has always been qualified by scepticism; t nd experience has always subsequently rov i t d the sceptics to have a far greater und standing of the ways of the world than...

It is clearly the Government's intention to exercise control over prices and incomes indefinitely. The powers it seeks, which Parliament will undoubtedly give it and which the...

Never before have I had myself woken up in the middle of the night to hear a broadcast, but I did so this Wednesday morning to listen to President Nixon announce peace in...

Patrick Cosgrave "Oh my God," said my favourite Tory MP on Monday — the day the House of Commons re-assembled — as he looked at the Evening Standard front page story on the...

Timothy Raison The message — according to the Daily Telegraph's Peterborou g h when the 1922 Committee's executive dined with the Prime Minister just before Christmas was "No...

Simon Penn I gave up fox hunting years ago; at about the same time as I gave up shooting. The last shot I ever fired was on our farm in pre-myxomatosis days. The rabbits were...

Kuldip Nayar India is always on the periphery of troubles; a little more rain or a little less makes all the difference. The nation's fortune still smiles with the fall of...

L.B.J. Denis Brogan Hey, hey, L.B.J., How many kids have been killed today? It was one of the tragedies of Mr Johnson's presidential life that the brilliant success not only...

Douglas Dunn on the revalued Pound The reputation of Ezra Loomis Pound, late Parisian dandy from Haley, Idaho, outcastcum-traitor and overhauler of twentiethcentury poetry; is...

Auberon Waugh The Abortion: An Historical Romance Richard Brautigan (Cape £1.95) Prophecy and the Parasites John Symonds (Duckworth £4.80) Car Harry Crews (Secker and Warburg...

Harold Beeley The Killearn Diaries, 1934-1946 edited by Trefor Evans (Sidgwick and Jackson £5.95) First as Sir Miles Lampson and later as Lord Killearn, the author of this...

Robert Moss The Fellow Travellers David Caute (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £5.75) Fellow-travelling is less a passing fashion than a particular cast of mind. The symptoms of those...

Dick Davis Collected Poems Donald Davie (Routledge £3.75) When, in the last stanza of his Collected Poems, Donald Davie writes "Irony fails us " there is a reaction similar to...

The Austrian Achievement 1700-1800 Ernst Wangermann (Thames and Hudson £2.25) Published January 29 In this excellent and refreshingly concise study of the Hapsburg empire from...

Bookbuyer Novels about the publishing trade are mostly set in. the United States, since not even the promiscuous imagination of a bestseller writer could weave lucrative...

Gillian Freeman on the avenue of fading stars The gold writing on the wall said, Think 20th.' And of course I was already. My approach had been along the Avenue of the Stars,...

Thugs and Catholics Christopher Hudson Film criticism, to pervert Wilde's remark about hunting, often presents the spectacle of the over-educated in full pursuit of the...

After the gala Robin Young Having bravely, untypically, and yet successfully given no fewer than five premieres in their 'Fanfare for Europe Gala, the Festival Ballet have...

Scots in town Kenneth Hurren Notoriously short on dissemblance and tact, I have never found it easy to write of the theatrical exploits of the remoter regions that are...

Hall marked Rodney Milnes Tristan and Isolde is such a difficult work to perform satisfactorily, and is indeed so comparatively infrequently performed, that I sometimes wonder...

Hoggart culture Clive Gammon When I hear expressions like " a new community of the mind" my own (mind, that is — not that it's firing all that well after 10.10 pm on a Sunday...

This was to have been the year of Australia's great leap forward into art and culture, and no doubt the artistically inclined are much encouraged by the election of Mr Gough...

Benny Green Suppose in the course of your reading you became intimately familiar with a person or group of persons in history. Suppose that by the chance speculations of self...

Morning glories Peter Quince It is not exactly easy to wake up punctually on these dark January mornings. I suppose I should be grateful to have acquired a new neighbour who...

Black Monday Nicholas Davenport Writing on investment policy for 1973 in this column on January 6 I came to the conclusion Cnat those stalwarts Who believed that Mr Heath...

It is impossible to accept without reservation the press releases of the company promoter takeover men. How two and two makes five. Synergy. Economies of scale and so on. The...

With dark, gloomy forebodings about Britain's entry into the Common Market I hope the taxfree status of charities and pension funds is re-examined. No one would argue, I...

Ladies Pride John Bull There is a snag about specula ting in small companies. The market in the shares tends to be very narrow and often the bulk of the equity is held by the...

