Amid the general gloom in which Tory realists now contemplate the Conservative Party's prospects — a gloom which last week's Liberal Party conference did nothing to dispel, but...

There has been a disposition in both official and in partisan quarters to play down the Prime Minister's remarks following his visit to Ireland and his lengthy talk with Mr...

Sir: You are indeed right (September 22) to notice the silence in Europe, a silence, now that the euphoria of the 'The Ode to Joy ' is quiescent, broken only when President...

effect everyone in Britain and the Commonwealth. The Tories' refusal fully to face the music at Blackpool is a sure indication that they know the Heathonian European orchestra...

Sir: Surely the interpretation of Gilbert Murray's deception is simpler than either Peter Ackroyd or George Edinger (Letters, September 22) realises. The essential question is:...

Murray (Telepathy) will not give the impression ESP is now a lost cause. On the contrary, it is very much alive. The late Professor Murray's experiments are no doubt of...

Sir: In his article 'What's wrong with Test cricket' (September 15), Labour MP Roy Hattersley suggests that the game is " in endemic decline." This is a very interesting...

Front Professor Gerard A. O'Donovan. Sir: May I make a brief comment on your section in the erudite/conservative The Spectator from September 15 issue, by one Al Capp, entitled...

Sir A belief in the genuineness of The Book of Dzyan — the obvious inspiration behind the letters of Messrs Golen and Gardner (September 15) — displays a naivete which, as Lenin...

Sir: What a joy to have my prejudices reinferced by Dr Norman of Peterhouse. His caustic but factual criticisms of much that passes for Christian thinking and theology...

condemnation of ' freedom fighters' (September 15) on the entirely reasonable ground that their actions are based on an unChristian hatred of their enemies. Can we assume that...

first rate articles which the Dean of Peterhouse contributes to the Spectator from time to time, and which must be a revelation to many who do not know what Crhistianity is all...

Dean Sullivan's article (September 8) about Faith: but an unbeliever could be forgiven for being confused by the assertion that Jesus condemned " only three sins outright -7...

Sir: Most of us who are accustomed to pray regularly are aware of the danger of allowing our prayers to become mechanical and of giving little thought to the often profound...

Sir: The title of my novel reviewed by Mr Peter Ackroyd (September 15) is not A Woman of Courage, as listed and referred to, but A Woman of Character. Whether this error was Mr...

Sir: As I was abroad on an Hellenic! Travel Cruise, I was unable to correct the proofs of my ' Brief Life ' of Sir John Betjeman after Aubrey (September 1). I would therefore be...

Emmaus' with regard to the EEC leaves the mind boggling with visions of poor Mr Brittain being treated to a long 1vayside homily by a resurrected Napoleon, or even Charlemagne!...

From Professor T. M. Norton Sir: Professor Trevor-Roper's comparison of Richard Nixon to Charles I (August 11) on the constitutional level was interesting and plausible. I...

A taste of honey: the taint of money? Patrick Cosgrove At Southport last week there were a lot of Liberals in neat or even elegant three-piece suits, the upper lips of the men...

Secret treaty Can there be any other possible rational explanation for the Government's decision to go on with the Channel Tunnel than the existence of a secret treaty or...

Sweden's old fashioned conformists Stig Stromholm With the death of its king, and a constitutional crisis brought about by the dead-heat between the social democrats and the...

The harvest train Geoffrey Jackson The nearest telephone is twenty kilometres away down the valley; if you follow it, and the road, just a little further, you may even catch...

An Oceanic Research Council? Donald Watt Britain depends on the sea for the international trade by which she lives and earns her living. In a world of declining resources she...

Plains to Spain David Wragg The story is told that, at the height of the, second world war, General Franco advise d Britain to negotiate a peace with Germany, 0 0 , the...

A new kind of history? Dermot Fenian Lucien Febvre was one of the pioneers of the French revolution in historical studies which has transformed the writing of history in the...

The coincidence of the fashion seasons and the publishing seasons, of spring and autumn collections with spring and autumn books, might well be accounted no coincidence at all....

