The talks between Mr Heath and Mr Lynch have not done any great harm; and the two Prime Ministers must by now know each other's mind better than they did before, which is an...

Three years ago Dr Kiesinger, then West German Chancellor, said on Panorama that Britain was a Conservative country. He was of course entirely right. We are a country which...

This summer I determined to go abroad with family. Eventually, following the kind offer from an old friend of a villa in Cavtat, we decided to go to Yugoslavia. It was a holiday...

Blackpool Can it really be ten years since the TUC Congress to which George Woodcock put his famous question — "What are we here for?" I suppose it must be. The question recurs...

My solution for Ulster JOHN VAIZEY Northern Ireland has ceased to work. Twelve thousand soldiers, internment, thuggery, looting and burning and no conceivable end to it....

The pornoscopers of Copenhagen MERCURIUS OXONIENSIS Good brother Londiniensis, In my last letter to you I touched lightly upon the Elect of our nation who, by certain abstruse...

Bedside manner JOHN ROWAN WILSON Second only to the Hippocratic Oath in medical mythology is the bedside manner. Throughout all the vicissitudes of the last quarter of a...

Long life? BERNARD DIXON An extraordinary and disturbing exchange took place in Swansea last week between Professor R. R. Porter, FRS, head of the biochemistry department at...

Christopher Sykes on Cecil Beaton's aunt J. E. J. Altharn on philosophy, Auberon Waugh on a sandwich R. M. Hartwell on the young Keynes The paradox of John Maynard Keynes is...

The Disciple and his Devil Valerie Pascal (Michael Joseph £3.00) One of the most interesting chapters of Hesketh Pearson's biography of Shaw was called 'The Strange Case of...

Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England Christopher Hill (OUP £1.50) Most Englishmen of the early seventeenth century believed that history was providentially directed, and...

Prototractatus Ludwig Wittgenstein edited by B. F. McGuinness, T. Nyberg, and G. H. von Wright, translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (Routledge and Kegan Paul £7.50)...

My Bolivian Aunt Cecil Beaton (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £2.50) The presentation by the publishers of this memoir is misleading. The picture by Cecil Beaton on the jacket of three...

St Urbain's Horseman Mordecai Richler (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £2.50) Mr Richler's new book, which is far the best and most interesting I have read from him, is calculated to...

Bridging the generation gap CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON For one reason or another, a good many distinguished foreign film directors sooner or later get round to making a film in...

Surprise, surprise KENNETH HURREN It would be surprising if its present one-week visit to the Old Vic — from New York via old York — were the last London saw of The Last Sweet...

Angels descendant ROBIN YOUNG The Little Angels from South Korea are the first dance company to appear here (they are briefly at Sadlers Wells Theatre) at the express wish of...

Goehr ahead RODNEY MILNES After the first flush of enthusiasm, two uncomfortable thoughts about Edinburgh. With no 'theme,' no concentration on one or two composers, the...

More than polo DUNCAN FALLOWELL Those wanting to score a quick point at a cocktail party — and who doesn't somewhere between their third and thirteenth raspberry gin? — should...

The interrogations on the London Weekend Tele. vision Man in the News show, never renowned for spikiness, begin to look alarmingly puffy. Last Sunday's programme was a blatant...

Sir: This month pensioners will be getting the £1 increase which the Chancellor announced in his budget last March. But just how far does this benefit go? Quite apart from the...

Sir: Will Britain ever learn? The tragic events in Northern Ireland are a repetition of the troubled Years 1920-1921 in the South when the battle was between the Sinn Fein...

From Dr D. M. Potts Sir: I was interested in the thoughtProvoking advertisement insert by Life in The Spectator. The poster makes the point that humane people condemn atrocities...

Sir: Like your correspondent Mr R. K. Brian I am glad that it is not on the whole the practice of The Spectator to censor advertisements on arbitary moral grounds; nevertheless...

Sir: Since Mr Dan Morton (September 4) has seen fit to favour me with a somewhat offensive and personal sneer (characteristic, I fear, of the deteriorating level of white...

Sir: Your reference to the work of Eugene Dodeigne in your last edition could imply that the quality of his art might be in question. This misses the crux of Mr TalbotRice's...

Sir: With regard to your review of the new Cambridge History of Islam (August 28) and in view of the present situation in the Middle East, it is strange to recall that at the...

Sir: The riddle of Arnold Toynbee is no more than the paradox essential to any great man and his thought, but Mrs Shirley Robin Letwin is pleased to fasten on Toynbee's ethics....

Sir: May I briefly comment on Mr Patrick Cosgrave's very thoughtful review of my last-but-one book, A Diplomatic History of the First World War. I pursued two main lines of...

Sir: It is frequently stated that there are no viable alternatives to joining the Common Market. Nothing could be further from the truth; if the British government were to play...

From General Sir Horatius Murray Sir: It may be that my impressions an two issues in Palestine in 1948 may be of help in the general discussion of the Jewish-Arab problem....

nevertheless delighted to read Mr F. R. MacKenzie's spirited defence of himself and his opinions. However, like the eighteen-yearold chit, J. Maule, I have little difficulty in...

it is difficult now to say how many of the Palestinian refugees fled from Palestine in 1948 out of simple fear for their lives and how many were driven out by the Israelis. It...

Sir: One of the most pressing problems facing a large City like London is the problem of the Inner City. In order to investigate the nature of the problem, Greater London Young...

Sir: Tearing oneself away from the fascinating subject of whether Tony Palmer has had sex, or, indeed done anything more fatiguing than putting pen to paper, your columns would...

Cheaper money is the spur NICHOLAS DAVENPORT No sooner was the printer's ink dry on my remark last week that " sooner or later Bank rate will be cut to 5 per cent one Thursday...

First run on Townmoor in 1776, the St Leger's our oldest, longest and now most vulnerable classic if those intent on tampering with it have their way. It is naturally...

This my son was dead. . . . SASTHI BRATA THAT of course was the bearded patriarch forgiving the Prodigal. And great need he had of forgiveness too. But consider for a moment...

KULDIP NAYAR New Delhi When in the wake of the Congress party's split a year ago Mrs Indira Gandhi talked more and more in radical terms, many people thought that she had to...

Soft swish of salaams CAROL WRIGHT 'Tourists are our honoured guests ' proclaim hoardings at every Indian airport. And in a country of poverty, the visitor feels himself so...

" Watch thyself," said Black Gauntlet. Rebuked, Sir Frederick of Gaywood, champion knight of Kent, sneaked back to the Red Pavilion. He did not wish to share the fate of Sir...

My father was a patient, gentle, easy-going man. Yet he always got non-existent or appalling service in restaurants and sometime we would wait forty-five minutes for the bill....

BENNY GREEN Now is the time when the voice of the tutor is heard in our land, and the inimitable drone of the spotted Lesser Lecturer wafts over the autumn air at dusk, a time...

The fiasco at Weeley jokingly called a pop festival turned out to be neither a festival nor popular. You may remember those newsreel shots of 120,000 fun-loving youngsters...