Two Cabinet Ministers and an Under-Secretary of State have travelled to Brussels to seek agreement with the European Economic Community on a fisheries policy, and have returned...

No area of British overseas policy has in recent years aroused such anger in discussion, such disregard of reasoned argument, such carelessness of the true interests of this...

It is being whispered around that when Lord Chelmer delivers his report on the Tory party organisation to the Prime Minister he will recommend the removal of the more grotesque...

TrrT Hugh Macpherson The Labour Party is having a collective nervous breakdown. That is the sad conclusion which one finds among the men thinking about the future of Her...

Bernard Dixon Drug taking by sportsmen is in the news again, with renewed concern about the use of anabolic steroids to build up body bulk in Shot putters and related...

Mercurius Oxoniensis Good brother Londiniensis, It grieves me to have missed you on your late (unannounced) visit to Oxon, but alas! 'twas an ill-chosen day, for my brethren...

Oliver Stewart Fog was said to have been the cause of the collision between a Liberian tanker and a small British coaster off Beachy Head on November 1. And in the coming weeks...

Home abroad Patrick Cosgrave Some years ago I was sitting at a dinner, listening to Sir Alec Douglas-Home making a speech when, after a reference to foreign policy, my...

Assasination in Cairo Martin Short Wasfi Tel was a generous host, a patriot and King Hussein's man, but the tragic division within Jordan these last few years has obscured the...

The contrasts between the two states on Irish soil constitute one of the more intriguing peripheral paradoxes of recent history. The Scots-Irish now cling so stubbornly to a...

Barbara Hardy In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Re-Definition of Culture George Steiner (Faber £1.75) In Bluebeard's Castle is exquisitely responsive to its title,...

Flash for Freedom George MacDonald Fraser (Barrie and Jenkins £1.75) The Umbrella Man Giles Gordon (Allison and Busby £2.10) The Christmas rush is now over and there is time to...

John Dunn Power and Society in Africa Jacques Maquet (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £1.75) Nigeria: Crisis and Beyond John Oyinbo (Charles Knight E2.50) No African state is yet quite...

Gillian Freeman Down and Out in Britain Jeremy Sandford (Peter Owen £2.75) Outcast London Gareth Stedman Jones (OUP £4.50) The assistance of the police was requested by the...

Compendiums of instant history deserve to be forgotten with the speed of a snap judgement. It might seem t urious, therefore, that a scrapbook like The Life and Times of Private...

Two weeks ago, this column noticed with regret that Dylan Thomas's famous Boat House at Laugharne was on the point of falling into the sea, and that even the hideous Welsh...

Mr Peter Craig-Raymond runs a service for actors called Professional Casting Report — a name neatly chosen, it would seem, so that both he and it can be known as PCR. What it...

Problems of rape and royalty Tony Palmer I have to report that the cinema took a Slight turn for the worse this week with the opening of two long-awaited and eagerly expected...

Television Omnibus: Humphrey Lyttelton and our contributor, Benny Green, trace the life of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, and the 'sound' is recreated by the Syd Lawrence band, in...

Blood sports Hugh Macpherson Monteverdi's opera The Coronation of Poppea tells a sordid tale. Nero rejects his good and faithful wife Ottavio and when the noble Seneca objects...

Nothing doing Kenneth Hurren The early-bird playgoer who has an opportunity to browse through his programme before the curtain goes up on The Balcony, at the Aldwych, will not...

Who's kidding Evan Anthony It's treacle time in the galleries, and we have pictures of the kiddies, by the kiddies, and for the kiddies. Bah, what a lot of humbug there is...

On the brink Nicholas Davenport In recent weeks I have more than once suggested that our long-term bull market had started off with too hot a pace — a rise of about 40 per...

the right fellow a powerful drink in the comfort of the Members' Bar is a far more reliable method of gleaning information than lonely nights of frustration with the form book....

Malcolm Horsman is one of Jim Slater's best apprentices and runs Rail! International. This week they bid £11 million for Consolidated Tin Smelters, 70 per cent of whose shares...

People, one is constantly being forced to admit, are odd. And about wine they are at their oddest. To start with, they know so Much. Of course they can tell claret from...

Clive Gammon A rare ray of hope for salmon-eaters and salmon-catchers has come from Norway. For those unacquainted with the present plight of the Atlantic salmon, I should...

Pronounced with a very hard 'G' Yvonne Brock The other day, as I wrote ' margarine ' on my shopping list, I said 'Maggie Ann' to myself, and wondered why. Soon I had embarked...

From Mrs Isla M. Atherley Sir: Re your article 'No consent, no entry' (November 6) and Mr 'puffin's letter opposing a referendum on the grounds that one would "limit the...

Sir. In his Political Commentary (November 20) Mr Hugh Macpher,aon describes the present Housing id ill as an attempt to bring sanity to rent policy. May I, with respect,...

Sir: Patrick Cosgrave's ' Anti-lib ' (November 27) does like so much of the campaign against Women's Lib, play into the hands of its organisers by attacking it on the wrong...

Sir: Mr Anthony St John Hamilton's reply to Mr FitzGibbon's letter and that from Brigadier W. F. K. Thompson (November 20) are both prime examples of prejudice and wilful...

Sir: May I call public attention to the growing corruption of appointment procedures in the universities through the involvement of the press in the discussion of appointments...

Sir: I read with great interest Mr Dinshaw's letter (Spectator, November 13) in which he tells us that " We have decided to establish the Peter Hain Fund to ensure that Mr...

Sir: Auberon Waugh's book reviews are pretty puerile, and whilst they liven up that notoriously provincial tea-room that is, or passes for, English literary life, no one takes...

Sir: I would like to say that I am fascinated by Juliette's tips coming on the Davenport page, which is otherwise devoid of them. I gladly guarantee the balance of 25 per cent...

From Professor G. S. Rousseau Sir: Although Miss Heriot calls me (Letters, October 9) "a displaced gossip columnist in the chair of a professor of literature " and accuses me of...