Her Majesty the Queen will signify her assent to the European Communities Bill shortly after Parliament reassembles. Her signature will be the final stage in the enactment of...

Spectator 44:1 Incomes policy: reinforcing failure The headlong and uncritical rush towards a comprehensive, and probably statutory, incomes policy continues. Mr Heath...

Patrick Cosgrave Another thing — in addition to power — that party conferences are about is leadership. That elusive quality escapes definition. In given situations the...

CONTRARY TO WHAT has been said the Government is trying to communicate. Mr Dick Marsh was woken lip early — about eight — the other mornir e ; by a palpitating Minister of...

When the entire Conservative Party conference, including the Prime Minister, rose to applaud Willie Whitelaw after his speech concluding the Irish debate at Blackpool, old hands...

David Williams We British have never bothered to write down our constitution as a coherent complete code. We have always found it more expedient to adopt, and if necessary...

Time for decision Rhodes Boyson The university year reopens with three major issues still unresolved: what is to be done about student unions since the issue was shelved last...

Andrew Faulds It has been announced in the House of Commons that the report stage of the Museums and Galleries Admission Charges Bill will be taken on October 18: thus a...

George III and the American colonies 1. Patrick Rogers This* is a rich, rounded, believable George III — and that will come as a shock to many. Conspiracy theorists have long...

History may not be relevant, in the modish and suspect sense of that word, but it can often be very comforting. From the British point of view it was one of the greatest...

Auberon Waugh Harriet Said . . . Beryl Bainbridge (Duckworth £2.35) Pasmore David Storey (Longman £2.00) I Want Adrian Henri and Nell Dunn (Cape £1.50) A girl of thirteen...

Frederick Copleston Francis of Assisi John Holland Smith (Sidgwick and Jackson £2.50) Francis of Assisi is represented by Mr Holland Smith as a 'dropout.' So he was. Anyone who...

Douglas Dunn Lucky Poet Hugh MacDiarmid (Cape £5.00) The Hugh MacDiarmid Anthology edited by Michael Grieve and Alexander Scott (Routledge and Kegan Paul £3.25) Before the...

Norman Fowler A Man Apart Anthony Judge (Arthur Barker £2.65) Good books on the police are surprisincly rare and good books by policemen on the police are for some reason even...

John Welcome The Players and the Game Julian Symons. (Collins £1.50) The Shooting Gallery Hugh C. Rae (Constable £2.50). Requiem for a Loser John Wainwright (Macmillan £1.75)...

Bookbuyer It may well be, in the not too distant future, that the commissioning of new book titles is divided between a publisher's editorial and promotions departments....

The angry will of Edward Heath George Gale Edward Heath is a much discussed man and already books* are being written about him, countless articles have sought to explain him,...

Radio No thanks for the memory Nicholas de Jough At last the 1922 show: born of the age we do not live in, long removed from Lord Reith, fluttering bravely in the shadow of...

On the wrong foot Clive Gammon I had an uneasy feeling that things were going to go ludicrously wrong when I heard they had cast Harry Worth as William Boot in BBC2's...

Prophet and loss Christopher Hudson The Assassination of Trotsky (' AA ' ABC2) is the most worthless film Joseph Losey has made — perhaps the only worthless one, since Losey...

Waspe Critics of the Arts Council's subsidisation policies — who were much exercised not so long ago over grants in aid of allegedly pornographic theatrical activities — have...

None in three Kenneth Hurren The audiences likely to be attracted by the three items up for review this week would not, in my view, overlap each other by so much as a single...

Triennale in Bratislava Sheldon Williams It may be hard to imagine the Director of the National Gallery dancing with an attractive blonde from Dtisseldorf with his torso bare...

Rambert outlines Robin Young It is not often that you hear a ballet audience laughing as if they were at a pier show or a recording of Workers' Playtime, and for some of the...

Benny Green There was no apparent reason why the Mole should have sensed in the very first paragraph of the very first chapter that spring was under way, except that presumably...

