Wednesday August 18: In Ulster a deafmute waving a pistol was shot by 'British soldiers; and a newly-born child was flushed down the lavatory of an Italian train travelling at...

Any chink in the Berlin Wall is to be welcomed, if only in that it makes the day-to-day lives of West Berliners a little less intolerable. But much of the optimism that greeted...

couldn't resist the lingering lensful of naked breasts, the ogling of one bronzed contour after another or any of the other gimmicks of the dreampeddling trade he so eloquently...

In the debate on Britain's entry into the EEC one aspect, which was hardly mentioned a month or so ago, has become a key issue — regional policies have emerged as a serious bone...

Peter Fleming CHRISTOPHER SYKES Many of his friends knew Peter better, but relatively few knew him longer than I did. I first met him through our friend George Harwood when...

Catching up BERNARD DIXON Next Wednesday evening in the Guildhall at Swansea, Sir Alexander Cairncross will rise and deliver his presidential address to inaugurate the 1971...

Now we're afloat J. ENOCH POWELL Suddenly the perspective of all writing and speaking on exchanges, sterling, reserve currencies and all the rest has altered, and altered for...

Mintoff cocktail JONATHAN DIMBLEBY ' Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' — the words in fading red capitals spread across the front of the Labour Party Headquarters in the village...

In our issue of June 5, 1971, we published an article by Mr Tony Palmer in the column Notes from the Underground which whilst being primarily a comment upon a periodical called...

Confessions of a Tory anarchist MICHAEL IVENS During the war I used to attend meetings of a London anarchist group. I was sixteen and full of adolescent preoccupations, even I...

This collection of essays* falls into two groups, those which had previously appeared in literary/political journals, and those which had graced the philosophers' trade press....

Lloyd George: A Diary Frances Stevenson edited by A. J. P. Taylor (Hutchinson £4.00). The British Liberal party has long appeared to be a classic case of life after death, a...

Private Worlds Sarah Gainham (Weidenfield and Nicolson E2.00) Private Worlds completes Sarah Gainham's trilogy about Austria during and after the last war. It would be an...

Government and Marlzet Economy Samuel Brittan (IEA Hobart Paperback 75p) This short but penetrating study pleads for the restoration of the market economy in Britain. It is a...

The Cambridge History of Islam edited by P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton and Bernard Lewis. Vol. I. The Central Islamic Lands Vol II The Further Islamic Lands, Islamic Society and...

There may still be some confusion about what, precisely, a literary agent can do for an author. Generally speaking, he is there to protect an author's financial interests. This...

Look forward in anguish? KENNETH HURREN John Osborne tends to be a bit testy about reviewers (or critics, as he is wont flatteringly to call them) and there's another...

When in Geneva . . . CHRISTOPHER HUDSON Films packaged for the international market are usually characterless and The Lady in the Car (' AA ' Odeon Marble Arch) is no...

New blood . DUNCAN FALLOWELL One of the nicest things about the 'sixties, as far as the record business is concerned, was the way small companies encroached on areas virtually...

In the outback EVAN ANTHONY John Bratby turns up in the most unexpected places — that is, his paintings do. 1 am beginning to think of him as the most prolific of English...

Starting next week, Thames Television gives a second showing to its widely-praised documentary series The Day Before Yesterday, a political history of Britain from 1945 to...

My colleague Kenneth Hurren's hunch — about the National Theatre's Ronald Pickup being the man most likely to succeed as Hamlet in our time — may have been anticipated by the...

and active on numerous cultural committees, seems the right sort of public-spirited arts man to succeed Lord Goodman as chairman of the Arts Council. He may well do so. But not,...

CINEMA Pick of the London runners: Sunday, Bloody Sunday, a triangular affair (man, boy and girl, with, in the fashion of our day, the boy in the middle), starring Glenda...

Children's charter TONY PALMER The Magazine Where? which is published every month by the Advisory Centre for Education, recently printed a draft for a Charter of Children's...

Sir: Mr F. R. Mackenzie's letter in last week's Spectator raises points which require sober answers. First, he claims that a single massacre carried out by Jewish extremists at...

Sir: In your issue of July 31 Sir David Anderson asks for comments on the thesis that " the present Common Market Six are anxious to get Britain in because the Market is...

Sir: If your contributor Tony Palmer feels that he is entitled to know the details of Princess Anne's sex life, he should ask her the next time she appears in public. I feel...

Anne is certainly not beyond belief but will be incredible to many when read in the columns of a paper of the quality of The Spectator. Facile descensus averni You have sunk;...

Sir: I am glad that Mr C. F. Langdon was shocked by the Life advertisement. The complacency of the more vehement supporters of legal abortion is not easily disturbed. I have...

Sir: My due pleasure at the reappearance within your broadsheet of August 7 of a polemick by the learned doctor Mercurious anent the disturbances in Balliol College which the...

Sir: Mr Auberon Waugh's comments on the "violent, stunted men of the north" (his words) in The Spectator of July 17, that "it seems obvious that they will never be found gainful...

prevent too many critics from serious artistic assessment the recent Spectator article on H. G. Wells was more than welcome! One finds occasionally, the partisan who defends a...

Sir: To respond to Evan Anthony's art review (Spectator, August 21). He begins with a preface in which he declares that he is "a compulsively gregarious reviewer" who wants "to...

Sir: I have been commissioned to write the history of this old and famous school, and have begun my researches. I should be most grateful if any of your readers can assist me by...

Sir: Whilst fully agreeing with Mr Challans's strictures on Mr Vaisey, who, apart from other failings manifest in his article, seems to have fulfilled to perfection the classic...

After the storm NICHOLAS DAVENPORT What an anti-climax to the world's currency crisis! After a week's closure the exchange markets opened quietly, dealings were restrained and...

Weekly I grow more knowledgeable, I pore for long hours over the formbooks and scour the racing press for any useful snippets of information, yet the harder I work at it, the...

I have never been a very clubbable sort of person, at least not since my teens, when four years at a youth club gave me the only education of any real value I have so far...

It was all right for those rugby Lions out in New Zealand, of course. They had all the action in the world to keep them occupied. Not for them the trauma and nail-biting of us...