Off on the summer holidays Hugh Macpherson It is quite appropriate that this Parliament should finish with a hellish inferno of noise as workmen swarm round Palace Yard...

New means worse. This occurred to me When taking a taxi through the Covent Garden area a day or two ago. Some of the low market buildings are very pleasant and should not be...

Vice-Presidents Denis Brogan I have been contemplating the current American presidential election with a very mixed kind of interest. I first began to study this great...

Yanks in town Minette Marrin Taxi drivers, pub owners, and souvenir salesmen all agree — Americans are meaner than before, and they have started counting their change. 1972...

PUZZLE SOMETIMES wonders which eight MPs he would take with him to a desert island — always, of course, excepting the Speaker and the Official Solicitor. For a start' he would...

Reviews by Myles Raven, F. S. L. Lyons, Tony Palmer, Maurice Zinkin and Auberon Waugh Shirley Robin Letwin on the case for and against Cicero Shackleton Bailey's Cicero* has...

Auberon Waugh Hermaphrodeity Alan Friedman (Cape £2.95) The Ewings John O'Hare (Hodder and Stoughton £2.25) Publishers are coming round to the view that what the reading public...

Myles Raven Fingleton on Cricket Jack Fingleton (Collins £2.75) Jack Fingleton is a political and sporting journalist, and he was, in his time, a professionitl cricketer of the...

F. S. L. Lyons The Anglo - Irish Terence de Vere White (Gollancz £4.00) During the truce — the real truce of 1921, not the sad parody of 1972 — Lloyd George remarked that...

Tony Palmer In the Future Now Michael Davie (Hamish Hamilton £3.00) This is a dangerous book, not just because it is occasionally inaccurate but more importantly because it is...

Rents and roads Clive Gammon An instructive contrast on Monday evening, with World in Action (ITV) clashing with Panorama (BBC 1) in more senses than one, in the former, the...

Below the belt Christopher Hudson After spaghetti Westerns come blackass thrillers, so called because their dialogue has a coprophiliac monotony even Luther would have found...

Henry Adler Funny things happened on the way to Golgotha. I can rebut the sneers •of those (ungraced by the enthusiasm of the archbishops and Harold Hobson) who do not seem to...

Truth into art Benny Green The recent unveiling of Richard Attenborough's cinematic Churchill portrait has not been without its excitements. On the day after the premiere, the...

Not everything has been roses for Robert Stigwood with his very hot property, Jesus Christ Superstar. A fair amount of the global profit has gone into lawyers' fees in bringing...

Poor little bastards of Vietnam Marina Warner Contraceptives are available free in the PX stores of the US army, but it only needs one glance at the cots in the ramshackle...

At Nawbury last year Noel Murless turned out four winners, netted £8,000 plus and now has some intriguing prospects in store for his three-year-old colts, Redundant, The Admiral...

Sir: One of the most disgusting features in Mr David M. Jacobs's remarks — to use his own style — is his way of answering facts with misleading and unfounded generalisations....

Sir: Could your correspondent Mr K. T. Moore of Ilford (August 5) please explain his reasons for describing Willy Brandt — who, as Lord Mayor of West Berlin, showed immense...

Sir: The Government has now taken emergency powers to ensure that essential services and supplies are maintained whilst the dock strike lasts. But what do these emergency powers...

Sir: Your leader Mr Heath's national crisis' (July 29) proposes remedies which Mr Heath is as likely to take as he is to give his yacht to Oxfam. You rightly say that the public...

Sir: One does not have to be a psychotherapist to detect the note of criticism in Jef Smith's reference to the meeting called by social workers to explore the place of...

Sir: In June I borrowed from the library a detective story, French Strikes On, written twenty years ago by the late Freeman Wills Crofts. I assumed the title to be purely...

Sir: Simply for the record, I correct a mistake of your (by me unheard of) reviewer (Christopher Hudson, July 22): the editor of the Cornish anthology in question was anxious...

Sir: In a recent letter about ILEA, Which you recently published, I made a factual error about Mr Peter Newsam, the Deputy Educa tion Officer of ILEA. Mr Peter Newsam took a...

Sir: I think that a true broad generalisation can be derived from Tibor Szamuely's exemplarily lucid review of the liberalist-intellectual position in Russia, (July 22). It is...

is trying to say in his article, 'The future of Soviet dissent' (July 221. On the one hand, he says that the Soviet dissenters are the intelligentsia, the ' elite' of Russia,...

Sir: Many a man is remembered for little more than a single deed; but was such a deed ever so frequently misrepresented? And was the reputation of such a man ever so...

Sir: You may recall that I was distinctly unenthusiastic about your Direct Rule campaign some months ago. Events have proved me right and Ulster is even worse off without...

Gooseberry fool Peter Quince Ever since our cat grew too old and lethargic to patrol the garden with her natural ferocity, the place has come more and more to resemble an...

The phoney peace Nicholas Davenport When the boys at Westminster break up for their summer holidays there is always a sigh of relief in Throgmorton Street. The stock markets...

In The Spectator of July 15 I suggested that new Embassies might be built as British Commercial Centres on the outskirts of capital cities. These centres would be permanent...

Good prospects John Bull I am sure that if a Gallup Poll were taken to see which housewives had the most sleepless nights it would show them to be the spouses of stock market...

Hitting the gold trail Nephew Wilde My broker, Wotherspool and 1 had a brief reconciliation last week_ In order to bring myself up to date With the present climate of a...

Mental health What are psychiatrists doing? Anthony Clare Recently I attended the recording of a televised debate, to be shown on BBC 2 this autumn, in which the American...

The stand-by call-out hang-up Jef Smith First let me explain the terminology. Most social services departments work office hours. Between 5 o'clock on Friday and 9 o'clock on...

Free milk Custos Are all poor families receiving their tight to free welfare milk? A report received by Custos this week gives cause for concern. All children under five in...

A step forward Bernard Dixon John Maddox, editor of that august organ of science Nature, did something remarkable last week. He published a research report by a group of...