The mis-naming of the National Health Service — which is corrected in the title of this article — has been a crucial part of our failure to understand the origins, purpose,...

Sir: Can our plight be put right by a GNU? Would its head be dull red or pale blue? Could it rule with one mind? Let's be cruel to be kind And accept it's best kept in the...

Sir: As one who spent many years in industry — both with large and small firms — and who is still employed in a consultative capacity, 1 found the article by David Crouch MP to...

Sir: It is probable there will bea General Election this year, and once again editors and commentators will be bowing before the opinion polls. Cannot something be done to...

Sir: The beliefs in the stagnating debate on economic policy as expressed by Mr Ridley and the like are all well and good. Such Conservatives have, however, one fearful enemy:...

Sir: .Mr Towler's indignation about the financial support that the European Movement has received in the past, from both wealthy and modest contributors, is really laughable....

Sir: It seems to me that your correspondence on homosexuality is in danger of becoming confused by odium theologicurn and confusion of terms. First of all, what do we mean by...

Sir: What an absurd fellow Mr Edwards is! He talks of "Good Roman Catholic Countries like France, Spain, Italy and Ireland where abortion, VD, and wickedness generally,...

Sir: I am surprised at your harsh judgement about the West German attempt to keep the World Cup free from disturbance by Arab terrorists ('Middle East Imperatives,' June 22)....

Sir: Peter Ackroyd's review (June 29) of Stanley Middleton's Holiday has achieved the improbable: I shall never read The Spectator again until it changes or promotes its...

'Sir: Benny Green's anecdote about how the man acquired his long black beard, namely by swallowing a horse, all but the tail, brings to mind a remedy for asthma recently heard...

Heath's question, but whose answer? Patrick Cosgrave In the last week or so the leader of the Conservative Party and those closest to him when he made his decision to appeal...

Some two years ago! suggested in the House of Lords that we should have a National Government. It was at the time when the government were having their first tangle with the...

Do they sincerely want to renegotiate? A Labour Party memorandum to the Cabinet Concern has been expressed in several quarters about the strength of the Labour Government's...

Medical care in the 'Nine' Alan Maynard The organisation of medical care in the nine member countries of the European Economic Community takes a variety of forms. In West...

White Paper and scissors Rawle Knox A few weeks ago in Londonderry two youths were on their way to plant a bomb in a grocery store (that had been bombed some seven times...

Emperor in a labyrinth Xan Smiley The Ethiopian troubles are not over. The recent decision of the military to take control of the government is but another link in the chain...

At present I am sitting with a Heap of Letters before me which I have received in the character of Puzzle. There are Complaints from Lovers. Schemes from Projectors, Scandal...

SOCIETY TODAY One-parent families Mr Healey misses his mark Moyra Bremner The publication of the Finer Report which reveals the desperate plight of the one-parent family...

Every granny a wanted granny John Linklater There is at present no provision under the NHS for gas chambers to provide a final solution to the problem of a falling birthrate...

Evening papers Bill Grundy Maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner, that I don't love London so. Every time I arrive back I look at all those serried ranks of solid citizens in...

Shaving away brands Philip Kleinman When economic times are uncertain, as one need hardly say they are now, retailers are not too keen on carrying big stocks. When stocks are...

Faith and prejudice Martin Sullivan My friend George Appleton who recently retired from the Archbishopric in Jerusalem had this to say in an address he delivered shortly...

Wet and dry Peter Quince We have had so many dry weeks this year, stretching back into the early spring, that it was a shock to plunge back into wet weather again. Drought had...

REVIEW OF BOOKS DiElbe Onyeama on the lies of a black hero This unauthorised biography* of Malcolm X (his widow declined to be interviewed for the book) owes its interest...

Maurice Buckm aster The Nazi Secret Service Andre Brissaud (Bodley Head £3.00) KGB John Barron (Hodder and Stoughton £4.25) Milton Waldman's translation of Andre Brissaud's...

Larry Adler The Dogs Bark Truman Capote (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £4.90) "Jack Kerouac? That isn't writing, that's typewriting!" The remark made Capote the most quoted writer of...

A.L. Rowse England and the Discovery of America, 1481-1620 D. B. Quinn (Allen and Unwin £6.50) Professor Quinn has become — after the admirable historian, J. A. Williamson —...

America lost Peter Ackroyd Ninety-Two In The Shade Thomas McGuane (Collins £2.50) The Limit Rosalind Belben (Hutchinson £2.45) McGuane's novel is set in the riverrunning...

Bookend As predicted in Bookend last March, the house of Barrie and Jenkins has finally fallen into the hands of Communica-Europa, the Swiss-based company headed by old Etonian...

Relative values Benny Green I am not familiar with the fictions of Miss Dodie Smith. Apart from the rapt attention I once paid in my teens to a Saturday night radio...

OF THE ARTS Sheldon Williams on the international art battlefield At the XII Bienal de Sao Paulo, "If You want a prize, you need to have one of your people on the Jury,” said...

Hello, old lovers 'Kenneth Hurren Cole: an entertainment based on the words and music of Cole Porter; devised by Benny Green and Alan Strachan (Mermaid Theatre) For nearly...

Indigestible Huck Duncan Fallowell Huckleberry Finn. Director: J. Lee Thompson. Stars: Jeff East, Paul Winfield, Harvey Korman. 'U.' Odeon, Leicester Square (114 minutes)....

I hear that the Arts Council has a barrage of aggrieved criticism coming to it in a day or two from a group called 'Artists Now,' a panel of five that includes at least two...

American deflation, British reflation Nicholas Davenport Money commentators are sometimes right and sometimes wrong — present company always excepted — but I cannot believe...

Oliver Stewart Trading stamps and credit cards are financial conjuring tricks which, under cover of diversionary patter, cause enormous sums of money to disappear daily from...

Nephew Wilde, who ran a share tip COlumn in this paper, pulled his readers out of the stock market before the collapse and in December left for the Far. East. He's just...