into the Common Market, and who have ever maintained that the undesirability of entry would become ever more evident as the vicious contradictions of the Community made...

Iii the unprecedentedly divided political situation now being endured by Israel the friends of that embattled country ought to attempt to encourage Israeli soldiers and...

The Prime Minister has been the victim of a spiteful attack from some Conservative backbenchers who have attempted, without success, to tie him to the Ince-in-Makefield property...

Despite the unanimous feeling of its members that the Abortion Act should not be amended in a restrictive way, it is impossible to feel that Mrs Justice Lane's committee of...

From the Rev. Victor Hellabv Sir: Your editorial of April 6 will have pleased many, besides myself, who are not Establishment bashers, and on the contrary would champion all...

Sir: Far abler pens than mine will be able to discuss the pros and cons for the establishment of the Church of England. I agree with you that it seems absurd and illogical that...

write, "or it is nothing." Your love of a rhetorical punch line has led you to make an absurd statement. If the Church of England were disestablished, it would still remain a...

Sir: How it would simplify things if farmers were machines and not people. Gerald Segal's letter from Brussels (in your issue of March 30) implied that the fundamental problem...

Sir: I am writing to comment on Skinflint's remarks (The Spectator, March 30) about the Julian Melchett Trust, whsich is being set up to pursue social objectives in steelmaking...

Sir: I am delighted to answer Mr George Martelli's questions to me (April 6) on pornography, arising out of my review of Lord Longford's The Grain of Wheat (March 23). Here are...

rationality in 41 Holbrook's writings. He seems j00,111,Mand space in the weeklies 1 ' lla proportional to the support he er the case he presents. latest article does not help....

legislative curb is needed on the present systematic debasement of public taste, in the cinematic field especially. Nonetheless I can never read any article deploring the...

From Eric E. Rich, M.A., Ph.D. Sir: Victor Montagu, in your issue of March 30, gives the impression that Queen Victoria personified the age of chivalry, but 1 expect he does...

Sir: — Many will endorse, and mostly rightly, what Patrick Cosgrave writes about Sir Alec Douglas Home's character and personality. That he is an extremely nice and honest man...

Sir Alec Douglas-Home (March 30)? The 14th Earl has been contemptuously dismissed by some as an anachronism. Maybe he is, but if so, what a remarkable and resilient specimen! He...

Sir: It was at a public meeting in Edinburgh last year that I was made aware of the horror and the extent of what has resulted from the 1967 abortion act. The main speaker at...

Sir: Ronan Fanning's sneering article claims that it was not liberal zeal which made the Irish Government introduce a Bill to legalise contraception. but rather a Supreme Court...

Callaghan: an instinct for the jugular Patrick Cosgrave During that dreadful weekend after the election, when Mr Heath was trying his hardest to hold on to office with the...

, The Home of Lost Causes is, by description, a i Sanitorium and ultimate cure resort of itself. 1 Oxford undergraduates of strange reputation and report usually contrive to do...

Douglas Johnson General de Gaulle was once asked about the g reat emptiness which would follow him in France. There would be no emptiness, he said, there would rather be an...

Dr. Casuisticus, the, enent sto.ral nilosopitor, koicts that, sinc,e,noPart can bestore, v-irt wows than the, Whole , Nre rkwat jultcje anA.ction by that Part of It titat Men....

Prance and the Atlantic crisis ,Nicholas Richardson .;;;;-- , 'Ile change in the wizard's voice was as` 01 Anding. Suddenly it became menacing. Po werful, harsh as stone . ....

Reality breaks through Douglas Jay _ It was a piece of good luck for sorely-bruised Anglo-American relations that Mr Callaghan's "pro-Atlantic" first speech as Foreign...

Seal and search Rawle Knox • blameless citizen, right credit-worthy and, 111 L bert ond ne o e n d d ed er s Imagine yourself (if imagination good standing at the local golf...

It was in the variety of his ideas, and the passion with which he regarded and promoted them, rather in their originality or precision, that Richard Crossman made his major...

Big brother Naomi Mitchison Many a Botswana is desperately proud of his little country and proud also of being an African. But there are tough discouragements for such people....

Mercurius Cantabrigiensis I had so fear'd for you at the hands of your student rebels that your letter of the 20th inst. .cheer'd me ultra morem. You ask me regarding our...

The other night, my good friend Sir Simon d'Audley tottered into the Club in search of such stimulant as would enable him to take post for the country without endangering an...

