The calibre of the reaction of our western civilisation to organised violence has yet to be fully tested. Until the spate of outrages last week — from the renewal of terrorism...

by the narrowest of majorities the French People have decided to avoid national selfu estruction, and M. Giscard d'Estaing has Proceeded with grace to the leadership of his e...

The electoral news from Australia is far less cheering than that from France. Mr Whitlam has, in as close run a race as that in which M. Giscard triumphed, prolonged his...

Predictable outrage greeted the news of India's experimental explosion of her first nuclear bomb. Predictably, too, the Indian government issued a sanctimoniously...

Sir: Mr Douglas Jay's article in The Spectator last week on food prices and the Common Market is an extraordinary web of half truths, misconceptions and false assumptions....

Sir: Your criticism of competitions in which animals are the prizes is most unfair to the Sun and, what is more important, to the Sun's readers. You say that "in a large number...

Sir: Up the Cosgrave Declaration! As people concerned with furthering the cause of Conservatism among students we hope that Patrick Cosgrave's willingness to talk to...

From Cdr Phipps Hornby, RN (Rtd) 'Sir: It is to be feared that a mis-statement has found its way into the book reviews that appear in your issue for May 18. The review in...

Sir: From the general tone of his writing in The Spectator, Larry Adler would, I am sure, wish to be regarded as liberal. Could anything be more viciously illiberal than the...

the front, page of The Spectator of May 18. 1 311 ,,` I've never heard a man with a go ev • flow of English say that. He alwaY, s , n sa n y ug s h? :' , Enough's e(expletive...

Sir: I am afraid your columnist Cha d d Babble was fibbing when he clairne that mobile Mr Ronald Biggs Mad!: that anonymous £65,000 payment the Industrial Relations Court to...

W hile n ile Miss Enid Lakeman makes " h _ u t a good case for the single " a nsferable vote as contrasted with its una dventurous cousin, the alternative °te, I feel that she...

to 18 Parage the alternative vote by 4 4 ° ,,_tiog an extreme illustration. - " . noriy Wedgwood Benn also did so on JUne 9, 1964, when moving the i, e l,ection of a Bill under...

Sir: Mr Benny Green's articles are always a pleasure to read, and full of stimulating ideas. But this week he has someone 'grinding the lens of thought to the point where it...

Sir: It is sad to see someone with the ".reputation of Nils Bohr putting into my mouth words I did not say, presumably because they are easier to refute than what I did say. I...

Sir: Rodney Milnes takes a keek at Edinburgh Festival and Fringe audiences and secretly plans of jumbling up the tickets but I think that he has just let dab that he gets his...

From Dr C. H. C. Thomas Sir: I enjoy the articles by John Linklater in your publication but feel I must remind him that the story goes — "first the bad news, then the good...

Sir: "There is now no excuse for thinking people not to realise that everything British education . . has stood for in its finest periods is under attack," you say in your...

second division, people are upset and angry and even put on black. If they did the same whenever a good grammar school is forced to go comprehensive, there might be less damage...

The Tories need Enoch and Enoch needs the Tories Patrick Cosgrave My old teacher, Sir Herbert Butterfield — almost certainly the greatest of modern British historians — once...

" j ' Ar .i.'great deal — but of a very special kind. ye t'lle accusation that they possess that un...,:rnroelled freedom of action which is so rare c e Nr society is basically...

The political will and the 'flexible response' A Senior Officer The Spectator publishes this article as matter of vital interest and concern, and is as assured of the accuracy...

A certain Mandacticrer 2ro2osts to modify kis Asotes, to render Collision with. YootTassattgers less 1117414*os:1 do tat uttolersta4 how ki5Course ci Action i1 iitig arltievt...

The corrupt juggernaut Paul Smith Local government, rarely front page news, is today in the centre of public attention because of the spate of corruption cases and reports of...

aking the :rleuts id b tc lodes Boyson,MP lit, HE Greater London Council (Money) Bill r , W before the House of Commons aims to e l ve the GLC power to spend £56 million in 0....

Dan's castle': after the. fall Jane McLoughlin While the world waits to see what will be the next item of T. Dan Smith's dirty linen to be washed in public, we might spare a...

