a timely i nqu iry The Government was right to set up an inquiry into industrial democracy, whatever the outcome of this may be. For too long, the economy of this country has...

Principally through the exercise of his remarkable powers as a Parliamentary debater Mr Wedgwood Berm managed, last week, to extricate himself from the more humiliating...

From Lord Shinwell, PC, CH Sir: I accept Mr Chen - ington's correction (August 9): it was Sir Eric Geddes and not Lloyd George who made the arrogant remark about squeezing the...

Sir: In answer to the compiler of 'A Spectator's Notebook' (August 2) I very much doubt whether there'll be any money in the coffers of Fleet Street by this time next year. If...

Sir: I am sorry to read that your pseudonymous contributor 'Peregrine' is suffering from the same sort of troubles as poor Mr Brezhnev. He ought to have something done about it....

From Mrs Isla Atherley Sir: Many of your readers will be dismayed by The Spectator's loss of Mr Harry Creighton, who fought a really magnificant campaign against the surrender...

Sir: As Daphne Hereward stated in your issue of July 26, the ComMon Market could solve a lot of problem, and in the long run save a lot of taxpaYers' money by adopting a common...

Sir: As a general practitioner apd part-time writer I have been content until now to disagree in silence with most of your medical correspondent's opinions but his article in...

From Mrs P. D. Riches Sir: The 'unholy alliance' referred to in Miss Sanders's letter (August 9) is far More widespread than she may realise. The Abortion Law Reform Society...

Sir: On a number of occasions recently I have seen Miss D. Sanders (August 9) and her colleagues quote a Gallup Poll Which shows that "78 per cent of women Oppose abortion on...

Sir: Martin Sullivan, discussing the Transfiguration (August 9), says rather defensively, "I do not propose to discuss the historicity of this episode," but adds rather rashly:...

Sir: The natives of Angola and Nigeria, and the paramount chief of Uganda are the latest in this heaving, discontented continent to behave in a manner in which, historically,...

Sir: How fortunate for Charlotte Bronte — and for posterity — that she did not have to do with Mr Farrar! Bookbuyer quotes Mr David Farrar, editorial director of Seeker and...

From Mrs V. J. Empson Sir: Your article, 'Falling Sales' (Robert Ashley. August 9), makes no mention of the reason why many of us have given up taking newspapers. We were being...

Patrick Cosgrave There is not a great deal that is cheerful to be said in an end of term report on the present Parliament. The amount of legislation has been so great — and...

While we must all deplore the slide towards a Communist dictatorship in Portugal, we should think twice before jumping to similar conclu sions about the forward march of...

Ralf Dahrendorf Three times in the last sixty years, changes in the constitution of companies designed to give workers' representatives • a greater say have dominated political...

Ian Ross it isn't only the oil which 'concentrates the Government's mind on Scotland nowadays; it is the 41 seats here which Labour holds, must hold again if they are to stay...

Power to the people Robert Moss ,••••• The immensely heartening thing about what is now going on in Portugal is that so many ordinary people seem prepared to fight, if...

In a heat situation Stanley Reynolds I'd like to fool, with My baby tonight, Break every rule, with my baby tonight. But, pillow, you'll be my baby tonight, 'Cos it's too dam...

Ever since I said last week that Paul Callan equipped himself with a bottle of champagne and an Old Etonian tie to write his story about Lady Antonia Fraser in the Daily Mirror,...

The famous Gratian, in his little Book wherein he, lays down Maxims for Man's advancing himself, advises his Reader to associate himself — with the Fortunate and to shun the...

I cannot express surprise that our great subsidised organisations, led, naturally enough, by the Royal Opera House, have sprung so nimbly and patriotically to the support of the...

Sorry news for Futura, the British Printing Corporation's paperback subsidiary which has just been celebrating its move to opulent new premises in Camberwell. I hear that the...

