that — a week or two, no more — before the formal recognition of the collapse of the American-backed regime in Cambodia takes place. This event has been recently'described in...

T b h , e latest nosedive by sterling, and the devastating results of the Von and Ely by - elections, not to mention the publication of ,"eWs about a report (officially denied)...

Sir: Richard Luckett's words about the " rough and Aramaically barbarous Greek " of St Mark are very relevant to a paper which I am at the moment preparing for a Biblical...

given to the same kind of ' verse' — or used to be. But, in my own view, versifying of any kind which is not actual prose, is unsuitable to the fundamental utterances with...

Sir: Patrick Cosgrave's review-article on the 1922 Committee July 28, was characteristically trenchant, I hope it is not pedantic to point out a few historical errors. The...

Sir: Al Capp's interpretations of the Watergate affair and its ramifications have in your July 21 issue fallen to the level of caricature which, perhaps, is the best that could...

Sir: This is a belated letter to 0 13 4 you for printing Mr Spring's article your July 14 issue. So many arguments about art toe lli l are based on an illogicality. People 011...

are predictable but not rejl'. ly relevant to what I actually wrot.er He states there is some confusion 0 % 74 whether Palmer, the murderer McManus, saw the film ClochW°';„...

Sir. r am sure I am among a majority ?f . Your readers who have been pray' r ig for the first constructive move to sa ve Parliament being reported in Your columns. It was...

Sir: The foundation of the Tibor Szamuely Memorial Prize was announced some weeks ago, under the distinguished sponsorship of a variety of figures from the literary, academic,...

Bookbuyer ' does neither more nor less than justice to those publishers who don't pay royalties on time (they probably blame pachydermatous computers). Where he — and probably...

I, for one, am delighted at the Liberal Party's by-election successes. Apart from anything else, it serves Central Office right. The Tory Party brass in its wisdom sought to...

Patrick Cosgrave Anything can happen now. That is the fundanlental lesson of the Ely and Ripon by-elec11 °ns. And, under the sour verbal defences of F abour and Conservative...

Wilfrid Sendall For some odd reason, possibly biological, a man who has done more than twenty - five years in a job gets a licence to tell his col leagues that " things ain ' t...

Hugh Dykes Some badly-thinking people might believe tight now that there would be little to choose, in terms of intrinsic undesirability, between giving every traffic warden in...

Louis Claiborne President Nixon has now put forward the extreme claim that he is absolutely immune from a judicial summons. To borrow his vocabulary, that is " wholly...

Symbol and reality Martin Sullivan Less than 4uu years ago men believed in an immovable flat earth and a three-storied universe. W hen Copernicus and Galileo, both Christians...

Whose benefit? John Linklater The Secretary ot State for Health and Social Security has recently issued a circular (HM(73)8) for the guidance of those employed in hospitals,...

I've never gone in for marriage myself, but just now there's a lot to be said for having Maurice Zilber as a husband. He, in case you were asleep, drunk or generally...

Hare racing Peter Quince Strangely enough, the hare is the only wild animal in these islands which ever shows much willingness to challenge man. It is a paradoxical...

Richard Luckett on a distinguished disaster The Oxford Anthology of English Literature' IS some four and a half thousand pages in length. The two volumes of the paperbound...

Simon Scham a Talleyrand: A Biography J. F. Bernard (Collins 0.95) Perhaps it is not entirely accidental that the smile curling on the lip of David's profile of Talleyrand is...

Kingsley Amis Rendezvous with Rama Arthur C. Clarke (Gollancz C2.00) At fifty-six Arthur C. Clarke is still the leading science-fiction writer of his generation. generation ',...

Peter Nicholls The Embedding lan Watson (Gollancz, e2.20) To Your Scattered Bodies Go Philip Jose Farmer (Rapp and Whiting, £2.25) The hero of The Embedding, as with most ot...

S F Paperbacks Bowing to the demands of an importunate literary • editor, Platypus has taken up with science fiction this week. And first a familiar name, John Wyndham. Coronet...

trades Peter Ackroyd Resurrection William Gerhardie (Macdonald £2.95) The Roaring Queen Wyndham Lewis (Secker and Warburg £2.10) The English novelist's home has always been...

Hugh Stephenson The Sovereign State — the Secret History of /TT Sampson (Hodder and Stoughton £2.95). Mr Sampson has written an extraordinarily readable book at extraordinary...

Tony Palmer The Revolving Door, Mervyn Jones (Quartet Books £1.50) Anonymous Venetian, Giuseppe I3erto (Hodder ant Stoughton £.115) For Whom the Cloche Tolls Angus Wilson and...

If women are equal nowhere else, they are more than equal in the world of modem crime fiction. At the top of the heap, of course, are the two great Dames — Ngaio Marsh and...

Bookend Publishers who write books may, as Arthur Koestler once, suggested. be like cows in milk bars, but they have never allowed the simile to sour their appetite. Company...