The Ugandan Asians

accepting the Ugandan Asians was full of the noblest intentions; one could picture the writer sitting back afterwards in a fine g low of moral self-satisfaction. The trouble is,...

article on the le g al position of the U g andan Asians (October 7) more especially the final para g raph. What is so depressin g for someone of my g eneration is to find, if...

From Mrs Ruth Lewis Sir: The forthcoming visit of Soviet artists as part of a festival taking place in England during the month of November, is likely to cause consternation...

against the forthcoming visit of the Soviet artists who are to take part in the Soviet Festival of Music in view of the fact of the persecution of the Jews in the Soviet Union....

Sir: In his interesting article about Marie Lloyd (October 7) Benny Green found it necessary to refer to Conrad's world as so totally devoid of humour.' It so happens that two...

Sir: It would be intemperate to expect you to print me again, but I Should like Mr Edward Norman (September 16), who is, clearly, one of our younger theologians, to know that to...

From Dr G. P. Walsh Sir: It is a great disappointment that, as John Rowan Wilson claims (September 30), the old diseases of malaria and cholera and others, having escaped the...

Sir: In Sandy Gall's article (September 30) — 'Congo and Uganda' — he refers to an incident at the Ethiopian court when Burton watched the Emperor shoot one of his pages. He...

Sir: On every conceivable occasion the national press, TV and radio networks publish news and views of the myriad of revolutionary anarchist, Communist, extreme Left-wing and...

Sir: We learn (Spectator, September 20) that the Dalai Lama has announced that he intends returning to Tibet with all his 60,000 followers. He feels that if the Tibetans are...

Sir: You have published an article 'Adam von Trott, Oxford, America and the anti-Nazis' (October 7) which is a misrepresentation of a man who gave his life in a prolonged...

Sir: In your article ' Anti-antiporn ' you observe . ' that -Lord Longford and his committee Were on occasions 'genuinely ridiculous.' That may be, but you might do well to...

Sir: The opening sentences of Lord Blake's review (October 7) do not agree with my recollections of 1944. I can well remember people prophesying not a Cold but a Hot war between...

From Sir Graham Sutton Sir: I imagine thal. - I am not alone among your regular readers in finding a certain puzzling inconsistency, not to say a lowering of standards, in your...

Sir: Will Waspe's comments (Spectator, September 2) on the use of coloured actors in the United Kingdom reminds me of the absurdities of the reverse situation in South Africa....

Sir: Mrs Elizabeth Cussons in :ier fascinating letter (September 16) made many points worthy of further comment. "Never," she writes, "have I seen such mourning as that of the...

The amount of adverse — masculine — comment being levelled at lady jockeys now that their first season has closed contrasts sharply with the lavish applause their equine sisters...

The political market Nicholas Davenport It now looks. as if our bear market is a political, not an economic, one. As I have said, it became panicky when the threat of a...

The absurdity of attempting to control inflation through a prices and incomes policy and dividend restraint was never so obvious as at Blackpool last week. Like the TUC's...

Matters of discontent Nephew Wilde In New York I believe that the practice of stock brokers in a bear market is to thumb through the yellow pages of the telephone directory...

John Bull The present climate for short-Aterm speculators is, to say the least uncomfortable. Without any clear guideline as to the way tho market will react, subject as it is...

Prisoners and unions Douglas Curtis When the formation of a Britis'n prisoners' union was announced on May 11 this year most people responded with amused disbelief. Prisoners,...

The NHS mind John Rowan Wilson "Good evening, Mr Gastropath. And how are you?" "No better, I'm afraid, doctor. It didn't do me much good." "What didn't?" "The hospital...

Clothing wrangle custos Evidence reaching Custos as a result of the piece on education clothing grants is fast approaching the stage where it will be sent on to the Education...

Carol Wright The big countries, the States and Canada, deter the tourist by their very size and diversity. Does the visitor go for the big City syndrome or head west into...