The last fortnight has seen an increasingly inadequate performance by the Opposition. Apparently galvanised _by the Government's wretched behaviour—in suspending Sjanding Orders...

Sir Harold Wilson was installed a Knight of the Garter and Benjamin Britten was ennobled. Mr James Callaghan said that there was no solution to the mystery of Sir Harold's...

Lady in waiting John Grigg If a few foreigners had not decided to keep the present Government in office by propping up the pound, Margaret Thatcher might even now be Prime...

14r Callaghan was able, on Monday, to take refuge in a written Commons reply when Officially communicating the news that the Allen inquiry had failed to trace the source of the...

Auberon Waugh Isn't it time we had a decent sex scandal in Britain ? Washington is plainly in for an enjoyable summer, as disgruntled secretary after disgruntled secretary...

Richard West Trieste Arrivin g at Trieste, where 1 had done my national service in 1949-50, I was startled to find the streets packed with Yugoslav cars; to hear Serbo-Croat...

John Horgan Dublin When Mr Liam Cosgrave, the Republic's Prime Minister, told the leader of the Opposition in parliament recently that he had no plans to introduce government...

George Hutchinson Early next month, Edward Heath will be sixty years of age—for many, though not in politics and certainly not for him, the point of retirement. Retrospectively,...

Amit Roy As Gurdip Singh Chaggar, an eighteen-yearOld Sikh, lay dying outside the Victory public house in Southall, he could not have k nown that his death would unleash a...

Christopher Booker Three weeks ago, I was prompted by loyalty to an old friend to contribute a somewhat intemperate paragraph to these pages on the subject of Private Eye. I...

Jim Higgins In March of this year the Sunderland ship repair yard, Greenwells, closed down and 400 skilled workers lost their jobs. Viewed from some Whitehall bureaucratic...

Hugh Macpherson The General Medical Council has, on occasion, been compared to the Inquisition, which might seem a little hard on the guardians of medical standards. But there...

Marcello De Cecco Through no fault of his own, but merely as a result of his being a post-Edwardian English man, Keynes spent one half of his adult life making history, the...

Advice to summiteers Nicholas Davenport In the debasing of the English language Which goes on in the financial vocabulary— in cidentally, why must we speak so vulgarly When...

Sir : The Director of Post Office Public Relations, in his letter to you, appears to be most touchy about any form of criticism of increases in Post Office charges. Of course we...

has been muddling up his Spectator and Private Eye copy of late, culminating in last week's mountain of silly trivia concerning his recent entanglement in the Eye case. What...

Sir: I think John Grigg is quite wrong in stating (29 May) 'that when the names of Ibsen, Grieg and Munch have been mentioned, the catalogue of Norway's famous sons is just...

Sir: In stating somewhat baldly that Pitt quoted two lines of Virgil in his speech for the abolition of slavery, John Grigg does scant justice to what was the most brilliant...

bright' (5 J tI ,1 both draw attention to the damage wreaKe on the whole concept of the honours sYsteill. and the need for immediate reform, if il ls not to be consigned to...

spectacular on the TV! From the skey tribunal to his resignation honours, tlarold Wilson has sneered, smeared and tw , isted his way to power; he has cheapened tile office of...

of the Powers that the Revenue are seeking to ob tain in Clause 48 of the Finance Bill, if I could say why in view of my own experience t a L s a so licitor in the Inland...

Peter Ackroyd The Auden Generation Samuel Hynes (Bodley Head £6.50) There are two distinct versions of the 'thirties. There is the orthodox view of it as part of the ongoing...

Robert Blake The Call to Seriousness Ian Bradley (Jonathan Cape £4.95) Dr Bradley's excellent book fills a gap. There are innumerable references, contemPorary and subsequent,...

Shiva Naipaul Man and Work: Literature and Culture in Industrial Society David Meakin (Methuen £5.00; paperback £2.50) 'Enjoyment is separated from labour, the means from the...

John Kenyon Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George Ill John Brewer (Cambridge University Press £10.50) The decade of the I 760s was one of the most...

Duncan Fallowell The Children of Dynmouth Trevor (The Bodley Head £3.50) The Legend of the Thousand Bu lls Yashar Kemal (Collins £3.95) If a town like Dynmouth (Teignmouth...

Benny Green The Life of Raymond Chandler Frank MacShane (Jonathan Cape £5.50) Blessed is the biographer who can produce a book which fulfils a genuine need. Month by month the...

Masters and museums Robert Medley It is a sound instinct that delays canonisation until after death, often for many years. A similar caution should prevail before we elevate...

Great epoch John McEwen The contemporary art situation in London is very dull at the moment. Where are the shows of yesteryear ? Where the Marlb orough, wise Helene Lessore,...

Class mates Kenneth Hurren The Family Dance (Criterion) Liza of Lambeth (Shaftesbury) It would be possible to say that The Family Dance, Felicity Browne's play at the...

Family plots Ian Cameron At the Curzon until 23 June is the last plaY i n the season packaged here as the British Oli n Theatre and across the Atlantic as the American Film...

dney Milnes Th r , t Music Theatre Company is in he • i t ...Middle of its inaugural season. Although "as grown out of the old English Opera (1 r : 311 P, it is a larger and...