The Government's decision to write off up to 050m of the debts of the British Steel Corporation, and to raise its borrowing limits from £650m to £1,250m is both depressing and...

IT IS ,clear enough that the present hostilities between India and Pakistan, which now amount to no less than an undeclared state of war, were begun on their present scale by...

There were mutterings in Fleet Street and Westminster on Tuesday evening, and in the papers on Wednesday morning, about the wisdom of the Prime Minister in accepting the huge...

"The pacification of Ireland at this moment, as I believe, depends on the concession to Ireland of the right to govern itself ... What is the alternative? Are you content after...

Student cash Anthony Flew The militants of the NUS call it, in their studious non-party way, milksnatcher Mrs Thatcher's threat to bash our unions. It actually is a...

Withdrawal when? John Vaizey A long summer spent reading the papers and watching the television, a summer and an autumn visit to Ireland, and what has happened since then...

Vishnu's press by A special correspondent William's arrival at the Grand Hotel Calcutta created a sudden resurgence of optimism among the weary press corps in the bar. "If The...

John Rowan Wilson The problems of junior staff in hospitals are less obvious to most people than those of the general practitioner service, yet every year they are becoming...

How wise it was of Goethe to wait until he was over sixty before attempting to tell the story of his childhood, adolescence and early manhood.* Only age can look at youth with...

for that especial present: like Lady Montagu of Beaulieu's `To The Manor Born' (0.25) `for the woman nearest your heart, an exquisitely beautiful and useful book' (James...

The Devil and All His Works Denis Wheatley (Hutchinson £4.50) The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware Denis Wheatley (Hutchinson £2) For some years now I have been intrigued by the...

Charles Stuart Charles II: The Man and the Statesman Maurice Ashley (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 0.25) Charles II has always been the most interesting of the Stuart monarchs, as a...

Norman Hammond The Quest for America Geoffrey Ashe (Pall Mall £5) The Discovery of North America William P. Cumming, R. A. Skelton, David B. Quinn (Elek £10) It has been a...

David Watkin William Butterfield Paul Thompson (Routledge and Kegan Paul £10) Pugin Phoebe Stanton (Thames and Hudson £2.95) At last it seems that some of the studies of...

Martin Amis The Guinness Book of Records Ross and Norris McWhirter (Guinness Superlatives E1.10) The review notes to this, the eighteenth edition, give a preview of "a few...

Auberon Waugh The Innocents Margery Sharp (Heinemann £1.50) Our Gang Philip Roth (Cape M.75) , Miss Sharp's latest novel came out in October, un-noticed by any reviewer, so far...

Inglorious Rebellion: The Jacobite Risings of /708, 1715 and 1719 Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson (Hamish Hamilton £2.75) Cni't , cted Papers on the Jacobite Risings Val 1 Rupert...

It isn't often that publishers bring out books with exactly the same title in the same season, three weeks apart. An occasion for flying fists, bitter recriminations and...

Journalistic naiveté, which I had thought to reside only in the most youthful and starry-eyed of political commentators, survives also, it seems, in show business. The...

ART Going the whole Hogarth Evan Anthony While it is highly unlikely that any divorce court would have accepted it as evidence of mental or any other kind of cruelty, the...

Making tracks Tony Palmer I remember once attending a BBC lecture course for radio producers, which, among other things, offered advice on the use of music in radio drama....

Stylish nozze Hugh Macpherson John Copley's exuberant new production of Le Nozze di Figaro offers so much in good singing, as well as the triumphal return of an old favourite...

Cartier's jewels Robin Young Jean Albert Cartier must be something special: a director who gives a ballet company an identity and spirit of Its own without either taking on...

Richard King and Colin Forsyth, gay blades and snappy dressers both, have received the warm blessing of Sir Kenneth Keith's Hill Samuel bank on the back-toback sale of their Pan...

Nicholas Davenport Wonders will never cease. The usually pessimistic National Institute of Economic and Social Research has actually made an optimistic forecast in its latest...

I cannot see why United Racecourses wish to bury the charm and character of Sandown under the heap of steel and escalators which will undoubtedly follow their modernisation...

Winter can lie across the countryside like a flat grey blanket at times. We had had several days like this: leaden, unvarying skies, no movement in the moist air, everywhere...

After the end of the last war, whenever I walked due south along the Haymarket, a tiny question mark would take shape at the back of my mind. This moment of subliminal...

From Mr H. E. Francis, QC Sir: I should be grateful if you would allow me to make the fcllowing comments on Mr Harry Samuels' letter on Fair Ren's (December 4). (1) The...

Sir: I read with interest the account in the November 27 issue of the banned World in Action programme on the Republic of Ireland. I had suspected that my contribution to this...

Sir: How welcome was the reminder by John Graham (November 20) of the basic and unchanged realities and distortions of Ulster politics which are at the root of the present...

letter November 6 I ignored the hostilit , to the EEC, in both Northern Ire, land and certain sections of tit'. South. The subject of my letter ws' direct rule. My reference to...

and we should be spared pat. attempts by Irishmen, real and n called, to confuse the issue by use of meaningless statements. his letter of November 13 Mr FitzGibbon propounds...

Sir: The Anglo-Polish Conservative Society, of which the Rt Hon. John Boyd-Carpenter, QC, MP is President and Mr Tadeusz J. Sas is Chairman, is offering prizes of £250, £150,...

Sir: The proposed Rhodesia settlement is said to depend on trusting Mr Smith. His previous record does not encourage this. Immediately before declaring UDI, he deliberately...

Sir: Dennis Hackett's contention (November 27) that the Free Communications Group, by attracting more members, will thereby become politically more balanced seems to rest on the...

SIR: Your premise that "Mr Barber has movea towards cautious support of limited currency floating" in place of his chief's "erstwhile commitment to rigidly fixed e occhange...

Sir: 1 read those two or three articles of Mr Palmer, in which he claimed to have found a most undesirable state of affairs in Nigeria, considering how much he believed the...

Sir: Agreeable rumours persist that you are to lose the service; of Auberon Waugh as reviewer. Please accept my sincerest felicitations on this pleasant prospect. Please...

Sir: The Gulliver's Journal in your November 20 issue really brought home to me how perceptive and ingenious the series is. But one question remains outstanding: who, is the...