This week's Labour conference is a curtailed and unnatural affair. It does not take place in the contained atmosphere of a seaside town, and will lack the vigour, power and...

At least, however, it can be said that from reactions to the terrorism both of the IRA and of the four Arab extremists who hijacked a British Airways VC-10 at Tunis, it appears...

It is far too early to descry the significance — let alone the meaning — of the Moscow Agreement on strategic arms limitation between Mr Brezhnev and President Ford. But their...

Mr Michael Foot's stand on the protest by Fleet Street editors against his decision to yield to the plea of the National Union of Journalists for a closed shop in their...

The growth in recent months of the power of the ratepayers' associations, and their evident determination to struggle fiercely against the burdens profligate councillors are...

Sir: In his recent speech Sir Keith Joseph admitted that inflation had been increased by the monetary policies of the Conservative Government of which he was himself a member....

Sir: How right and how timely Mr Leggatt's article on 'Art and the wealIe tax' (November 16) is. At a time.eite4 the present Minister for the A 1 'i tte Hugh Jenkins, is...

Sir: "Inflationary pressure," says Professor R. C. Bellan (November 23), "will abate only when inequality of income is still farther reduced, when the living standards of the...

Sir: Elwyn Jones's defence by impeachment of plodding British police proce durals shows an astonishing lack of awareness of the scope and intention of . series drama and an...

Sir The present experiment in co-residence between the sexes at five Oxford colleges constitutes a wholly unacceptable threat to the traditional pattern of an Oxford education....

Sir: Mr Magnusson . (November 16) would do well to bear in mind the privileged of today who are - not only absolved from fines but from the whole mechanism of the legal system....

From Mrs H. Quinn Sir: As a Liberal I have certainly heard a great deal about the part Liberals played M bringing up the matter of civil rights in Northern Ireland. However,...

Sir: I was sorry to see that in his 'Spectator's Notebook' (November 9) Rupert Croft-Cooke was ready to circulate once again an old canard about Beethoven's parents even if he...

Italian High Renaissance picture, rar migianino's 'The Mystic Marriage of St C atherine,' is to be sold at Christie's, having been sent to auction by Lord Normanton. As British...

the Crossman diaries had been held up by Sir John Hunt and company. Richard Crossman was in the true tradition of the good-natured left-wing nut, a man whose business was...

Jim Pettispite was one of those MPs who, when the chance arose, Would call for stringent measures to Impoverish the well-to-do (A term by which, I fancy, Jim Meant any better...

There has lately risen to Fame and 'Eminence among us a new Breed of Alchemists and Necromancers who yet advance the old Claim to predict future Events with sureness and...

Patrick Cosgrave Earlier this year I published a - bonk on Churchill, the centenary of whose birth is now upon us. Mine was a strategic rather than a political study but, for a...

his peers in history might have paid him tribute The Earl of Chatham There are gentlemen who bring forward their . ,a e cusations of inconsistency against this man. Let us...

Arianna Stassinopoulos Ne w York I am going to set up a Society for the Rehabilitation of Airplanes. For most people they are a bore — a long empty interval between departing...

Now back to the rehabilitation. Flying is like bathing — only more so. Those blessed hours when we can ignore the claims of the telephone, the doorbell and the world — • without...

Most of the seven-hour flight was spent • wandering through a twenty-square-mile forest that had been turned into the Sunday New York Times. All human life is there — most of...

I hereby append a list of those British journalists who should become compulsory reading — under penalty of death or solitary confinement with their own Collected Works and Wit...

Peter Shipley t ir n ela nd's English dimension is here to stay. In e e wake of one of the mostextensive bombing t riPaigns yet, culminating (if it can be said i at the...

(with apologies to Rudyard Kipling) If you can force through higher wage increases Than those your fellow-workers have obtained; If you can break the management in pieces When...

Rawle Knox Belfast They did not mourn, they uttered strangely little in the Catholic areas of Belfast, when they heard the news of the Birmingham bombings; but that should not...

Will success spoil Jim Callaghan? Maurice Edelman, MP As Jim Callaghan beams from his chairman's throne at Labour's Conference, he will certainIY recall with satisfaction his...

