Since practically nothing but brickbats have come the Prime Minister's way in recent months it is satisfying to be able to salute his singular achievement at the Sunningdale...

These are not good times for the European Economic Community, nor for Britain as a member of if. The failure of her partners to support Holland in the recent oil dispute...

The Government and the Home Secretary are to be congratulated on their decision to switch from a policy of foreign aid to Uganda to the assistance of the still unsettled Ugandan...

Sir: Your gibe about "ignorant churchmen" (Leader, December 1) would seem to imply that in matters so obscure as politics and economics only experts have a right to an opinion....

Dean of St. Paul's, over his refusal to allow his pulpit to the Archbishop of Canterbury, your reasons are rather spurious and, if not, then one must say the New Testament is...

Sir: Whilst not wishing to contest the rights of the Dean of St. Paul's to refuse any service in his cathedral which he regarded as an unsuitable act of Christian worship, much...

of a surprise. The Spectator appears in a new role as guardian of "the purity of Christianity" and as protector of the politician from those members of the public who may be "...

Sir: There are several points in Miss Valerie Riches' letter responding to my comment on Dr John Linklater's article of November 17 which I should like to answer. First, Miss...

transforms opinion into fact (" Never have the young known more about sex. Nor have they ever been more promiscuous ") and makes assertive deductions from non-proven...

Sir: What can Beverley Nichols mean 'poor ad Norman Douglas'? (Notebook, December 8.) Poor old Beverley Nichols, I'd say. Norman Douglas didn't in "his last disreputable days"...

Sir: The peg on which Benny Green hung his 'Talking of Books' article in Your issue of December I was our new publication Bits of Paradise. Mr Green occupied two columns with a...

From Sir lain Moncreiffe of That Ilk Sir: I was consulted by my friend Nancy Milford before she wrote her controversial U and non-U article; and Pointed out that 'mirror'...

Sir: Your leader on Chile (December 8) is as intemperate as it is inaccurate. (The President of the Chilean Junta is General (not Admiral) Pinochet (not Pinrochet).) If, like...

Sir: You published in June 1972 a letter in which I supported (but, I hope. with more charity) the complaint of another correspondent about the element of bad-tempered bossiness...

Sir: The omission of a short sentence in my review made utter nonsense of what followed. What I said was, 'Oliver Cromwell had no such illusions (i.e. as Charles I). On the...

Is an election needed? Patrick Cosgrave It is axiomatic in British politics that a Prime Minister never goes to the country except at a moment when he 'considers his chances...

The BNTB has just opened for the season, and those who have had occasion to use it are agreed that of its class it is unique. The BNTB, es you need scarcely be reminded, stands...

Hong Kong's web of death George Patterson A good police force, it has been said, is one where more crooks are caught than are employed. By this standard the colony of Hong...

The last continent Molly M ortimer Only in 1962 were the British Antarctic Territories created. This followed fast on the 1959 Antarctic Treaty of which Britain was one of the...

We're very fussy about the sites we choose for Asda Superstores. The more defunct they are, the better. An old mill, a rubbish tip and a derelict brickworks are three examples...

Seventy years on David W. Wragg Seventy years ago, two brothers, bicycle manufacturers from Dayton, Ohio, made the first aeroplane flights to be recognised as such, in marked...

Europe and the computer Gerald Segal On the table of the EEC Council of Ministers there now lies the Commission's proposals for the European computer industry. It would be all...

Evere magnanimous Puzzle is prepared to look for something to praise in the constitutional outburst, or, to be more precise, the outburst on the constitution by Chancellor Hogg....

Marguerite Alexander Women, we are told at every turp.. now, have always taken the brunt end of corrupt ideologies. Our traditional defenders, the knights in shining armour and...

The spice of life John Linklater General practitioners note that a steadily increasing proportion of patients today present with illdefined, diffuse complaints of which...

Spiritual fellowship Martin Sullivan Christian pulpits ring out every Sunday with reflections upon the life and ministry of Christ. His teaching is applied to modern...

Investigation and privacy Bill Grundy "Investigative journalism" is a phrase that can only be said to trip off the tongue if "trip" means stumble. It is a phrase so clumsy...

I touch your hand, Madame, In the pavane; I bow and bend To grace your allemande; I point my foot To match your minuet. I hold you close Among the shouting brass; My arm impels...

The bottom translated Pamela Vandyke Price Sometimes those of us who are otherwise placidly preoccupied with perfecting the poaching of eggs, trying to determine whether there...

"We are in sad fears the Tories will win, their beer and money are so wildly flying, and the people they have bribed are getting so fearfully impudent now, demanding spirits and...

Peter Quennell The Contrary Experience Herbert Read (Secker and Warburg, £3.25) Subtitled on the dust-cover, though not on the title-page, 'The Autobiography of Herbert Read',...

Peter Ackroyd Season of Anomy Wole Soyinka (Rex Collings £3.00) The Wound Malick Fall (Heinemann Educational Books 60p) I may be white, but I'm no liberal. Unlike certain other...

Donald Watt Hitler by Werner Maser, translated by Peter and Betty Ross, (Allen Lane £5.00), The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler by Robert Payne (Cape £3.95). To write a...

Rhodes Boyson The Inequality of Man. H. J. Eysenck (Maurice Temple Smith £3). Into the raging battle between the millenarian egalitarian environmentalists and the rationalists...

Duchess Anne Elizabeth Jane Howard The Days Of Duchess Anne, Life in the Household of the Duchess of Hamilton 1656-1716 Rosalind K. Marshall (Collins £3.75). A great deal of...

Thanks, pal Benny Green When a famous novelist puts a famous person Into a famous book, the whole world, that is to say, the daft enclave of London's metropolitan limits, soon...

Bookend Review of the Year January — The principal officers of publishing's very own union (ASTMS) were elcted. Five out of seven worked for Longman Penguin. February —...

In The Glass Menagerie (London Film Festival) there is a passage in which Jim O'Connor, the bouncy young shipping clerk from the warehouse, is sketching out his ambitions to...

Tip of the iceberg Clive Gammon An abiding memory I have of Greenland concerns a beach close by the coastal settlement of Sukkertoppen: grey pebbles, grey rocks, small...

Taking the pith Evan Anthony To ensure against damning Patricia Faulkner with faint praise, I'll start off by recommending her exhibition at the Mercury Gallery, Cork Street....

High C's Rodney Milnes . Both the Victorians and the 'other Victorians' took sex far too seriously for it to be tolerated as a subject fit for comedy, and this was the greatest...

Actor turned producer Kenneth Griffiths must be getting fairly exasperated over his troubles in getting his TV films actually on the screen. He produced one for ATV about...

Nicholas Davenport The slump on the Stock Exchange assumed such ferocity as to presage, it seemed at first sight, some national disaster. The fact that about £10,000 million...

Sponsoring horseraces has far more to do with outgunning rivals, entertaining clients and dispensing goodwill than with a direct sell to the racegoer. Still, every little...

How shrewd young Nephew Wilde was to sell out his portfolio before the devastation in the stock market last Thursday. If only he had gone in for short selling, say, double the...