The reception accorded to Dr Neville Bennett's report on Teaching Styles and Pupil Progress has been both predictable and depressing. Predictable in that the 'progressives', who...

Leathern wings were heard flapping as Dr Henry Kissinger passed over England. The new Foreign Secretary, Mr Anthony Crosland, journeyed to Lincolnshire to pay his homage, before...

Five minutes to midnight Patrick Cosgrave Every good actor has at least two exit lines —so 1 persuaded the editor to allow me two columns in which to bid goodbye to this spot...

Since even during his own time as Secretary of State the United States has consistently ignored events in Africa, Dr Kissinger's strong avowal of the black cause against...

Never shall be slaves Auberon Waugh A subordinate error in the case for détente with the Soviet Union lies in the assumption that there is profit to be made from trading...

KuIdip Nayar

in October 1962, Nehru said: 'Our conflict With China is a much deeper one and is likely to last a long time.' Indeed, it has been a long time, fourteen years, since the two...

Richard West Just a year after the end of the Indochina war it is hard to remember why the rest or the world thought its outcome was so important. The 'domino theory',...

Leslie Finer Washington How many primaries does Jimmy Carter have to win to become the only possible choice as the Democratic Party candidate for President ? Early in the game,...

Dingle Foot Monday 3 May is an historic anniversary. Fifty years ago the General Strike began. In the event it passed off without bloodshed or much in the way of open tumult....

Jock Bruce-Gardyne To one, at least, of the main actors in the last sterling debacle, there must be an awful feeling of deg, vu. More than eight years have passed since Mr...

8 ryan Robertson The death last week of Colin Maclnnes deprives English literature of a novelist and essayist whose imaginative force, originality Of thought and wide range of...

Robert Skidelsky 'We cannot base our hopes for the future upon a resumption of the cheap and easy living standards of the past. . . . We shall have to level down a bit.' So ran...

Nicholas Davenport It is now obvious why the Prime Minister could not go to the royal birthday party. He had just read the City page in the Spectator on the sterling crisis. He...

He argues that the phenomenon of fire-balls or ball-lightning doesn't have 'a natural explanation', that it is connected with the phenomena both of 'spontaneous c ombustion' and...

Sir: The Prime Minister may well be 'boorish and self-important' in not attending the Queen's birthday party (though no doubt the social loss was minimal), but the really...

over-rated and I expect he is right, but why must he assume that a girl in her twenties who writes to her mother 'VERY GOOD NEWS: in the mail I just got my first acceptance from...

going to comment with its usual astuteness on American politics, the least it owes its readers is someone with a fair understanding of the subject. Henry Fairlie, having...

TV item in Omnibus concerning the composer Alkan rather odd. It was the first of April if you remeMber, and the broad smile on the face of the usually (faintly unnerving)...

Andrew Faulds for warning us that by 1985 Saudi Arabia will hold two-thirds of the world's monetary resources and that 'it has become the Babylon of the millennium'. But,...

Sir : I don't think Mr Leo Abse should be allowed to get away with calling St Paul an anti-semite. Any man who, with all the pride of his motive, announced 'I am an Hebrew of...

The great American disaster Jan Morris The New Golden Land Hugh Honour (Allen Lane £12.50) The American Indians Dean Snow (Thames and Hudson £6.50) One must not, of course,...

Sir Anthony Nutting Another World 1897-1917 Anthony Eden (Allen Lane £3.95) Having previously waded through the three turgid volumes of Lord Avon's political memoirs, I...

Neville Braybrooke The Ark in the Park Wilfrid Blunt ( Hamish Hamilton £7.50) L ondon's Zoo compiled by Gwynne VeVers (Bodley Head £4.95) Wilfrid Blunt has written a history...

EXPERIENCE AND ITS MODES by Michael Oakeshott. J. Liddingion. Balliol College, Oxford. RECONSTRUCTION by Macmillan . GUILTY MEN by Cato WIGS ON THE GREEN by Nancy Mitford. 60,...

Duncan Fallowell Silence Shusaku Endo (Peter Owe n E4.25) Mr Shusaku Endo is that rare and provok ing animal, the Roman Catholic Japanese novelist. You haven't come across one...

Benny Green B!smarck Alan Palmer (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £6.95) P ost-Victorian Britain, 1902-51 L. C. B. Se aman (University Paperbacks £4.50) It has always seemed to me a...

Geoffrey Grigson The Uses of Division: Unity and Disharmony in Literature John Bayley (Chatto and Windus £4.50) Readers should reject criticism which does not turn them from...

James Hughes-Onslow An lncompleat Angler Lord Hardinge of Penshurst (Michael Joseph £4.25) People who oppose bloodsports on grounds of cruelty really ought to grapple with...

at Rogers Th e Cabaret Lisa Appignanesi (Studio Vista £6.95) Movie buffs have long been with us; blues and folk purists we have met ; and defenders of the true music-hall faith...

Richard Hough The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery Paul M. Kennedy (Allen Lane £10) Readers of Mr Kennedy's new book are left with the strong impression that his real...

Shiva Naipaul Revolutionaries Without Revolution Andre Thirion (Cassell £6.50) In France, the terms 'Paris' and 'the Provinces' often seem to imply a kind of stark , almost...

Welcome to Sports Day Ian Cameron Death Race 2000 (London Pavilion, 'X' Certificate) is a low budget exploitation movie, and none the worse for that. Obviously calculated as a...

Carmen from two angles Rodney Milnes Those who believe that the provinces get only second-rate opera should have seen the 444th performance of Carmen at the Royal Opera House...

Horse power Kenneth Hurren Equus by Peter Shaffer; National Theatre production (Albery) Salad Days by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds (Duke of York's) Equus again, and I am...

Some fiddles Jeffrey Bernard Menuhin (BBC2) was a sixtieth birthday celebration for the great fiddle player which took the form of a chat between the master and David...