Mr Whitelaw's decision to keep direct rule in Ulster for a further twelve months is none the worse for being expected. The White Paper outlining the Government's long-term...

It is fortunate that Mr Heath should be the first European prime minister to visit Washington and discuss world affairs with President Nixon since the Inauguration and the...

I hear, with great dismay, that one of the casualties oi Aeggie Iviaudiing's departure from the Home Office, may well be licensing reform. Freddie Erroll's committee, set up by...

Patrick Cosgrave It makes one wonder, as Mr Enoch Powell once said in a different dimension of the same context. It certainly made me wonder last Thursday when I heard the Home...

In 1964 Peter Alexander Rupert, sixth Baron Carrington — who, as a minor, succeeded to his title in 1938 — took the important decision not to try to be Prime Minister, by...

Thai Cong Molly Mortimer It is impossible to overestimate the importance of Lee Kuan Yew's visit to Bangkok; or the danger of a new Vietnamcum-Korea in Thailand. Far back the...

(The Australian Government have announced that they are to hold a competition for a new national anthem. The entry below should be sung to the tune of "Land of Hope and...

Where have the good men gone? J. R. Bevins Bores, like boredom, are evil, as any doctor will tell you. This not very profound statement come to me from reading a recent book...

Since the appearance of Lord Blake's definitive biography of Bonar Law, its title --The Unknown Prime Minister — could have been transferred appropriately to Sir Henry...

Auberon Waugh Christie Malry's own Double Entry B. S. Johnson (Collins £2.00) The Clown Heinrich Boll (Calder and Boyars £2.50) " The novel should now try simply to be Funny,...

C. M. Woodhouse A Piece of Truth Amelia Fleming (Cape, £2.95) Journals of Resistance Mikis Theodorakis (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon,£2.95) The Greek military dictatorship unites and...

Leon Garfield Watership Down Richard Adams (Rex Collings, £3.50) What is it about? A city state is doomed. Cassandra-like, a visionary prophesies the coming calamity. Together...

Objective Knowledge Karl Popper (OUP £4.50) Philosophers of science will find Sir Karl Popper's new collection to be essential reading. In several of these essays, mostly...

Bookbuyer Publishers are sometime.; so wholly di3similar in their aims and methods that it is startling to think that their products are available in the same shops. Take for...

There are incidental, if rather negative things to be grateful for in Small Craft Warnings, the first play by Tennessee Williams to have turned up in many a moon. It is having...

Not holding his own Christopher Hudson The surprisingsurprising thing is that people said Portnoy's Complaint couldn't be filmed. The novel by Philip Roth, if you remember,...

Though Peter Hall does not assume the directorship of the National Theatre until next year, it appears that even now he is able to have a decisive word in its affairs — powerful...

Nicholas Davenport The end-January 'account of 1973 will always be remembered on the Stock Exchange as the one which got buried under a fantastic fall of bricks. The heaviest...

Try New Zealand John Bull The market in its present condition is fraught with dangers I wonder how many are nursing burnt fingers following the latest collapse? Fortunately,...

Buying Unochrome International Nephew Wilde It is terribly sad. Just look at my lovely ' paper ' profits disappearing! One gentleman who must take part of the credit for the...

Laing returns to the fold Anthony W. Clare I, perhaps like others, came to psychiatry by way of R. D. Laing. Even after all these years, his first work The Divided Self...

In limbo Bernard Dixon If you ring the personnel office of the US National Science Foundation in Washington these days, a tape recorder will give you the following plaintive...

Sir: It would seem that your education correspondent, Rhodes Boyson (January 20), has had no experience at all of two-to-fiveyear-old children and their mothers. Possibly he is...

education (January 20). • The vital elements in education are the virtue and knowledge of the teacher and pupil, their natural kinship for one another, the degree to which they...

a widely held feeling on January 25, when he said that parents were entitled to a bigger 'say ' in the education of their children. But how is this to be achieved? The present...

the White Paper' (January 20) suggests that mothers send their children to nursery school (a) because of their own inadequacy to rear them, and (b) in order to go out to work....

Sir: Mr Walker (Letters, January 20) was perhaps justified in having his tilt at Sir Alec Clegg's 17,000 per cent increase in the use of our county libraries but the dilemma in...

Sir: Simon Penn's article about transportation of live animals by land and sea, in appalling conditions involving great sufferirg to them, prompts me to ask for more information...

Sir: As one whose name has an alternative spelling my enemies prefer, I wish to apologise, with heightened sympathies, to Eric Homberger for referring to him as ' Homburger '...

From Mrs John Tutton Sir: In Belfast vacant officers have been occupied by the Security Forcers, and in some placers streets are now blocked by trenchers. Rumours of peace...

From Mrs James Brock Sir: Miss Leach's courteous and moderate letter in your correspondence coloumns (January 27) shows her to be the type of member for which the National Trust...

Standing in the 'Royal Box' at Sandown Park as the winter sports enthusiasts slid gracefully over the dry ski slope above the rhododendron walk, it was hard to believe that...

From Mrs S. Hagan Sir: When the Prime Minister — putatively a literate man — stabs all of us in the back by publicly using, and that to the assembled press of the world — the...