The outcry on publication of the report of the Advisory Council on the Penal System was no less depressing for being wholly predictable. The Council may be wrongheaded and...

The fall and rise of Treasury control Ferdinand Mount When plans for reform on rational lines are put forward, it is always useful to consider among other things what's in it...

What Dr Owen considers his impartial and statesmanlike posture over Rhodesia has become much more difficult to sustain following the massacre of twelve British subjects near...

Mr EnnaIs's confession Auberon Waugh One can see it as a cruel paradox or as poetic irony, according to taste, that Mr David Ennals, Secretary of State for the Social...

Luigi Barzini Rome The Neapolitan taxi-driver in Rome the other day, (a real taxi-driver this time, and not at all the journalist's mythical and ubiquitous interlocutor), shook...

Xan Smiley Truth, the first casualty of war, is ritually and systematically slaughtered in civil war; and when, in a place like Rhodesia, the vanities and consuming ambitions...

Richard West Salisbury In the '1890' bar in Salisbury there drinks each lunchtime one of the world's most notorious muck-raking journalists. He is Francis Courtney Browne who...

June Lait One of the advantages of living in what I was about to call a primitive society (but since so many words one was wont to use without inhibition touch someone or other...

Peter Bauer and John Wood `Will the 1 million unemployed please report immediately to Notting Hill Gate where a job as a shorthand typist has been waiting for one of them for...

Poor Grace Taki The publicity over Princess Caroline's wedding reached a crescendo this week, and although she is now plain Mrs Junot, it looks as if it will continue until...

Inflation fears Nicholas Davenport It has always been virtually impossible to control the economy of a free capital society by monetary means. Only the slave societies can be...

The Contagious Diseases (Animals) Bill — in other words, the Bill for compelling the slaughter of all fat animals imported from every European country — Canada and the United...

Versions of history Sir: I am certainly not going to let Patrick Cosgrave, of all people, lecture me on objectivity, if his review of The War Path is typical of his work (24...

Sir: A propos of Mr Waugh's article on fox-hunting (24 June), it may interest you to know that a 2nd Deputy Speaker of the Swedish Diet, Herr Bengtsson (Centre Party), the other...

Sir: I have lately returned from Rhodesia and been shown Mr Alexander Chancellor's piece in the Spectator Notebook of 29 April about my son, Richard Cecil, who was working as a...

Sir: Judged to be in the wrong by the Press Council you printed their adjudication prefaced by a further attack on Ian Hamilton Finlay in your issue of 17 June. Not content with...

Sir: I have just read the article by Desmond Stewart headlined 'Hollis in the evening' in your issue of 3 June, which referred to the cancellation of the Pyramids Oasis project....

Sir: I have just read the review by Philip Hope-Wallace headed 'Brighter once' in your issue of 6 May. As the author of the Shell Guide to East Sussex I am grateful for the...

Sir: Alan Watkins writes (17 June) that 'the Irish state was established by thugs and murderers'. If he would glance at J. C. Squires Selections from Modern Poets he would find...

Herod: Reflections on Political Violence says that 'whereas the Welsh go in for a sort of maudlin sentimental boastfulness, the Irish like the Sicilians have a disposition to...

Turkish Cypriot Proposals for the Solution of the Cyprus Problem CHRONOLOGY: 1955 — 1958 Greek Cypriots attempt to unite Cyprus with Greece by killing Turkish Cypriots, the...

A. The common starting points of the constitutional solution A federal system of government for Cyprus is a solution which has been advocated by the Turkish Cypriot side from...

relations with the EEC, the Commonwealth, the Socialist bloc and the non-aligned countries and is in a position to attract the capital and the know-how of foreign investors....

It has to be recognised that the question of territory is closely related to the economic viability of both Communities and to the question of security. This problem was taken...

George Feifer The Gulag Archipelago: Vol. 3 Alexander Solzhenitsyn Translated from the Russian by H.T. WI!lefts (Collins & Harvill E6.50) Solzhenitsyn and the Secret Circle...

Christopher Booker The Natural History of Selbome Gilbert White with drawings by Fredrick Marns, (Shepheard-WalwYn £9.95) The Shadow of Extinction: Europe's Threatened Wild...

Richard Shone The Case of Walter Pater Michael Levey (Thames & Hudson £8.50) We must all tumble into the gutter at some point during our career but not as our career. Pater...

Benny Green Charley Gordon: An Eminent Victorian Reassessed Charles Chevenix Trench (Allen Lane £8.95) In at least one sense General Gordon, or Charley as his latest biographer...

Francis King Men on White Horses Pamela Haines (Collins £4.95) Since it was this periodical that first brought Pamela Haines to public notice by awarding her a New Writing...

Rodney Milnes La Bohan% (Glyndelaourne) Hansel and Gretel (Scottish Opera) These operas have a lot in common. In both, characters dance to hide their hunger and misery; in...

Adventures Ted Whitehead Go Tell The Spartans (London Pavilion) We're used to movies preying off each other, but it's a surprise to hear a character describing his past in...

LAW'S Grocer's Manual (J. T. Law) or Xerox copy; Crime mystery fiction including A. Christie, J. Creasey, Jules Verne. S. B. Johns, 12 Forest View, Neath. ELSE OXENHAM books....

From nothing Peter Jenkins Evita (Prince Edward) It was a compulsory success. Failure would have been too horrible, and far too expensive, to contemplate. Who can say, with...

Phenomena John McEwen Restrospectives are treacherous things. The most famous victim of one, as Saul Steinberg recently pointed out, being the wife of Lot. Every artist who...

For the money Richard lngrams For one awful moment on Sunday night it looked as if the World Cup Final would be a draw and that they would have to go through the whole thing...

Mixed joys Hans Keller 'Oh no! This is not what one buys the Spectator for. As if three weeks and four days of televisual irritation hadn't been enough — do we now have to...

Village life Jeffrey Bernard Some time last year I made a rather hurried and hackneyed .contribution to the Observer colour magazine's series on London's villages. They asked...