Doctor Sicco Mansholt, a Dutchman, a socialist and the President of the Common Market Commission, has told a conference of British businessmen that, whatever Mr Harold Wilson...

inchoate and unworkable Not long ago we argued in these columns that a strong opposition was as essential for the solution of the nation's problems as a strong government. We...

The suspicion of corruption Hugh Macpherson The Government have been exhibiting a low profile — to use the fashionable phrase — in their reaction to the Liberal Party's demand...

The Irish situation degenerates. The British authorities' tolerance of the new UDA barricades and the creation of new Protestant ' no-go' areas has an air of fairness about it:...

George McGovern and the Democratic Party's new (Mite Henry Fairlie Washington, D.C ; In the event, George McGovern came to Miami, saw and.conquered. It was all over, bar the...

Belfast: IRA and Orangemen Richard Cox The red and white flags of Ulster bearing the red hand of the O'Neill at their centre are flying all over the province this week as the...

MR GEORGE POTTINGER the top Scottish civil servant mentioned in the Poulson bankruptcy hearing, was recently a hot tip to become the Permanent UnderSecretary at the Scottish...

Denis Donoghue on the conspiratorial rhetoric of Dr Leavis The celebrated poem from which Dr Leavis has taken his title* comes in the Pref are to Blake's Milton (1804); Blake...

Auberon Waugh Josh Lawton Melvyn Bragg (Secker and Warburg £1.95) Body Charge Hunter Davies (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £2.00) On several occasions in the recent past I have had...

Raymond Carr Reactions to the French Revolution Richard Cobb (OUP £4) The Counter-Revolution: Doctrine and Action 1789 - 1804 Jacques Godechot translated by Salvator Attanasio...

Ernest Gellner Psychology is about People H. J. Eysenck. (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press £3.50) Together with Skinner and Monod, Eysenck is perhaps the most influential of...

Christopher Sykes Operation Portland Harry Houghton (Hart-Davis £1.95) How brief is public memory! The affair of the Portland spies in 1961 shook all Eng land, and now, ten...

Douglas Dunn Livingstone's Companions Nadine Gordimer (Cape £1.95) The Devastating Boys Elizabeth Taylor (Chatto and Windus E1.75) Publishers still maintain that short stories...

Bookbuyer As young editors leave established publishing houses it has been noted how often their authors follow them. But the general galvanising effect of changing publishers...

The conservative rebel Patrick Cosgrave There can be no doubt, that, since the last general election, Michael Foot has moved into a new, and totally unexpected, phase of his...

Theatre National press gallery Kenneth Hurren Listen, I want you to tear out the whole front page . . . Yeah, the whole front page . . . The hell with the Chinese earthquake...

Masked beauties Evan Anthony Anyone who watched Roy Strong being interviewed on the box the other evening would easily understand why he has earned a reputation as a bright,...

Deep sea view Clive Gammon To those of us who live in the far west and so were among the few privileged to see the striking Japanese illustration of an octopus being all...

The BBC Audience Research figures for June came out last weekend, accompanied by the usual publicity statement reading, typically: "The television audience divided its viewing...

Winner's loser Mark Le Fanu The theme of an innocent child being unwillingly caught up in the sexual entanglements of its elders is one of perennial fascination. Henry James...

Benny Green I find it rather surprising that none of the reviewers of Claude Cockburn's book Bestseller has taken its title seriously enough to expose it as fraudulent. None...

After the deluge Peter Quince At this time of year I sometimes like to go out before the village is astir, to enjoy the freshness of the early-morning world ahead of the heat...

Graham Greene, CH, on Sir Basil Spence, OM Sir: I am in agreement with your leading article, 'Dictator for London,' with one reservation. Poor Mr Harry Hyams, what ha t s he...

Sir: Who is this person (" a Conservative," The Spectator, July 8) Who writes that Mr Heath is " not a natural Conservative," " made a Compact" with the Conservative Party and...

Sir: Why do you continue your condemnation of the present leader of the Conservative Party? Your support and publications of articles by second class Tory members of Parliament,...

Sir: In his letter " Shining the Ball" (June 24), later most com pendiously depreciated by Captain Duncan Neil Dewar's pithy reply Ball Bash' (July 1), Mr Mark Goulden...

From Captain Duncan Neil Dewar Sir: Not surprisingly, I almost puked when, at breakfast, I read that the body of Kwame'Nkrumah had been flown from Guinea to Accra for a...

Sir: Nephew Wilde must have gone round Aberdeen in mink-lined blinkers (July 8). To suppose that the discovery of oil in the North Sea has caused no difference in the north east...