Peter Ackroyd The Fort John Hale (Quartet £3.25) Bull Fire MacDonald Harris (Gollancz £2.50) I Come As A Thief Louis Auchincloss (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £2.25) Frankenstein...

Beverley Nichols The Strenuous Years Cecil Beaton (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £3.50) On her small French bed lay a strange object of art. A minute bird-like head, wrapped in a...

Quentin Bell Chanel Solitaire Claude Baillen translated by Barbara Bray (Collins £2.50) There have been greater artists in our time — although hers was not a talent to be...

silk Diana Holman Hunt Christabel: The Russell Case and After Eileen Hunter (Andre Deutsch E2.95) In 1923, when Eileen Hunter was fourteen, her mother rented a furnished...

Colin Wilson Magic and the Millennium, A Sociiological Study of Religious Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third-World Peoples, Bryan R. Wilson (Heinemann, £6.50) Aldous...

Philip Ziegler Byron's Letters and Journals: In My Hot Youth Vol. I, Famous In My Time Vol. II, Edited by Leslie Marchand (John Murray, £4.75 each). 'Byronic,' like...

Robin Campbell Everest South West Face Chris Bonington (Hodder and Stoughton, £3,95) Interviewer: Why are you going to climb the Sou th . , ,vest Face of Everest? Bonington:...

Robert Dougall Pedigree: Words from Nature S. Potter and L. Sargent (Collins £3.15). Two miles off the mainland of Orkney lies the sea-lashed island of Copinsay. The Vikings...

Jan Morris Palaces Of The Raj Mark Bence-Jones (Allen and Unwin E5) If the Empire still survived, and India offered an arena for our national energies, who would now be our...

Duncan Fallowell The Symbolists, Philippe Jullian (Phaidon at £7.95). • " The need for the quintessential is becoming widespread." This was written in the mid1890s by a Swiss...

Patrick Cosgrave De Gaulle the warrior Brian Crozier (Eyre Methuen, E7.00. Two ideas, and no more, dominate the European understanding of relations between states as it has...

Bookend It was sneaky of the British Government to keep so quiet over one aspect of their Common Market capers. It was left to Mr March Hunnings, editor of the Common Market...

Paperbacks Now the leaves are falling fast, nurses' paperbacks will not last. Not unless they are from Oxford University Press, of course, who are now resuscitating some of...

The new production of Tannhauser at Covent Garden is visually dismal and dramatically inadequate, but for once my anger at the waste of time, effort and money was dissipated by...

Down memory boulevard Christopher Hudson LL . _ . _ Down memory boulevard again this week with another American period piece celebrating the rite of passage from callow youth...

Two ways to treat a big news story Clive Gammon Returning to Britain late last week, I found the lead story on BBCI news was the Chrysler strike. By an odd coincidence, a day...

You might have thought there were enough male misogynists around without women getting in on the act, but the Coors/ion's • Woman's Page editor Linda Christmas seems to have no...

An interview with Norman St John-Stevas Do you think that in the future the best students are likely to continue to attend a university? I don't think that's necessarily the...

A Dickens of a life Douglas Curtis Britain is facing a recruitment crisis in its service industries, Postal workers, teachers, policemen, railwaymen, civil servants, hospital...

Who pays the piper? John Linklater The reasonable criteria for a comprehensive health service have frequently been stated and agreed by most of us who are not politicians...

Trees of the river Peter Quince The alder is curious;y unrecognised, compared with several other native trees. I s-spect there are scores of people, possibly hundreds, who...

Yellow peril Bernard Dixon As well as illustrating our fecklessness in handling human faeces, the Italian cholera epidemic has focused attention on an intriguing, but...

Benny Green In his dotage J. B. Priestley has become something of a social historian. His recent books on the Regency, the Victorians and the Edwardians were all delightful,...

Sandown On Saturday was a far cry from the idyllic scene at the press preview the week before, but then any racecourse would have been hell with a 21,000-plus christening party...

Nicholas Davenport The complacency with which the Government is viewing the troubles of our greatest industry — motor manufacturing — can only be explained by the fact that it...

Scotts wha hae! Nephew Wilde 1 steady my hand in order to write these words, suffer an almost unbearable cacophony of drums beating in my head and say to myself: "This is the...