The latest terrorist atrocity at Athens airport provides further tragic evidence of the need for resolute international action to deal with hijackers. It is quite clear that...

The political situation which confronts the nation is at the same time both simple and exceedingly complex. Its simplicity resides in the probability that if most of the...

Sir: Your extraordinary references in your issue of August 4 to the Daily Telegraph " suppressing " two Gallup polls last month betray a complete misunderstanding of the...

on the Telegraph's Gallup Poll omissions (August 4). And so I have been to my University library — a private subscriber to Gallup — to see what results were obtained in June to...

Sir As a liberal I feel sure _that my party will heed Mr Cosgrave's advice (August 4). As we all know, political leaders have lots and lots of things to do, but nevertheless 1...

No one, I imagine, is likely to dispute the Liberals' infection with the psychological disease once colloquially known as ' native-loving '. Indeed Mr Peter Hain is more...

the good thing about the Liberal victory, at recent by -elections, is that it may infuse the Socialist majority in the Opposition with concepts more practically valid than those...

Sir: As long as we have great and understanding scholars such as Professor Trevor-Roper and Professor LloydJones, teaching will not die, nor learning, nor interest in the...

Greek at Oxford, on Hugh Trevor-Roper's presidential address to the Joint Association of Classical teachers — and how wellbalanced. It brought to mind the saying, "To Christ we...

P .S. In a recent issue, Benny Green wrote about "No Latin and less Greek ' (interesting but possibly with tongue in cheek). Has he any comments about Hugh Trevor-Roper?...

broadcasting Reginald tkcoldall's Ring from the Coliseum, BBC will " tape the tired old Bay a t version and broadcast it later - suspect, considerably greater He suspects...

as delighted to learn that the Bayreuth tapes are free as I was surprised when their availability was mentioned as an excuse for not taking the Coliseum cycle when the matter...

Sir: David Hume and, apparently, W. J. Spring, to judge from his article in the July 14 issue, are of the opinion that constant conjunction constitutes a causal. However, the...

Sir: Our Central Committee naturally keeps a weather eye on food trading. We suggest, with all due respect to a senior citizen, that G. Haydn Jones (Letters, July 28) does not....

Sin The quality of English Association football is currently the worst in its long history. The truth is that football has become largely a lost art, and consequently this great...

Sir: Martin Sullivan's article on ' Sym. bol and reality' (Society Today, August 4) requires some comment. First, there is a great difference between the discoveries of...

Sir: Ian Meadows' article on the Cathars or Albigenses (July 21) with its melange of astrology, dark suggestions of great Cathar secrets greedily hoarded by the Vatican (a...

Behind all the great liberal causes of our time — and 1 am thinking specifically of abortion — there is a sense, an overpowering feeling, of rightness (which the rest of us call...

Were there but world enough and time Patrick Cosgrave Fondly though I once treasured the possibilirY, an early general election is now out of the question; there have been too...

Nixon—America's Charles1? Hugh Trevor Roper I make no claim to predict the result of the Watergate scandal in America. I think it quite possible that the President may...

Keeping prices down berek Coombs The recent by-election results at Ely and FtiPon made it abundantly clear, if it was not clear already, that the soaring price of food is the...

Year of the nineteenth Molly Mortimer Every Commonwealth Conference has its own vintage flavour — its tag. Singapore was Strife and Survival Year. Rivers of busy ink are...

who cares? Geoffrey Wagner _.ful go forward to almost certain parliamentary g ully than you do. These tiny, beautiful is. 1 10 should Grenada have to be independent if she In...

A view from the bridge (2) Wilfrid Sendall t .'„Lue 1945 Parliament you could generally t `" a Labour MP from a Tory at a glance. Not today. I have never heard Mr Ted Short as...

The price of Innocence Douglas Curtis Raymond Harris may be sent to prison soon for not having stolen a magazine worth 7p. His case is just one of the bizarre situations which...

Scientists' language Bernard Dixon Whenever I drop into a scientific meeting, I am reminded once again of. the . extraordinary tortuousness of ' scientists' syntax ' — the...

