The referendum campaign has now entered its general election period: as we go to press there are less than three weeks to go before the British public makes the most momentous...

The greatest power on earth found it necessary last week to launch a vicious, bloody and unprovoked attack on a small peasant community dragging itself from a war that was never...

As most newsagents are reluctant to carry surplus copies, some readers may have difficulty in obtaining The Spectator. To ensure a regular copy we would ask our readers to place...

Mr. Christopher Harrisson in his article published in your latest issue mentions the attempt made by the British Government at the time of the recent acute sugar shortage to...

Sir: I do indeed approve of Anne Wood's suggestion (May 17th) that arts which have too small a following to pay their own way should raise funds by lottery, or any other way...

From Sir Graham Sutton Sir: In his sincere and well argued letter in your issue of May 10, Mr Adrian Barrett compares the evidence for the Resurrection with that for the moon...

Sir: Lady Antonia Fraser and the Society of Authors, quite rightly deplore the savage cuts in the bookfund of the Buckinghamshire County Library, but is there not something...

Owing to circumstances beyond our control — a dispute in the printing industry — the number of pages in this issue of The Spectator has been severely restricted and one or two...

Sir: - .,Surely," writes Mr Martin Seeker, "what was good enough for Wilde is good enough for us." Well no: I can think of lots of things — not to mention lots of people — good...

From Professor Antony Flew Sir: I read with a shudder of foreboding the story in The Spectator (May 10) of ,how the Director was prevented by trades union action from...

Sir: While we much appreciate Cecil Gould 's notice of Dress in Italian Painting 1460-1500 by Elizabeth Birbari in this week's Spectator (May 3) we feel we ought to reply to the...

Patrick Cosgrave The currently fashionable (in some quarters) coalition theory of British politics states that if all the second-raters, and all the failures, come together in...

The City has been priding itself on the amount of new money it has raised for business through 'rights issues during the past few months. It looks suspicious. The market has...

With grotesque political ineptitude, Harold Wilson's much-publicised television chat with Peter Jay coincided with Beethoven's 'Eroica' Symphony in stereo on Radio 3. I turned...

Tuesday, the thirteenth day of May If the Effusions of certain leading Statesmen are not mere Wild Exaggeration, then our Fanaticks who look to Muscovy as the Ideal Polity both...

When Rudolf Nureyev takes his flatulent new production of Sleeping Beauty for Festival Ballet to the Palais des Sports in Paris this autumn, he has a surprise piece of casting...

One of the more surprising moments of last week's annual Booksellers' Conference was provided by Lord Willis, whose new career as a novelist seems well launched. Lord Ted, a...

Matters of fact Edward Taylor, MP In a stirring call for "clarity and enlightenment" in the Referendum campaign, EEC Commissioner George Thomson called for an end to...

Nationalisation pains David W. Wragg No matter how awful the proposals of Labour's left wing, most of the electorate has always sought some solace in the almost certain belief...

Long hot summer John Vincent-Smith For elections that were not supposed to have much point once the Armed Forces had laid down in advance the basis of a constitution which...

Beverley Nichols on being frank about Frank Harris Nearly fifty years ago a very young man sat in a small office off Madison Avenue, endeavouring, with singular incompetence,...

Douglas Houghton People Populating Derek Llewellyn-Jones (Faber and Faber £3.95) Malthus was proved wrong in many ways because he overlooked technological advances in food...

Kenneth Griffith Gallipoli Eric Bush (Allen and Unwin £7.25) Some sixty years ago a child named Eric Bush was amongst the men of Australia, New Zealand, India, Britain and...

Robert Blake The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, Loyalism and the Destruction of the First British Empire Bernard Bailyn (Allen Lane £7.50) Thomas Hutchinson was the last royal...

Peter Ackroyd The Low Road Gilbert Phelps (Barrie and Jenkins £2.95) Mott on the Landscape Tom Sharpe (Seeker and Warburg £2.90) Samuel Beckett ruined the literary status of...

Benny Green In spite of the fact that the guest-list is so voluminous that the table-plan has been printed as a two hundred and forty five-page hardback, I was not prepared for...

'Crime and consequences Project communicado Lain Scarlet I suppose everyone's entitled to one good idea in a lifetime and mine hit me in the dog days of 1966. I was...

Bill Grundy My good friend and colleague, the Very Reverend Martin Sullivan, the Dean of St Paul's and occupant of the Spectator Chair of Religion, tells me that the road to...

Philip Kleinman In Piccadilly you've still got time to visit the Royal Academy summer exhibition at Burlington House or, if you walk down the street, the ISBA exhibition at...

Bernard Dixon Response to pain varies enormously from one person to another, as any dentist or fast bowler will tell you. Aside from squeamishness or toughmindedness, which can...

Martin Sullivan These are the last two lines of Paradise Regained. Christ has won His victory over Satan and resisted the threefold temptation. Following Luke's order, Milton...

Kenneth Ilurren Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand, translated by Christopher Fry (Chichester Festival Theatre) A Touch of Spring by Samuel Taylor (Comedy. Theatre) I'll say...

Kenneth Robinson The Godfather Part II Director: Francis Ford Coppola Stars: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, Robert de Niro, John Cazale 'X' Plaza 1 and 2, ABC...

Nicholas Davenport Having accused Big Benn of Putting the clock back I must now try to put the clock forward and see what is the future, if any, for Britain as a great trading...

Bernard HollowOod I met him in a Lyons café over a cup of tea and a bun, and he told me what a mess he was in. At the time the unemployment figure stood at just over two...

It seems Mr Douglas Tilbe was displeased with my disclosure of the wayward manner he runs Shelter. But though he protested, things have since gone from worse to worse still. I...

Charles R. Stahl The Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to make new highs for the year, and as of this writing stands at 848, a 50 per cent rise since last December's low...