It must be a long time since the nation entered upon a New Year in such a concentrated attitude of gloom. The news that Taylor Woodrow and Costain International have seized a...

Dr Kissinger's press conference last week, in which he renewed his questioning of European attitudes to the Atlantic Alliance, demonstrated the significance which the Nixon...

Sir: I should like to comment on some remarks in your December 15 leader. One of these is "the oppression of Catholics for fifty years." This can only mean the oppression of...

Sir: One may well contrast the pursuit of economic growth with the Christmas message, as you do (December 22), but I feel that while what you say is largely justified, there is...

for many , many years, frequently with profit, but I take very grave exception to one phrase in your leading article on the Irish question. The phrase "oppression of the...

escapes me. Christianity was probably the main driving force behind the remarkable expansion of Western civilisation. Not infrequently the Christians' message was transmitted...

Sir: After reading Patrick Cosgrave's recent article on governmental takeover one's feelings muss be mixed. There can be few thinking people who want the present system of...

From Dr Peggy Norris Sir: If Claire Rayner's credibility as a suitable adviser on sex education is to survive she will have to do better than simply accuse Dr J. Linklater and...

Sir: It was good to find that clockwork duck, Mr T. C. SkeffingtonLodge, once more wound up and quacking his platitudes in your pages after so long a silence (December 22). But...

Sir: I read your outrageous editoria l supporting the entry to this country of the Kenyan Asians (December 15). At least in the speed with which you have effected the betrayal...

d as Sir: Dr Rhodes Boyson is right to praise Professor Eysenck: his readine ss to defend intelligence testing is indeed courageous in an age haunted bY educational fanaticism...

Sir: Readers of the current corre s spol y dence are no doubt aware that Mi s Nancy Mitford did not invent the terms U and non-U. In an amusl article she merely developed ,...

Shortage of staff' ;ince this is the theme-song to which modern !ritain has apparently decided to dance to le struction, it may be worth a few words of 'tifnment. ? P oll...

Speakers of the House Patrick Cosgrave I argued last week that the centre, the beating heart as it were, of British politics is the main chamber of the House of Commons; that,...

Y kawle Knox Londonderry Y this week Brian Faulkner goes through yet kother trial by Northern Ireland Unionist lell-fire. His opponents in the Unionist uncil are for the third...

The rough Scotsman and Malawi Norman Lamont It is not surprising that a country both as beautiful and as poor as Malawi should be trying to put itself on the tourist map. Nor...

150 years of the Union Christine Pemberton In the Michaelmas term of 1822, a small grouP of Oxford undergraduates set about forming a debating club, known as the United...

It being the New Year, the season when hope commonly prevails over experience, Puzzle ventures some hopes concerning the conduct of our Parliament men, expecting but little,...

A girl on the game lain Scarlet kin Scarlet, the writer and broadcaster specialising in crime, delinquency and penal matters, is the author of 'The Professionals: Prostitutes...

Refoliation ternard Dixon Scientists look like playing a leading role in helping warravaged Vietnam to get back on i ts feet. The US-based Scientists' I nstitute for Public...

The ring of truth Martin Sullivan It has been frequently asserted that the greatest change which has come upon religious thought in our time has been the shifting of the...

Greens Denis Wood Maud came in the other day waving the new seed catalogues in my face. "Look here," she said, "you really must get your vegetable seeds in time this year....

Seasonal games Bill Grundy I'm not sure, &at I think I've finally _snapped. For the last few weeks, as I thumbed through the papers I found myself singing the following...

our own age Robert Louis Stevenson is ° Is r . l e of those writers who seems to have got dates wrong. Like Babbletongue Lacaulay, he appears, on every page that r s !ars his...

Gilbert Ryle Experience and Judgment: Investigations In a Genealogy of Logic Edmund Husserl. Translated by J. S. Churchill and K. Ameriks (Routledge and Kegan Paul £5.95)...

Duncan Fallowell The Decorative Tradition Julian Barnard (Architectural Press £5.00) More of counterweight to J.M.Richards' P e Functional Tradition than pungent thesis 1 . 0...

Peter Ackroyd The Harmless Building Douglas Oliver (Grosseteste Review Books 0.00). To say that The Harmless Building is a 'new' novel is not to imply that it is either modern...

Richard Shone British Landscape Painting of the Eighteenth Century Luke Herrmann (Faber and Faber E15.00) The 'British school of landscape painting' is a national asset like...

Bookend A happy new year to you, and an opportune moment to offer some well - meant resolutions. With so much being written about the book trade in every imaginable...

In the small controversy over Whether the association of Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Tynan — as Director and Literary . Consultant, respectively — has or has not been...

Critics who have opined that the congregation of communists in Trevor Griffiths's National Theatre play, The Party, are no more than cardboard cut-outs with little...

On target Rodney Alms As Mary Stuart mimsied on its predictable way at the Coliseum last week, among the thousand thoughts coursing through my numbed mind was that we...

Sting in the tail Christopher Hudson- It may be a Christmas without indigestion, or it may be completing another year of film reviewing without suffering schizophrenia,...

Christmas Carroll Clive Gammon It's tough, being Alice. For some unaccountable reason, people ex pect her to be a fey little thing though there is no justification for this in...

Nicholas Davenport Apart from a cheerful finish — due to the Arabian oil Christmas box — this has been the most unpleasant year for the Stock Exchange that I can remember. It...

Christopher Booker is on to a good thing writing about the property speculators, supplementing his freelance earnings as a journalist. But what is his objective? Surely the...

Note of resolution Nephew Wilde In these inflationary times there is little incentive for anyone to adopt the traditional methods of saving. Moreover the immediate prospect...