When I look about_me and behold the strange variety of persons which fill the Corridors and Lobbies with Business and Hurry, it is no unpleasant amusement to pick out the...

An open letter to Alfred Morris MP from Louis Battye Mr Alfred Morris, MP for Wythenshawe, has been appointed an Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Health and...

Politicians and platitudes Bill Grundy Every schoolboy knows that the Sage of Ecclefechan had a poo r opinion of the public. When asked what was the population c if • England,...

Giscard v Mitterrand Philip Kleinman The role of advertising is not usually a topic with which political elections are much con cerned, though their outcome may often be...

k moral-issue Another influential voice has joined the chorus d enouncing President Nixon. This week an editorial in the Las Vegas magazine Cosa Nostra declared that the...

Eye witness Martin Sullivan It has been the business of Biblical scholars to help us to examine in detail the narrative which is before us and tease out its separate elements....

Tasteful colours Bernard Dixon Our expectations of the way something ought to taste has a real effect on the way it actually does taste. That is the remarkable implication of...

Rejoicings in Noshleigh Pamela Vandyke Price The award of the Glenfiddich Trophy to Derek Cooper, as wine and food writer of the year was an event several years overdue —...

On the eve Denis Wood Towards the end of May the country is poised at the edge of summer. The loud Wagnerian longueurs of the full opera of roses, delphiniums and phlox are...

psychiatry without tears This is a difficult book to review"' Its sub-title is "A new approach to the treatment of the mentally ill," and one might think that it would be easy...

My father may be often in my dreams Yet (since he died when I was young) play parts Or be himself — and stay unrecognized. In any case dreaming often modifies The features of...

Ian Robinson The Metropolitan Critic Clive James (Faber £ 3 .95) T he "metropolitan critic" of Mr James's titlees say is Edmund Wilson, but the jacket rakes it plain that Mr...

LOIRE VIVIEN ROWE Ann Mansbridge Eyre Methuen. 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4. CAMBRIDGE LESSONS IN ENGLISH by George Sampson (C.U.P. 1948). Shuter, 82 Mt Pleasant Road,...

Fritz Spiegl The Grand Tradition: Seventy Years of Singing on Record 1900 to 1970 J. B. Steane (Duckworth £10.00) At the present galloping rate of progress, with lunatics,...

Philip Ziegler William Wilberforce Robin Furneaux (Hamish Hamilton £6.00) Statesman, Orator, Philanthropist, Saint, one of the greatest Parliamentarians in a great age, a...

Colin Wilson Strong Opinions Vladimir Nabokov (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £3.50) Literary reputations are sometimes made in a curiously accidental manner. One mild day towards the...

Life is a drag Peter Ackroyd Royo County Robert Roper (Andre Deutsch £1.75) Regiment of Women Thomas Berger (EYr e Methuen £2.75) There was once a poem, in those days when...

Victoriana , tlenny Green N i 2thing could be more self-defeating than the n d of critical work which tries to place the ;'-reative artist under a glass dome of social...

Bookend The travelling 'circus descended last week on Eastbourne (we are of course referring to the annual Booksellers Conference) and a much improved affair it was, with a...

Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw, with Diana Rigg, Alec McCowen (Albery Theatre, London) Tonight We Improvise by Luigi Pirandello, with Keith Michell, Keith Baxter, June Ritchie...

Scripture and kung fun Duncan Fallovell Craze Director: Freddie Francis. Stars: Jack Palance, Edith Evans, Diana Dors, Julie Ege, Trevor Howard, Michael Jayston, Suzy Kendall,...

Head start Rodney Milnes In launching their new series of contemporary music on the slightly equivocal label 'Headline,' Decca have wisely led with a winning trump. Messiaen's...

Masochistic nostalgia Clive Gammon Sam is back, and a nasty bit of work he looks too. Merciful time has eroded the memory of shorttrousered Sam in last year's Granada series....

At the climax of a horrible little trendy play by Stanley Eveling called Shivvers, at the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs, an actor committing a sort of hara-kiri gushes blood...

R.C. BeIlan An intriguing feature of post-war economic development in the Western world is that national economic performance has been worst in those countries in which t...

While the Department of Trade's boring inquisitors huff and puff their obscure way along in investigating the affairs of Lonrho, following last year's boardroom row (most likely...