There can be no questioning the strength of the Prime Minister's zeal for Europe. He speaks and acts as a man possessed of the utter certainty of his convictions. His mind is...

The Government now must act There is no sign of an end to the troubles (as we may as well get used to calling them again) in Ireland. For four years a part of the United...

I had already scribbled down in my mental notebook something like this: "Ted Heath has now reached the peak of his form. He is turning out to be a first-class horse. The only...

Mr Harold Wilson recently said to a group of new MPs who enquired about the party difficulties over the Common Market: "This is the most important policy decision taken in a...

Thursday July 8: UK troops shot dead two men during rioting in Londonderry. The BC defended itself in a statement against Labour's protests over ' Yesterday's Men' and refused...

The Conservative future A STUDENT OF POLITICS The party question to be decided is not so much whether the Common Market is enticing, but what a diet of Common Market and...

The White Paper A SENIOR CONSERVATIVE The recurring annual cost of EEC entry to the balance of payments after the transitional period will be £500-£600 million. that is to...

The gelignite headache LESLIE MALLORY The latest innovation in the brisk street life of Belfast is a military device known as the jelly-sniffer. It is a portable backpack with...

Paper money DENNIS HACKETT When Mr Rupert Murdoch said he did not believe price increases were "a panacea for all ills" and that he would hold his price "as long as...

Moonshine BERNARD DIXON If all goes according to plan, the next Apollo mission will blast off to the moon on July 26. Five days later, while all good Europeans are doing their...

CounterYBlait torfibsecDefendea of th,e9trab Cause ktirGForm of azOdvi8orycEpiftle ToGIVIr8 Melt" Prom hercElleemed`Serval GEli IcralgVilz (F. R. Mackenzie) A drunkard's turd...

It has, I confess, afforded your servant no little gratification and amusement to contemplate the pro strations and genuflexions of those selfstyled gentry of the nib, that...

prefer present ease whatever the future cost, cry, "Throw them a sop !" Little do the simpletons realize that a be gg ar, whose appetite is whetted by a crust, is merely...

Raymond Carr on guerrillas in power Reviews by Simon Raven, John Biffen, John Casey and Auberon Waugh Harold Wilson on Lord Butler During the Spanish Civil War, the News...

A Young Person's Guide to Life and Love Benjamin Spock (Bodley Head £1.25) There is a photograph of Dr Spock on the back of the book jacket. He is walking down a street, both...

Income Redistribution and the Welfare State Adrian Webb and Jack Sieve (Bell £1.90) Income Distribution Jan Pen (Allen Lane The Penguin Press £3.50) A Conservative' has masked...

Guerrillas in Power: The Course of the Cuban Revolution K. S. Karol (Cape £4.95) Ancient Greece apart, the output of words as a ratio of inhabitants written about must be...

Samuel Richardson: A Biography T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel (Clarendon Press £6.50) One of the most striking signs of the decline of taste is the rise of the 'definitive...

Camp Commander Stuart Lauder (Longman £1.75) Stuart Lauder's new book arrived with strong recommendations from its publisher and an effusive message from Mr Angus Wilson: "I...

People I Have Loved, Known or Admired Leo Rosten (W. H. Allen £3.50) Highly Jewish anecdotage of an American nature about such as Winston Churchill, Groucho Marx, the author's...

Publishing plays has become a full-scale industry. A yard of plays, perhaps sixty or seventy titles in all, came in to The Spectator in the first six months in this year. They...

THEATRE The rocking-horse loser KENNETH HURREN The late Bernard Shaw had a new theatre named after him in London last week, but he had little else going for him, and the most...

Old waves CHRISTOPHER HUDSON Talk of Godard, Chabrol, Malle, Resnais, Truffaut et al as still part of a nouvelle vague in French cinema is as common and irritating as...

Blue weekends DUNCAN FALLOWELL Last year, apart from the Glorious Isle of Wight, most people spent their festival weekends being drenched in the Dales or frozen stiff in the...

Legacies EVAN ANTHONY "Alistair, something has got to be done! I have tripped again over Parallels [William Turnbull's collection of ninefoot u-beams, placed parallel to one...

RODNEY MILNES Just as Britten elicited a strong emotional response in his War Requiem by combining words from the Christian liturgy with war poems by Wilfrid Owen, so has John...

So Peter Hall, to whom congratulations (and my apologies for under-estimating him), is not, after-all, to be a yesman of the Donald Duck administration at Covent Garden. The...

The Arts and the Department of the Environment are in conflict in Hyde Park, of all places, and the modest endeavours of the Serpentine Gallery to establish a showplace for art...

THEATRE Opening next week: Look — No Hands!, the Lesley Storm comedy that so amused the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Gardiner, that he was persuaded to become one of its...

Sir : As the present Vice-Chairman with responsibility for candidates of the Conservative Party, I take exception to the terms of a letter in your issue July 10 under the...

allow space for the expression of a view on the Common Market that has nothing to do with the terms; that is, in fact atavistic and will no doubt be derided as ' emotional ' but...

Sir: In his letter on entry into the Common Market (July 3) Mr Kenneth Middleton com ined that the Prime Minister had brushed aside the limited commitment to negotiate contained...

of a European Common Market, one question has yet to be asked and answered. In the event of our being prodded into the Frog-pond by Messrs Pompidou, Heath and Rippon, what, it...

of all sections of the Party. I would like to inform Mr Thomas and others that the decision in each case was taken most carefully and was based on considerable enquiry as well...

the European Community, though I think we would have done better still to go in as one of the foundermembers — and the most signifi cant as we would have been at the time....

Sir: Mr Hollis misses certain points. As author of a book about Isis I naturally hope your readers (including some expert Catholic theologians) will take to heart what is...

Sir: Whatever the state of play between us — of which your readers are the best judges — Mr Berrington's invitation seems to me most handsome. Let us hope we can arrange to...

The former suggests that, once in ECSC, the British government will no longer be able to finance uneconomic expansions of the steel industry (or expansions on which the High...

opposition to British entry into the Common Market. I have worked and voted for the Conservative party ever since I was an undergraduate, have served as secretary of two local...

Sir: I am preparing a biographical critical study of the Edwardian dramatist St John E. C. Hankin, who died in 1909. I need much more information than is already published about...

Sir: Surprising as it may seem, Benny Green's criticism of booksho - s (Juno 12) is shared by at least one bookseller who is attempting to do something about it. Even in these...

Sir: Christopher Booker is somewhat inexact when in his review of the Dictionary of National Biography 1951-60 (July 3) he remarks that the price is three or four times that of...

Sir: John Rowan Wilson is right (July 10). The death rate has not gone down in the past quarter of a century because new diseases have appeared to replace those which organic...

Sir: My attention has been drawn to a report in your issue for June 19 to the effect that I have deserted my tax-haven home to return to Britain to receive the accolade of...

Sir: We are in debt to The Spectator and Dr Bernard Dixon for bringing to public notice what he calls "the Great American Debate on Cancer Research " in his article 'Cancer...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT It looks as if the lone campaign I have been conducting — thanks to the unfailing courtesy, if not commitment, of the editor — for certain reflationary spurs...

Dr Daniel McDonald obviously has a taste for strenuous effort and hasn't accustomed himself to leisure in Switzerland since clearing £16i million through the sale of his...

CLIVE GAMMON Michael Brennan lives in a house near Dungarvan, County Waterford, which has a fine wrought-iron gate surmounted by an image of a greyhound in silhouette. "I've...