Nephew Wilde A trivial thought crossed my mind after I had heard Mr Heath's economic measures last Wednesday. Who on earth is going to put his proposals into effect? Will we...

Supermarket mugging Oliver Stewart Supermarkets smell like consumer slaughterhouses. They are crude, hideous and menacing. Compared with shops which give individual attention...

Poverty The half-time score Frank Field The half-time whistle has been blown on the life of this Parliament, so now is an appropriate time to take stock of the Government's...

Information services custos The SBC republished the Supplementary Benefit Handbook (HMSO 32ip) at about the same time that Tony Lynes's Guide to Supplementary Benefit (Pen guin...

In the Westminster Sir: Mr MacMahon's objection to Jennifer Hawley complaining in the press, rather than privately through " the adequate machinery for complaints" seems...

Sunday Mirror and News of the World (whom others might have considered prone to sensationalism) against the television critics of the rest of the press. Robin Milner-Gulland...

Sir: It is five or six years since last 1 wrote, the interval coinciding with your last editorial concerning teacher supply. You are, I suggest, mistaken in laying the blame...

Sir: Whilst agreeing with a good deal of John Linklater's bellyache about the NHS (Spectator, January 6), I am bound to take exception to his generalisations about "less well...

safety of the NHS temple shown on the cover (January 6). I do so as a close observer, married to one of the priests of medicine .concerned since the foundation stone was laid,...

From Sir lain Moncreiffe of that Ilk Sir: M. S. Golding's letter about David Holbrook (January 20) tells us more about Mr Golding's own character than it does about Mr....

• Sir: I am, shall we say, a mature middle-aged relic of World War II; and the other day I was challenged . by a younger colleague as to why , there were so many World War II...

Sir: Many congratulations to your contributors Auberon Waugh and Kenneth Hurren who, week after week, delight readers of more sober artistic judgement than the Booker Prize...

Sir: You surpassed yourself with your decision to announce Jon Margolis as winner of the Schools Writing Competition. Although his name rings vague revolutionary bells, I...

Sir: As an admirer of don Andrea Giovene's The Dilemma of Love which your reviewer, Auberon Waugh, discusses with some dis taste in your issue of January 20, I would like to...

picture on the subject of Andy Warhol's trashiness (Notebook, January 20); such scraps of second-hand information are particularly valuable now that Mr McWhirter has shielded us...

Sir: Skinflint, in his column of December 30, expressed gladness that the first Premium Bond prize is to be increased to £75,000. At the risk of shattering Skinflnt's roseate...

Sir: As a member, I was naturally disturbed to read of Mrs Brock's experiences with the National Trust (November 25). I have been surprised that so far your correspondents have...

Sir, — I am working on a fairly extensive book on Richard Wagner. May I enlist your readers' help in making available to me, on short loan, any of the following publications...

Sir: I've only just read Simon Jenkins's long review of Colin Buchanan's recent book (December 23). One cannot let him get away with the naive and sentimental prejudices which...

S. L. MacGregor Mathew (1854-1918) and should be glad to hear from anyone having letters or other manuscripts, drawings, photographs, etc, connected with him or with the Order...

women gangsters of the 20s and 30s and would be most grateful to any of your readers who could send me any information on Edna Murray (the Kissing Bandit) of New York; and Mary...

Sir, The Voluntary Advice Scheme is being withdrawn on the implementation of the Legal Advice and Assistance Scheme not only because it would have lost its purpose, which was to...

For the second time in a fortnight Haydock Park lost a mag nificent Saturday card, and, with Newcastle faring no better, what promised to be a trailblazing month for Northern...

Sir: You will realise my age when I mention that I resumed buying and reading The Spectator last October for the first time since J. Addison, R. Steele and their staff of...

Sir: As a bookseller, I read with great interest the correspondence Df G. L. Bayliss (Letters, January 6) concerning the problems of obtaining books from this country. From my...

Obsessed with sex Sir: Now that Britain has become a member of the Common Market, we, two teenage English girls living in France, have been leafing through English journals,...

The Housmans Sir: I am endeavouring to found a Housman Society, preferably based on Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, the birthplace of the brothers A. E. and Laurance and their...

Money supply Sir: In 1922, while on a Mediterraean cruise in SS Adriatic, I heard an American who had just spent the afternoon in Haifa, say that he had seen some Arabs....