It has not been just the continuing relentless heat which has cast an air of unreality over Mr Healey's efforts in Cabinet this week to find ways to cut 1000 million from next...

The Department of Trade report on Lonrho was published at last. It harshly criticised Mr Angus Ogilvy. He called the criticism unfair, but as a 'gesture of honour' gave up all...

Blast-off or bust in Europe John Grigg On Monday and Tuesday of next week the EEC heads of government will be meeting in Brussels to take, or not to take, vital decisions...

An interesting competition seems to be emerging between the winners of libel actions and 'prematurely retiring' town hall officials as to which group has found the fastest way...

Unfit for publication Auberon Waugh 'We would restore real freedom of the press,' says Mr John Tyndall, chairman of the National Front in the course of an interview in this...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington By the Fourth of July weekend even the intelligentsia had surrendered to sentiments Of simple patriotism it didn't know it possessed and the...

John Ardagh Paris A parched Paris is emptying fast for its usual long holidays by the sea, where at least some water remains. Among those still left in the capital, tempers are...

Peter Nichols East Berlin There was a lot of talk of history in the making last week in Berlin at the conference of European communist parties. The prod of history in fact was...

Keith Joseph A television interview with Mr Heath has set Political commentators off again scribbling earnestly about the dispute between Keynesians and monetarists in the...

Norman Lamont Anyone who confused the Hansard Society Report on Electoral Reform with a Royal Commission could be forgiven. The very word 'Commission', the red cover, the...

Shiva Naipaul During the Commons debate on Immigration which took place on Monday, Mr Enoch Powell looked alarmingly portentous—but remained silent. He had the aloofness of an...

Hans Keller By common consent amongst all my psychic agencies—ego, super-ego, id and, above all, my very own discovery, the supei -id, which tells the other internal...

Christopher Booker Anyone interested in the present strange, almost unbelievably confused and neurotic state of British architecture might well take a look at a rather...

Andrew Alexander It is wonderful what a little self-interest or— if you prefer it—a brush with the real world can do for a socialist's outlook. A friend of Labour persuasion...

Elisabeth Dunn Boarding house landladies everywhere are under starter's orders for the holiday season. A gentle canter throughout June leads to the final couple of furlongs in...

The equity prospect Nicholas Davenport At long last the stock markets responded to the more cheerful noises sounding from Westminster. The FT index of industrial shares...

Sir: Peter Young (4 July) refers to astronomical expenses to provide a service similar to the service pre-war. Why then do the Post Office pay their staff every week thousands...

receiving very substantial remunera`!nn for doing nothing whatsoever. So why snnuld there be any objection to freelance c(bat soldiers being paid for their services? AfMl ter...

26 June) was quite naturally greeted with great interest and appreciation by the members of our Association. Most certainly, there is little more that need be added to Mr...

26 June to Lord Brockway as Liberal sub-agent at Rusthall, in the Tonbridge constituency, in the 1906 general election recalls the only four years (19061910) when the old West...

Sir : In a recent issue you complained in 'Notebook' that the supporters of the National Campaign for Electoral Reform include some 'surprising names'. Apparently it is bishops...

Sir : Brigid Brophy, in her review of Gillian Freeman's Angela Brazil biography, must surely be oblivious of today's periodical literature for teenagers if she truly doubts the...

of Military Incompetence fails to mention that failure is a characteristic of human behaviour when confronted with novel situations. People design and build bridges which fall...

Sir: It really is high time that the establishment figures of the past so-called Conservative government stood down in the interests of a united concept of a kingdom, rather...

the authorship of the poem on the OBE has no doubt been answered by many people who remember the scarifying poem by the late A. A. Milne (1882-1956), who is more usually...

Sir: I think 1 can help Celia Haddon, What is a bulger? (Letters, 26 June). According to the Supplement to the OED: bulger 2. Golf. A wooden club with a convex face (Disused)....

Form and content Mark Girouard A History of Building Types Nikolaus Pevsner (Thames and Hudson £16.00) Histories of architecture tend to deal with their subject in terms of...

Edward Neill Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction Jenni Calder (Thames and Hudson £5.00 cloth £2.50 paper) This book is a gleefully emancipated backward half-look at a time...

Ronald Hingley Moscow Farewell George Feifer (Jonathan Cape E4.95) To leaf through this publication, in the dismembered proof form in which it reached me, was to receive an...

Duncan Fallowell The Hospital Ship Martin Bax (Jonathan Cape £3.95) Games of Love and War Dinah Brooke (Jonathan Cape £3.50) Both these novels involve South-East Asia, lest we...

Benny Green Written for Children John Rowe T OWnsend (Pelican 95p) The emergence of children as a literary consumer group, perhaps the most staggering cultural event of the...

Look out for boys Gillian Freeman Two thousand five hundred and sixty years ago an eagle flew over Sicily holding a tortoise in its talons. It was looking for a rock on which...

The Rambert Michael Church One of the most hallowed conventionsofarts criticism holds that the writer should present his response as a fundamentally integrated one. He may...

De profundis Kenneth Hurren Hanratty in Hell (Open Space) Amy and the Price of Cotton (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs) The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (New End, Hampstead)...

In the 'eighties Hans Keller One of our era's outstanding characteristics IS its tendency to give birth to new professions which are anxious to establish their claims to be...

New menace Jeffrey Bernard It must be very nearly as exhausting to watch hysterical scenes as it is actually to play one of the leads in a real one. After the Fall (BBC 2),...