boorish and self-important behaviour of the Prime minister in declining the Queen's invitation to Windsor d was the one infelicity of an otherwise happy Royal birth, a Y. Of...

-r ,he Queen celebrated her fiftieth birthday in toe absence of the prime minister. She 'fully un derstood' the inability to attend her d ance at Windsor of Mr Callaghan, who is...

Counter-revolution coming Patrick Cosgrave It is three and a half years since I began to write this column. Since Parliament is in recess, and since there are only two weeks to...

Mr James Goldsmith continues his war against Private Eye. Apart from the sixtyodd writs which he has issued against the magazine and various wholesalers and .other agents who...

To kill a Massingberd Auberon Waugh Is gentry a word which can usefully be applied to the Irish ? Burke's Landed Gentry of Ireland ran for four editions (1899, 1904, 1912 and...

David Rudnick Lisbon The Portuguese are a sentimental people, which is perhaps why they like to choose 25 April, the anniversary of the military revolt that ended the...

Amit Roy Just down the road from the Taj Coromandel Hotel, where the outsider may launch his investigation into the hotchpotch of Madras politics, stands the statue of Muthuvel...

Edward Gardner If Taiwan, once famous as the late Chiang Kai-shek's Formosa, has been forgotten by the West, then the sooner we get back to reflecting on its importance to the...

Peter Nichols Rank , The Italians have a lot to be thankful for to BP and Shell: over and above—very much above—the hapless little handful of millions which the multinationals...

John Biggs-Davison Eamon de Valera described Ulster as Ireland's 'fairest province . . that the Irish of every province love best next to their own. The Ulster of Cu Chulainn,...

Ian Waller The image of British Rail that emerges from the Government's consultative paper on the future of public transport is distinctly unflattering: a tiresome and costly...

Jim Higgins I n that fine novel The Good Soldier Schweik , there is an episode, early on in the volunle4 where Schweik through no fault of his ovi ll is immured in a hospital...

Brian Inglis During a thunderstorm last summer, a Smethwick housewife in her kitchen saw what appeared to be a ball of fire, about the size of a grapefruit, coming at her. 'The...

Elisabeth Dunn Sir Richard Marsh is, of course, a professional. From such a vantage point he i§ well-qualified to describe the Department of the Environment's report on...

Hans Keller By sheer accident, at the quarter-final and semi-final stages of the European competitions, I saw more matches this season than ever before--and that made me think...

The plight of the manager Nicholas Davenport A Bank holiday gi‘es one time to reflect seriously upon whether it pays us to work in this disunited kingdom. Some workers—...

Sir: The desire of Sheila Donaldson (10 April) to make our parliamentary system responsive to majority opinion does her credit, but I submit that the very factors Which make the...

Sir: I applaud Mr Christopher Booker's attack on the Community Land Act (10 April). His message is that 'positive' town planning has been a djsaster. I think it reasonably...

hi s tory (Spectator 3 April) regards the liberal middle classes as being the enlightened and progressive ones while Marxist materialists see the working class as the only...

Sir: Andrew Faulds says the Saudi Arabian 'woman's role is the Scots one of hearth, bed and board. And with our declining social disciplines, who is to decry that ?' This would...

feel (3 April) that as Palestine was not among the territories specifically excluded from McMahon's letters to King Hussain, the Arabs were justified in assuming that it was...

I may not have the literary elegance of style shown by your reviewer Benny Green, who takes me to task for what he calls my 'syntactical chromosomes' in his review of my book...

Sir: I read with interest Philip Mason's admirable review of Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe (10 April). There is ample reliable historical evidence in support of Mr...

In the Russian labyrinth Ronald Hingley Lenin in Zurich Alexander Solzhenitsyn, translated by H. T. Willetts (Bodley Head E3.75) Alexander Solzhenitsyn is not, to me—as he...

Peter Ackroyd Letters Home, Correspondence 1950s 3 Sylvia Plath, edited by Aurelia Chober Plath (Faber £6.75) Only in second-rate writers does that conve ntional gap between the...

Robert Skidelsky Julian Grenfell: His Life and the Times of his Death 1888-1915, Nicholas Mosley (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £6.50) 'Come and die, it'll be great fun,' urged...

Duncan Fallowell A Dove of the East Mark Helprin (Hamish Hamilton £3.50) The Sun's Net George Mackay Brown (The Hogarth Press £3.75) Foreign Affairs Sean O'Faolain (Constable...

SILVICULTURAL SYSTEMS by R. S. Troup, 2nd Edition. OUP 2 copies. P. D. Ellis, 23 Homers Croft, Greenleys, Milton Keynes, MK12 5DB. COMPLETE BOOK OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL, David...

Benny Green The Selective Ego:The Diaries of James Agate edited by Tim Beaumont (Harrap £5.75) To someone of my age and social background, a critic like James Agate is remote...

George Gale • The Survivor Terence Des Pres (Oxford University Press £4.00) This is a good book, modest in size, large in theme, well-written and coherently organised, and...

George Hutchinson A Man of The Times lverach McDonald (Flemish Hamilton £5.50) Mr Iverach McDonald retired from the Times after service of nearly forty years, first as a...

John Brewer The Bourbon Kings of France Desmond Seward (Constable E6.00) Henrietta Maria Elizabeth Hamilton (Hamish Hamilton £6.95) Three hundred years of history in some three...

Overnight celebrities Gerrit Henry New York The evening of Monday, 22nd March saw a rather unusual event taking place in Manhattan. The setting was a small, elegant...

Pinter's progress Kenneth Hurren 1 ' The Caretaker by Harold Pinter (Shaw) No Man's Land by Harold Pinter (lyttelton at the National Theatre) Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land by...

Country dance Robin Young Why, I think one might be forgiven for asking, have a Welsh Dance Theatre and a Scottish Ballet if there is no Welsh dancing and precious little...

Space trip John Bridcut Twickenham is not normally associate d l with the space race, but that is from whe ° Sittlimia di Sfere by Andrzej Panufnik. exiled Pole resident in...

Mysteries John McEwen If you like mysteries go and see the photographs of Peruvian ground drawings at the ICA (till 2 May). No more peculiar vestige of an ancient culture can...

Bye, Brother Jeffrey Bernard Worldwide. Kojak and Co. . . . (BBC2) confirmed my worst and long-held suspicions about Americans. It's not just that they worship the 'almighty'...