The forgotten victims Graham Junes A fifteen-year-old boy was appearing before a juvenile court, accused of two offences of indecently assaulting teenage girls. One of these,...

If you can smile when rising income taxes Swallow the extra cash you hardly earn; If, when you see the price of petrol waxes, You stain Arab nations good discern: It you can...

Copy rights Bill Grundy I remember as a boy being frequently puzzled by that newspaper column known vulgarly as 'Hatched, Matched, and Despatched' — Births, Marriages and...

Technumaniacal failure Bernard Dixon I'm happy using a credit card td buy petrol and settle restaurant bills, but not to purchase a packet of Rawlplugs, a Scotch, or the...

Jonah's message Martin Sullivan Three hundred years before the birth of Christ a thoughtful man was concerned about the narrow exclusiveness of his church. To challenge this...

Yulan Denis Wood The yulan is very old: 1,00 years at least in China before it was brought to Europe in the last decade of the eighteenth century, when it must have been seen...

Pressure Groups and the Permissive Society* IS well written and, within its limits, well documented though it is not a particularly exciting book. Which is a pity since being...

Peter Ackroyd The Rain Forest Olivia Manning (Heinemann £2.50) Dogcatcher Peter Prince (Gollancz £2.50) Well well, says Miss Manning as she glides into the neighbourhood...

Marigold Johnson Times to Remember Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (Collins £4.95) Exactly a year after Chappaquidick, Rose Kennedy decided to spend her eightieth birthday in Ethiopia....

Charles Marowitz Violence in the Arts John Fraser (Cambridge University Press £2.50) This should be made required reading for Lord Longford and Mary Whitehouse for, in the...

Edited and introduced by Giles Gordon and Alex Hamilton Brian W. Aldiss, Maureen Duffy, Robert Nye, William Trevor, and many other d istinguished fiction writers have each...

Auberon Waugh Illustrated by Ken Taylor A brilliantly funny collection of essays on country life, revealing to the unenlightened urban inhabitant rural reactions to world...

Christian Sanctified by the Lord's Prayer: and by E. Bandeur Living to the Lord's Prayer. Pub. by Burns & Oates. John Cumming. Burns & Oates 270 Jerdan Place, SW6 5PT....

John Casey Keats and Embarrassment Christopher Ricks (Oxford University Press 0.75) Hegel thought that one great outward manifestation of the human soul was the' transparency of...

Kay Dick Staying on Alone: Letters of Alice B. Toklas Edited by Edward Burns. (Angus and Robertson £4.50) Gertrude Stein died in 1946, leaving behind her dearest friend and...

A.L. Rowse That Noble Cabinet. A History of the British Museum Edward Miller (Andre Deutsch. £4.80) I have never been — unlike so many of the eminent — an habitué of the BM, as...

magic Richard Luckett Simon Forman: Sex and Society in Shakespeare's Age A. L. Rowse (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £4.50) A. L. Rowse's latest book is essential reading for anyone...

Music, maestro Benny Green I have sometimes thought what a good idea it would be for somebody to write a book analysing the various motives people have for writing books,...

Britain is unusual among civilised countries in not having a national bestseller list and a good deal of sales baloney has been allowed to pass because of it. Last year the...

If you can't get a defence of J. B. Priestley's Eden End from me — libellously reputed as I am to languish in a bygone day — I don't know where you are going to find one. The...

Mauling Mahler Christopher Hudson The sea pounds the headland; the rich symphonic music swells and lours; on the desolate rocks a white chrysalis inches painfully out of its...

Wasted journey Clive Gammon I was delighted to see that BBC] were repeating Shakespeare — or Bust last week as a Play for Today because I'd missed it first time round and I...

Conspiracy Rodney MiInes • One had hoped that the current outcrop of four new operas presented by London and regional companies would form some sort of cornerstone of a...

Waspe Despite the scorn which this column poured a month ago over the weird reports that the commercial theatre was in a critical condition from which it could only be rescued...

Nicholas Davenport As Nigel Lawson remarked in his elegant maiden speech in the budget debate, if we are to have an autumn budget most of us would prefer it to be delivered by...

Unwanted holidays David W. Wragg During the late 1950s and e,..rly 1960s, shortly after the trend towards cheap holidays abroad first reached boom proportions, a spate of...

If ever a reverse takeover situation should be referred to the Monopolies Commission it is the merger proposal between Sterling Guarantee Trust and Town and City Properties....

has been visiting London. His newsletter has been almost invariably correct in forecasting the market in silver and gold and should be obligatory reading for commodity dealers...