Mr Healey has now given himself six weeks in which to produce some sort of package of economic measures which — so it is hoped — will set the country on a healthier economic...

Amid so much gloom it is worth recording that the University College at Buckingham (in familiar parlance, the Independent University), of its essence free of state finance, is...

Last weekend saw demonstrations in favour, and demonstrations against, Mr James White's Bill designed to amend the Abortion Law Reform Act of 1967; and, in the event, the...

The decision of the Prime Minister to discontinue Downing Street press briefings to lobby correspondents on a privileged and non-attributable basis is certainly welcome to The...

After the referendum Sir: Like Mr Redmayne and others I have been indulging in post-referendum musings. I am irresistibly reminded of my time with the Control Commission in...

From Commander Ed g ar P. Youn g , RN (Reid ) . Sir: David Wragg (14 June) begs the question when he alleges that "it is generally taken for granted in diplomatic and military...

Sir: Those who watched the pro-abortionists facing Leo Abse and James White (BBC Talk-in, June 20) and the Hyde Park demonstration, and listened to the silly attempt to justify...

Sir: Mr Varley, a Guardian scribe informed us the day after Wilson's ministerial switch, is deficient in charisma compared to Mr Benn. Thus what was once a theological term...

From the Revd Harold S. Goodwin Sir: Bill Grundy's article (Spectator, June ,14) sent me back to the 17th chapter of the 2nd Book of Samuel. Could I hope that we had in Ross...

Sir: An offensive and inaccurate paragraph in "Spectator peregrinations" about The Sunday Telegraph would normally be treated with the contempt it deserves, but a gross...

Sir: The decision of the Buckinghamshire County Library authority to buy no new novels as children's books was, it goes without saying, an outrageous one. It wasn't, in fact,...

Sir: Bookend wrote a piece about 'red faces at Weidenfeld' because we had forgotten to clear copyright permissions from Macmillan for extracts quoted , from Hardy in our...

Sir: Martin Sullivan (June 21) describes the theory that "all religious feelings and beliefs are an illusion" as "a relatively modern attack." It is in fact rather older than...

Sir: I have been commissioned by Faber and Faber to write a new biography of . W. H. Hudson. If any of your readers should possess letters. documents or other relevant papers or...

Patrick Cosgrave A couple of weeks ago, discussing the various rifts which currently exist within the Conservative Party, I insisted that there was a serious plot by Mr Heath...

A point that I do not think I have seen made about the result of the referendum on the Common Market is that when there is an overwhelming and decisive vote in a certain...

Condensed from the book by Martin D. Weiss The world economy is on the brink of a money panic. The place is every home, business and government. The time is now. The money...

The Spectator's schools prize for 1975 was open to competition by sixth-form students (or equivalent) for original writing on one of ten given subjects. The prize of £500, by...

Paolo Fib della Torre Perhaps it has something to do with the world-wide fashion for exorcism: in any case many leaders of opinion in Italy, led of course by the trendy...

Peter Shipley For the comrades of the Communist Party's inner sanctum, the Political Committee, it has been a good week. At the engineering union's conference Jimmy Reid moved...

A day in the life of... Simon Freeman Alan Clark looks every inch the aristocrat and political cavalier but like most MPs he works the sort of hours that would have most of us...

From bad to worse Rhodes Boyson, MP Miss Joan Lestor, the new Under-Secretary for Education, said in Brighton in October 1971: The time is ripe for us to inject some radical...

Martyn Sutton Jobsworth is a quaint word which is used to describe a certain kind of British worker. There are a lot of these workers about and British Rail alone employ...

I would like to have been the only diary-writer not reporting from Ascot last week. Having lived there for many years I usually like to be somewhere else when the hordes of...

It is something pleasant to consider the different Notions which different Persons have of the same thing. To read the popular prints, you would suppose from the reports of the...

The authors turn out in dozens for the Convention of the American Booksellers' Association, although the ABA made it as hard as possible by holding the exhibition on the second...

Al Capp on pigs, insects and white liberals By the time this reaches print, Patricia Hearst may have given herself up, been captured, or shot, and the theory I am submitting...

Quentin Bell The Art Crisis Bonnie Burnham (Collins £4.50) This book is in many ways a continuation and an expansion of Mr Karl Meyer's study: The Plundered Past, which was...

Elwyn Jones The Dangerous Edge Gavin Lambert (Barrie and Jenkins £4.50) Naked is the Best Disguise Samuel Rosenberger (Arlington Books £2.95) The best crime fiction is...

A. L. Rowse War of Illusions, German Policies from 1911 to 1914 Fritz Fischer (Chatto and Windus £12.00) Fritz Fischer is the most important German historian today, famous — or...

Please let THE SPECTATOR know when you have received from a fellow subscriber the books that you required. EARLY C19 POLL BOOKS published by Hernaman and Perring, Journal...

George Gale Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence edited by Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley and Manfred Jonas (Barrie & Jenkins £10,00) IT will...

Peter Ackroyd A Month of Sundays John Updike (Andre Deutsch £2.95) The title is boring, but the book is not. A Month etc. is the way and testament of one Reverend Thomas...

old sport" Benny Green I must move fast if I am to do any j tistice at all to John Arlott's latest literary gesture*. For one thing I have always rather liked the word...

Medicine Kill or cure John Linklater At about fifteen weeks of gestation it is no longer possible to hack a baby to pieces with a curette by the vaginal route without...

Mirror of the future Tadpole "Early on I uesday morning a Dove aircraft took off from Glasgow to Biggin Hill, near London, carrying thousands of copies of a secretly printed...

Post Resurrection Martin Sullivan An interesting point arises from the post-Resurrection narratives in the New Testament. When Christ rose from the dead the stone which closed...

So nigh of progeny Denis Wood Unlike other large animals, horses do not seem to have been intended by nature to give birth to twins, but it sometimes happens that a mare will...

Changing times Pamela Vandyke Price Well though I know that food takes on the temperature of the body once it has been absorbed, it never feels comfortably sustaining to me if...

Theatre Two from the graveyard Kenneth Ruffen Ardeie by Jean Anouilh, translated by Lucien ne Hill (Queen's) The Gay Lord Quex by A. W. Pinero (Albery) The revival of Ardele...

Moi Aussie Kenneth' Robinson 'The Cars That Ate Paris Director: Peter Weir Stars: Terry Camilleri, John Meillin. 'X' Rialto (90 mins). Barry McKenzie Holds His Own Director:...

Rodney Milnes _ . . By the end of the evening I was so out of sympathy with the new production of The Rake's Progress at Glyndebourne that I asked my Aunt Jennifer, who came...

Summer sets Evan Anthony If I've said it once, I've thought it many times June is a terrible month for an artist to have an exhibition, and this particular June could hardly...

Curing the English sickness Nicholas Davenport As the Prime Minister is pursuing a policy of consent and not of confrontation he may be forgiven for a face-saving compromise...

Tax accountant on record Bernard Hollowood Not so long ago, in January of this year to be precise, the pundits were saying that equities offered no hedge against inflation....

Stop rearranging the deckch airs we are on the Titanic. That seems by general consensus to be the message that an increasing number of companies are trying to get across to...