Mr Barber's lollipop Budget briefly diverted the nation's attention from the crisis it is going through in industrial relations: a crisis which the Budget did nothing to cool....

Apart from such cosmetic artifices as the zero VAT rating on children's clothes and the lifting of the lollipop tax on such necessities of human life as ice-cream, sweets and...

The question as to who will succeed Sir Hugh Cudlipp as editorial boss of the Mirror newspapers remains intriguing. Last October Hugh Cudlipp announced that he would retire this...

Patrick Cosgrave Mr Anthony Barber is the veritable Houdini of politics. Whatever he says as Chancellor can, it seems, be turned to political advantage; and any budget of his...

The relevance of Mr Barber Thomas Balogh When the Spring-sowing is due, so is the ritual dance of the Budget. The economic High Priests rise to the irrelevant occasion and...

Clever snake in narrow tunnel Nicholas Ridley One cannot but admire Mr Barber's energy, his ability, and his political flair. During a week of hectic discussions on the...

PUZZLE NATURALLY TROTTED along to the Budget debate the other day and, as usual, noticed all the inconsequential things that were going on, rather than attending to the wise and...

Peter Walker on monetary reform and freer trade John Szemery An interview with Mr Peter Walker, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Szemerey: Some international...

Mercurius Oxoniensis Good brother Cantabrigiensis, I am truly sorry to read of your late Cambridge stirs, which have obliged you to call in that great legislator and arbiter of...

Blacks in the Ivy League On a plane out of Boston, Massachusetts, some years ago, a smiling, tweedy black in his late thirties introduced himself to me as Assistant Dean...

The two Christianities Edward Norman Like cheeky acolytes daring one another into irreverences at the altar; like strippers arranging an adjustment of their act; like coppers'...

Truth will out: so even will respectability, Lloyd George's best-kept secret. For long the English, a mystic and irrational people given to romantic exaggeration, have seen our...

Auberon Waugh The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz Russell Hoban (Cape £2.25) The Girl Who Passed for Norma/ Hugh Fleetwood (Hamish Hamilton £2.10) I had intended to review...

Kenneth Minogue Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery Barrington Moore, Jr (Allen Lane £3.50) A few years ago, during the student troubles at LSE, I had an American student...

Barbara Hardy Thomas Hardy and British Poetry Donald Davie (Routledge and Kegan Paul £2.75) Critical judgments may tell us more about the judges than the judged. Fielding mocks...

Simon Schama My Country: The Story of Modern Israel Abba Eban (Weidenfeld and Nicolson E3.75) To Build the Promised Land Gerald Kaufman (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £4.25) The...

Bookbuyer Weidenfeld and Nicolson have not only moved to Clapham, an area which their promotion department wistfully refers to as Battersea, but have also made the most...

The filming of The Whither Mart — starring Edward Woodward and Britt Ekland, screenplay by Peter Shaffer — would seem to have caused consternation, in and out of the company, on...

A girl and her search Evan Anthony "As a little girl in Transylvania, Gyongyi knew she was going to paint." No, it's not the beginning of the plot outline for an operetta, but...

A slight Frost Clive Gammon Somewhere in the trackless middle of The ' Frost Programme (ITV) this week, a distraught member of the audience began to interrupt violently....

Getting together Robin Young It has (long been suspected among the gossips in the amphitheatre that Margot Fonteyn was irreconcilably reluctant to dance with Anthony Dowell....

Benny Green Last Christmas one of my relatives, well-trained by me in the matter of gifts and emoluments, resisted •the temptation to festoon me with underpants and bottles of...

Nicholas Davenport With the economic pundits shouting contradictions at him — one lot crying for another £1,000 million to keep growth going at 5% and another lot telling him...

I am appalled by the Chancellor of the Exchequer's truly scandalous decision about sweets, chocolates, ice-creams, lollipops and so on. These pernicious confections, which do...

Here for De Beers John Bull This is perhaps the worst possible climate in which to give short-term investment advice. One only has to listen to conversation in the City to...

Into the oil field Nephew Wilde I noticed last week that General Amin had sent all his Cabinet ministers away for a compulsory month's holiday. Returning from the Scilly...

Francis Wintle I do not wish to be uncharitable about this; nor, I hope, does the Government. The Budget promises further concessions to pensioners, some encouragement to the...

Testing time custos It is crucial for voluntary and social workers to understand fully the importance of the Simper case which was heard in the High Court recently. It may mean...

Bedside teaching John Roman Wilson One of the more constructive aims of the 'consumer movement' in recent years has been to defend the interests of patients in hospitals. The...

Sir: Whether it is simple ignorance, or Christian casuistry at its worst, which impels the Rev Tony Crowe to wrest General Dayan's words from context, Arabs in Israel know...

When he is not reviewing thrillers for The Spectator John Welcome's literary activities revolve round the turf and with a faultless sense of timing Pelhams, the publishers, have...

St Luke, quotes the report of Le Monde that General Dayan asserted in Tel Aviv that "peace with the Arabs is not the primary objective of Israel ". Mr Crowe, incidentally,...

Sir: It is a pity that Mr Patrick Cosgrave allows himself to stray so far from the path of accuracy in his ' quotations ' from Mr William Whitelaw's recent speech (March 3). He...

As a working wife struggling to make ends meet in a one-roomed flat with an invalid husband, I heartily agree with Mr Whitelaw. Surely it takes little education to see exactly...

Sir: It is mostmisleading of Bookbuyer (March 3) to cite Richard Kennedy's A Boy at the Hogarth Press as an example of booksellers marking up the price of new books, since in...

Sir: A third force may be emerging in English politics. This may be the lesson to be learned from last week's by-elections. Scotland, however, is in a different position. At...

impending doom of Edward Heath. Like a demented general ture...i.;ug phantom armies he will no doubt continue to boast that he has the wholehearted supporL oi jority of the...

Sir: Strange are the survivals to be found in your Letters column! Mr John Wareham has resurrected in triumph Ezra Pound's circular definition of poetic criticism, which I had...

Blish and Mark Braham about Ezra Pound. I deliberately overstated the case: they may swing a little too much in the other direction. I doubt whether Hardy had all that much to...

Sir: I sometimes wonder if columns like 'A Spectator's Notebook' February 24) don't go out of the way to write rubbish with the intention of goading half-wittedreaders like me...

Sir: Clive Gammon was so right about "the harsher alternative" being the right one in The Wild Dogs of Africa documentary. One of the most memorable experiences for television...

Sir, Mr Cosgrave (February 3) raises again the question of the legal right of alien British passport holders to enter and live in Britain. I see Mr Cosgrave's point but would...

Sir: Re the article in the February 10 issue, by Oliver Stewart entitled 'One More Sonic Boom ': I again assert that puffed out cheek towards America is no substitute for...