Robert Blake on the problems of the Whig succession Charles Watson Wentworth, second and last Marquis of Rockingham, was twice Prime. Minister — for just over a year in 1765-6,...

Francis King Isaac Rosenberg, Poet and Painter Jean Moorcroft Wilson (Woolf £4.75) Isaac Rosenberg: The Half Used Life Jean Liddiard (Gollancz £6.00) When my brother-in-law...

Please let THE SPECTATOR know when you have received from a fellow subscriber the books that you required. ANY TITLES in the 0.P. series "Art Of The World': (Methuen). Buxton,...

Richard Milner A Hundred Million Dollars a Day Mtchael Field (Sidgwick and Jackson £6.95) Once upon a time, Sheik Shakbut bin Sultan al Nahayan of Abu Dhabi went down to the...

Magnus Magnusson. The Viking Saga Peter Brent (WeidenfeId arid Nicolson £5.00) Who actually were the Vikings? What actually were the Vikings? Come to that, who and what were...

Joan Robinson Inside China Peter Worsley (Allen Lane £6.00) The Second Chinese Revolution K. S. Karol (Jonathan Cape £8.00) Professor Worsley's account of a visit to China is...

Peter Ackroyd Hard Option Gwen Moffat (Gollancz £3.50) A Spider in the Bath John Lymington (Hodder and Stoughton £2.95) 1. - et us all admit, as we shOuld, that the - English...

Barrie's ghost Benny Green In the spring of 1891 the smallest journalist in England, finding himself surrounded by Henry Irving one night at the Garrick, tried to turn the...

Alastair Mackie Out of last week's Commons questions about the Government's new action against smoking _ grew a rambler rose of an answer. What Dr David Owen said wound itself...

Sudden death Robert Ashley The cover of the current issue of Nova shows, in titillating close-up, a distinctly female hand unzipping a distinctly male pair of trousers. It...

On parole lam Scarlet The other day a group of prisoners on the Isle of Wight took to the roof of their cell block in protest against the unreasoned way in which they had been...

Laboratory sleuths Bernard Dixon Textiles imported into Britain have to be correctly declared for Customs purposes. During the second half of 1974, there was an influx of...

City churches Martin Sullivan The City of London, the famous Square Mile, is a village, and a stroll through it in the evening or at the weekend reveals many of its joys. None...

Moor big business Geoffrey Wheateroft This Wednesday is the Gastric Thirteenth when American and Japanese tourists sit down at West End restaurants to dine off the 'first...

Incomparable Cowes Oliver Stewart There was no artificial insemination nonsense about . Cowes 'Week.' As in so many previous years it burst spontaneously forth from the...

Opera The truth about the Coliseum union Rodney Elms It seems - a great pity that the Arts Council report on the state of industrial relations at the Coliseum is not to be...

Now and then Kenneth Robinson That Lucky Touch. Director: Christopher Miles Stars: Susannah York, Roger Moore, Lee J. Cobb, Shelley Winters, 'A' Odeon, Leicester Square (90...

Touched up Kenneth Hurren Engaged by W. S. Gilbert; National Theatre Company (Old Vic) Since I am not privy to the intramural discussions that precede the selection of items...

Give me Liberty's (or...) Evan Anthony _ Frankly, I am not awfully fond of shopping, but I once did buy a suit at Liberty's, Regent Street, and, wore it for three summers (it...

Pouring dear oil on inflation Nicholas Davenport The ink was hardly dry on my protest against Labour's extreme egalitarianism last week before I read in some gossip finance...

A word of warning to all of you who still think accounting is, if not wholly an exact science, at least a reasonably precise and fiercely delimited method of adding up...

There is something tragically wrong with any manufacturer who needs production at 96 per cent of capacity to break even. Yet that is what Sir Monty Finniston admits is the case...

Job interview Bernard Hollowood As good white collar jobs in industry become increasingly difficult to obtain, candidates are realising that their Vehaviour at the final...