Sir: Poor Mr Hackett has it wrong yet again. The Sun is not now selling 2,600,000 copies a day. It is selling more than 2,750,000. For the setond time in a year, Mr Hackett has...

Sir: One was distressed to see that Mr Puzzle's sense of humour was not stimulated by the excellent Mr Patrick Moore on that television chat show. Not being sure whether Mr P....

Sir: The Spectator (July 7) accuses Ulstermen of disloyalty because of their readiness to act outside the law in 1914 and again today. There has indeed been much heartsearching...

Sir: Once more, as readers with military interests have pointed out in your columns on . earlier occasions, our army has been placed in an impossible position in Northern...

Sir: Hugh Macpherson (July 8) says that battles of confidence are lost and won in Parliament before (my italics) they ripple out to the country at a different level of argument....

Sir: It is the privilege of journalists, particularly of editors of distinguished journals, to make con troversial statements which stimulate the readers and increase the...

Sir: Notebook (July 8) contains two particularly nasty examples of snide journalism. You quote from a "note which one local law society has sent to its members and which...

Sir: I keep reading reviews of a recent biography of the late Lord Beaverback that puzzle me. Clearly, this fellow was so benign, so distinguished, so public-spirited, so...

Sir: Miners are now saying the Wilberforce award has been eroded by inflation. Of course it has. What did they expect — prices to remain steady or even go down after their last...

Sir, It is good that Hayek's Road to Serfdom is at last penetrating the walls of the Commons after a generation, thanks to Lord Hailsham and Mr Richard Body. It is now high...

Sir: The United States Senate have voted by a majority of one to abolish capital punishment except I suppose for the usual bar in every country at crimes like sedition and...

Sir: Under the heading Saving the whale' you quoted a Friends of the Earth warning that Waitrose Meat/Liver cat food contains whalemeat. In fact this is no longer true. The 4...

Sir: I saw a cricketer having sexual intercourse on the field of play the other day; but I didn't misconstrue his activity! Not I!. Phillip Hodson 83A Theberton Street, London Ni

ASCAP appear to be confusing ' songwriter ' and 'lyricist! — two complementary but quite different functions. Thus, Dorothy Fields , Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner, and Johnny...

Sir; He may have found it described as ' A True British Tap ' but surely the correct title of Mr Cook's drawing (Letters, July 1), is ' Naval eloquence' and it is Gillray's 1795...

Sir. Again as an Israeli, I feel that the dispute over what caused the ' flight' of the Arab refugees in 1948 is misplaced. Nobody now inside Israel doubts that they were...

only just been drawn to the letter from Air Vice-Marshal R. I. Jones (June 17). It is a peculiarity of the Palestine problem that people still spend their time accusing one...

Arab League declared its member states would resist the proposal made by a UN Commission to partition 'Palestine, if necessary by war. (2.) In November 1947 the UN Assembly...

from Mr Berkeley had been entitled " Humphry Bash" (June 24). My surprise was effectively disposed on reading it. Nothing could have more thoroughly impaired his reputation than...

public that most of the criticism and a lot of the control of architecture is in the hands of literary men, politicians and other than its practitioners. Your correspondent,...

" Owning racehorses? — it's money for jam' observed one disgruntled punter at Sandown Park. Tempest Boy had just become the second successive horse to be rewarded for coming...

Goodbye sterling area Nicholas Davenport One must shed a crocodile tear or two over the death of the sterling area. It is always sad when any monetary freedom has to be given...

The full text of the Labour Party's programme for the Blackpool Conference makes a dull gloomy read, as one now expects. It is the usual rag-bag of sops to the Party's true...

Bond Worth Holdings John Bull It is often puzzling to find one sector in the market that consistently appears to be neglected. Carpets shares have come a long way from their...

Waste appeal Nephew Wilde Wotherspool was insistent that he should see me immediately on my return from Scotland. This he did and pumped me for information on the North Sea...

Parliament The Tory social conscience Tom Stuttaford MP The present malaise from which the House of Commons is suffering is easy to define. A mass of legislation, and in...

Reforming London Jef Smith Reforming local government is a job in the class of painting the Forth Bridge before you finish you have to think about starting again. The current...

Disabled and homeless custos Under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act firms employing more than twenty persons are required to allot 3 per cent of the workforce to the...

What about the controversy over comprehensives? That, you know, has quietened down a good deal. Ironically enough we are getting far more objections now to changing the...

Staff of life Bernard Dixon "Pull of natural flavour and goodness. Rich in all the golden health of wheat". "Nothing is added and nothing is taken tt,Way "....