Humble beginnings

Seventy-five years ago this week, a meeting was held in a room above a Shaftesbury A venue restaurant to launch the Automobile Association.

IT is not something that The Times goes in for, but some editors will do anything to ginger up their Correspondence pages: "There will be a prize of "1/2.oz. (of tobacco) for the best letter under 100 words," was the offer in the September 1978 issue of lnside Out. Furthermore, the editorial went on to welcome criticism from "outside" readers, and when it said outside, it meant those not currently residing inside- inside, that is, Maidstone Prison, the site of the editorial offices.

Having seen BL's car for the '90's MAHOOD reveals some other projects now on the drawing board

WHEN I was about eight years old I inherited my brother's collection of Classics lllustrated comics. They were-,--and may still be-comic-book format versions of great works of literature, such as Hamlet, Loma Doone, Jekyll and Hyde and so on. My favourite of ail was the Classics lllustrated version of Dickens's A Tale Of Two Cities. I spent a great deal of time looking at that particular comic and it wasn't until I was nineteen that I realised that Dickens hadn't drawn the pictures, but had merely written the original story.

DAVID TAYLOR talkstothe author of Catch 22 and Good as Gold: JOSEPH HELLER

Arnold Roth notices the recent swarm of Cuban emigres and sees them through quarantine and Sorne Old Spanish Customs