Maurice Samuelson When he was in London last year, Israel's solder-scholar, Professor Yigael Yadin, remarked that the real leaders of Israel have been the Arabs. Their...

R ill Grundy 'Seem to remember that in last , we ek's article I said that this week I 0. 1 ild be talking about what Mr ZiWarn Deedes has to do to get `flings straight at the...

Philip Kleitunan There has been a distinct change of tone in the way advertising people talk about commercial radio. Whereas earlier this year many tended to dismiss it as a...

Paul Griffin Dear Major Lash, Thank you for your letter of notice for Roger to leave at the end of the coming term, and for your 'comments. It was an interesting evening we...

John Linklater Doctors are trained to assess prognosis in part by the degree of healthy reaction to an infection. If the reaction is weak, or equivocal, the tissues - have not...

Denis Wood Maud came limping in the other day. "It was my own fault," she said — but luckily there was no real grief. "He came down with me on the landing side because the...

Martin Sullivan "Gangway for the Lord God Jehovah." There is a reverent hush and God enters. There are no more dramatic lines or stage directions than these in any play. They...

There can be no doubt that Wilfred Owen was a r at poet. The rear-guard action mounted by m eats in his preface to the Oxford Book of _cidern Verse failed long ago, having done...

5/1 „ ary Whitehouse b -ri nging Up Children in a Difficult Time uenjarnin Spook (Bodley Head £1.95) n i3r P e ek is, on the whole, a wise man. Even if fld does over-simplify...

Beverley Nichols H. O. Wells and Rebecca West Gordon M. Ray (Macmillan £2.95) This is a sombre and distressing book. And though it appears with the imprimatin of Dame Rebecca,...

George Gale Samuel Johnson John Wain (Macmillan £4.9 5 ) This commodious and discursive work of pietY starts with the prdposition, startling to me, that "Samuel Johnson has not...

Wilfrid Blunt Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature Thor He (Allen and Unwin £4.75) m clea n To the Bach of the Beyond Sir Fitzroy —a (Jonathan Cape £4.50) It must have been about...

TORY OF NAVAL LIFE by Adm ral Sir H. J. Tweethe Box 524. IMAGINATION BY VANBRUGH AND HIS FELLOW ARTISTS by Lawrence Whistler. Box 523. NEXT YEAR'S NEWS by Kingsmill and...

Ronald Hingley The Russian Tradition Tibor Szamuely (Seeker and Warburg £5.00) Tibor Szamuely was a regular contributor of political articles to The Spectator up to his, death...

Sir lain Moncreiffe of that Ilk Louis & Victoria. The First Mountbattens Richard Hough (Hutchinson 0.50) In 1883 a young Lieutenant in the Royal Navy became engaged to his...

p eter Ackroyd fe and Death in the Charity Ward Charles i.ilkowski (London Magazine Editions £2.75) witch Bitch Roald Dahl (Michael Joseph E2.75) 'wish that critics would nail...

Bookend A post-script on the Thomson pantomime was promised, and here it is. The recent press release put out by Thomson's head office, and then withdrawn, and then put out...

Murder on the Orient Express D irector: Sidney Lumet. Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Baca11, Rachel Roberts, John Gielgud, Michael York, etc. 'A': ABC 1 and 2, S haftesbury...

Kenneth Ilurren The Marquis of Keith by Frank Wedekind; English version by Ronald Eyre and Alan Best; Royal Shakespeare Company (Aldwych) The Beast by Snoo Wilson; Royal...

Coliseum due to the stagehands' strike, I gather , that 'concert' performances (minus . scenery) are more than likely to _ bridge the gap — with seat prices at £1.50 top —...

Rodney Milnes The Royal Opera House's latest financial report reveals that the management is more than ever reliant on box-office returns: only 46 per cent of expenditure is...

Atchojas Davenport W hen the Arabs quadrupled the r ic e of oil in one fell swoop they th at • red the first shot in Armageddon, from an economic point of -w• Naturally, the...

Bernard liollowood Hands up all those who agree that Britain will eventually •be compelled to adopt a statutory prices and incomes policy! Eventually; that is after one, two or...

Just what was the point of the Hudson Institute report on Britain? Its findings were either obvious or suspect (sprinkled with a little illumination), and we have not been...