settlement? Although it is too early to be sure how the fighting will end and what its consequences will be, it is clear enough that the resumption of the Arab-Israeli war was...

A very great deal hangs upon the outcome of the next General Election and, in their different ways, both the Liberal and the Labour parties at their annual conferences have...

Sir: As the marriage of Princess Anne approaches the time has come to take stock of a constitutional problem which it presents but which appears likely to be _overlooked. For...

Sir: In a statement on the diplomatic status of the new Chilean government, Sir Alec Douglas-Home laid down that the qualifications for recognition of a new regime should be...

Sir: In your article on this subject this week, you fail to point out that had the advice of the Liberal Party been heeded when the Treaty of Rome was being drawn up, it could...

Sir: I understand that the circulation of The Spectator is still falling* and if this is so I am not surprised. I have just been reading the issue, dated October 6, and find the...

Sir: Surely Patrick Cosgrave cannot seriously believe that the British electorate hates the Common Market so much that it would be prepared to give the Labour Party a mandate...

Sir: In a recent issue (September 22) John Gaselee drew attention to various Ways in which one can ensure an income on retirement. In the many sChemes advertised by insurance...

Sir: The thesis discussed by Mr Fenlon ( S eptember 29) of a " missing third di Mension, non-Lutheran and untr identine " has been known to s tudents of the Spanish and...

Sir: Finding much to admire in Mr Gordon Bigham's own excellent contribution to your correspondence columns (October 6), I only wish he had not included the floating pound as a...

Sir: The doctors (October 6) are of course right to preach against smoking, but for the hard core of us who continue to indulge in this admittedly vicious and nasty habit and...

Sir: A man may be permitted to have read George Selwyn on the Gordon Riots executions, and Hazlitt on Cobbett and Paine, before encountering these familiar allusions in the...

Sir: Mr. Al Capp's non-stop petulance and his lame, albeit strident, ad hoc propter hoc rebuttals in defence of his hero are beginning to pall. Take his reference to the...

T. A. Wainwright Pippins, Hermitage Drive, Twyford. Berkshire

Sir: You make me sound most ungrateful (Notebook, October 6) about the fee I earned by recording a couple of poems for the Greater London Arts Association's Dial-a-Poem...

Sir: Rev. Angus Hunt's letter (September 29) — 1 do not see any danger myself if, through frequent repetition, one's praying does become somewhat " mechanical " from time to...

The Labour Conference was, by and large, highly successful. True, the papers were able to make screaming headlines out of various commitments to nationalisation; and the...

It could all depend on Ted Patrick Cosgrave In 1969 a lot of things went wrong with the Tory conference at Brighton. First of all, while the party was ensconced at that most...

Each year at the Conservative Party Conference a lecture is given by some leading member of the party under the aegis of the Conservative Political Centre. The purpose of he...

Not quite presidential—yet Wilfrid Sendall For many years now there has been in this country a subconscious drift towards a Presidential as opposed to a parliamentary System....

Whizkids and efficiency Kenneth Lewis The Government has been unfortunate during the last few months on the international economic front. Commodity prices have raced up; world...

Impenitent imperialism John Vaizey For a good many years now the Imperial idea has been in retreat till it can be defended only by a tiny minority of nostalgic eccentrics....

Michael Stourton T his year's corn harvest has been an excep Pnally good one. Weather conditions have Dieen so favourable that nothing short of amazing individual bad luck or...

A fair share of the miracle Joel Cohen .The Persian Gulf of Britain? Or a source of peasant labour for the rest of the world's oil moguls? Up to last Year it seemed as if all...

(With apologies to Lord Tennyson) Half a step, half a wink, Half a move sideways; All in a pitch-black pool Swim Labour's hundred. " Forward the Pink Brigade. Charge for the...

Medicine Who indeed, is to blame? John Linklater A sick baby died without receiving medical attention, three days after his parents had asked, in vain, for an urgent home...

Earth-shaking questions Bernard Dixon An even greater human idiocy than jettisoning untreated sewage into the sea (which I was discussing last time), is man's tendency to set...

Rewards and punishments Martin Sullivan 'There are many features of New Testament teaching which puzzle the modern reader and none more than its repeated references to rewards...

Flowers of autumn Peter Quince "Summer is over, and we've had scarcely a wasp in the house," someone said; and although I had not really noticed it before, I recognised that...

God bless Rheingold. Crouched in front of the ' box ' on Sunday afternoon I certainly didn't feel like a girl about to tip the winner of the world's richest race, the mood being...

Benny Green Sitting at breakfast last Wednesday morning running an eye over the morning newspaper, I suddenly 'underwent one of those pregnant Proustian experiences when...

J. Enoch Powell on how Macmillan deceived the Queen "1 was sad that Macleod, for whom I had the highest regard, did not feel able to join" — so said Macmillan, on the formation...

Richard Luckett 'George Canning Wendy Hinde, (Collins 0.00) Every schoolboy knows about the duel with Castlereagh; students of that neglected subject, abusive language,...

Ralph Harris Small Is Beautiful: A Study of economics as if People .mattered E. F. Schumacher (Blond & Brig gs 0.25) I. fear this is a most perverse collection of eSsaYs, with...

Lord Rhyl Capitalism and the Permissive Society Samuel Brittan (Macmillan £3.95) This is a collection of essays, some previously published, some not, by perhaps our leading and...

Michael Bentley Liberals, Radicals and Social Politics, 1892 - 1914, H. V. Emy (Cambridge University Press, £6.50) The Liberal Imperialist: The Ideas and Polltics of a...

Michael Jones The New Service Society Russell Lewis (Longman £3.25) Recently a new genre has emerged which might be categorised as 'Musings on our Economic Life and Times.' It...

Peter Adixoyd The Heyday Bamber Gascoigne (Cape £2.25). Jane Dee Wells (Blond and Briggs £2.75). Star Dust On The Pavement Frederick Broadie (Chatto and Windus £2.00). I...

Paperbacks After a week's absence, Platypus is back with a vengeance and With a backlist larger than even a bookseller could imagine. If someone would be so kind as to pop on a...

Bookend "A good book," remarked the late Jonathan Cape, with a twinkle in his eye perhaps, "is one which sells 100,000 copies." There are not however many general hardbacks...

OF THE ARTS Robin Young on culture taking the strine One could not resist the thought, as Lucette Aldous ran down the stage to leap into Rudolf Nureyev's safe embrace: ''Jeez...

Crime passionel and custard Christopher Hudson Tales of murderous love must have a strange fascination for us. Of the hundreds of French films made every year, many of them of...

Catching up * Kenneth Hurren After absenting myself from the London playhouses for a week or two, I found the catching-up process so generally agreeable that I should be bound...

Not notable Clive Gammon Let us deal with various ladies to begin with. Notably there was Diana Ross in Shou. of •the Week on BBC 2. Why did I write 'notably'? It just...

The diversifying Playboy organisation, I learn, has a number of film prospects under active consideration for investment and production. Evidently the Bunny men are not unduly...

Concert and Festival notes On Tuesday October 2 at the Central Hall, Westminster, the Institute of Indian Culture presented a concert of Western and Indian music in recognition...

Wilson, Heath and the Stock Exchange Nicholas Davenport The Stock Exchange did well last week to ignore for the most part the goings-on at Blackpool, seeing that Mr Heath will...

Harold Wilson's first speech at last week's Labour Conference hinted, and no more, that a future Labour government might consider directing institutional investment as well as...

Going east Nephew Wilde Nothing rouses my broker, Wotherspool more quickly to anger than left-wing politics. Thus I caught him frothing at the mouth !ast week as he watched...