_ Prayers and petitions Martin Sullivan Man is a praying animal. He has been at it since he first realised What a dangerous instrument his reason is, and he turned to prayer...

Weepers Denis Wood Many trees, besides the ordinary shape in which we know them, have as they say in horticultural terms, thrown sports, upright or fastigiate with a shape...

Tipsters, like dentists, doctors and stockbrokers, must instil faith in their clients and putting a cheerful face on the 100th losing nap is all part of the game. or confidence...

Pollyanna policy Pamela Vandyke Price In years past nice little girls were often given, as approved junior diversions, books about a perfectly revolting heroine, one...

Where would we look for the source of " When my beloved slipped his hand through the latch-hole, my bowels stirred within me "? Who wrote to the Times imploring that we Should...

Peter Ackroyd Sweet Dreams Michael Frayn (Collins £2.00) Forever Panting Peter De Vries (Gollancz E2.20) I have only two claims as a reviewer of recent fiction. I have never...

Irish tale • P.S.L. Lyons E ducation and Enmity: The Control 'of Schooling in Northern Ireland, 1920-50 D. H. Akenson (David and Charles, Barnes and Noble E4.95) Grim as are...

Memoir of a Revolutionary Milovan Djilas (Harcourt Brace Jovanivich, New York £4.75) The past, it was once memorably averred, is a foreign country: they do things differently...

Norman Fowler The Police We Deserve edited by J. C. Alderson and P. J. Steed (Wolfe £2.25) There was a time when books which reviewed the legal and constitutional position of...

b onald Watt 1 , 4V er Play: The Tumultuous World of Ea s t I . 18;90-1973 Leonard Mosley eidenfeld and Nicolson £3,75) i her 1 )0 e is a curiously unpleasant taste to this Mr...

There is a good deal to celebrate this week, even if some of it — my first reading of volumes from the Gollancz vintage detection ' reprints — causes even a seasoned addict to...

Stewart Conrad: The The Critical Heritage edited bv Norman Sherry (Routledge £5.95). In May 1963 Mr Sherry, then a lecturer in the University of Singapore, printed in the...

J. A. Watt This Sun of York: A Biography of Edwa0 117 Mary Clive (Macmillan, £4.25) s Between 1399 and 1485 four kings of Ens. i0 4 lost their thrones and met violent deaths....

Paperbacks After the enforced limits of Platypus's last column, he has decided to be as eclectic as possible this week. The first choice is from Signet and is entitled Herman...

Bookend The announcement last week Head had joined financial force and Chatto and Windus was per most cheering publishing news at Although, by Longman's standands, companies...

Pierre Boulez lends a welcome air of astringency to the Proms, The popular view of Prom audiences as young people who do not necessarily hear much serious music being served...

In The Bacchae of Euripides, the new addition to the National Theatre's repertory at the Old Vic, Constance Cummings can be said to have a short part but a merry one, though I...

Before all this fiddle _Christopher Hudson ilm companies, ruthlessly in search of the quick dollar, have hit upon the concert-film as the most profitable enterprise of the t...

Blabbermouths Clive Gammon As David Rees wrote while 1 was off-duty, a type of programme that is done admirably on BBC television is, for want of a better word, the...

All has been far from well with Decameran 73, the sex and nudity show, during its previews at the Roundhouse — attended, I'm told, by 95 per cent male audiences, thanks to a...

Benny Green Last weekend there passed unnoticed the anniversary of what was once the most popular instrument of dramatic irony in the armoury of the English novel. Perhaps one...

Nicholas Davenport The public must have been utterly bewildered by the sky-rocketing (3 t‘ money rates last week. It was ri olY a month or so ago that the Government was telling...

The lamentable murder of Sir Richard Sharpies, the Governor of Bermuda, earlier this year, is still unredressed. His wife and family had the immediate and deep sympathy of...

phew Wild The FT Ordinary Industrial index has fallen by 117.8 points since I began my portfolio over a year ago. Now this, of course, is only a rough yardstick with which to...