The Government has become most excited about the gas workers' industrial action. "There can be no compromise," Mr Heath tells the leaders of the TUC in a specially convened...

Any measure of currency movement — whether it is a revaluation or a devaluation — which tends to move exchange rates towards realistic comparative values, is to be welcomed....

Notebook • I once met Professor Gilbert Murray briefly in, I think, the Reform Club. He was very old and delicate, and I noticed that what ever he was doing, he kept his mittens...

The real Labour Party split Patrick Cosgrave I return this week to a subject I have touched on before, but never discussed at length — the real split in the Labour Party. With...

The mad hatter's steel party Skinflint In an industry as big as steel, shedding 50,000 jobs (as the BSC is determined to do) over a period of seven years ought not to prove...

Coming down to earth Michael Brett-Crowther The problems of the environment are the common currency of educated conversation today, and like the currency of baser metal they...

Romeo and Juliet Jeremy Griffiths The following short story won a runner-up prize of 00 for Jeremy Griffiths of Moreton Paddox, Warwickshire, in The Spectator's Schools...

LOOKING DOWN at the golden hair of aerospace minister Michael Heseltine, Puzzle was pleased to note that Michael's hair is looking very refreshed. He is unlikely in the near...

Steven Lukes's study of Durkheim* is a model of exposition: clear, sequential and beautifully structured. It is also a model of scholarship in its range of reference, its...

Auberon Waugh A New Dominion R. Prawer Jhabvala (John Murray £2.50) Getting There William Bloom (Michael Joseph £3) There are three novels in Mrs Jhabvala's latest tour of the...

J. I. M. Stewart Arnold Bennett in Love: A Correspondence Edited and translated by George and Jean Beardmore (Bruce and Watson £2.50) The facts hitherto known about Arnold...

Gillian Freeman Victorian Aapirations: The Life and Labour of Charles and Mary Booth Belinda Norman-Butler (Allen and Unwin £4.25) There is no connection with the Salvation...

Bookbuyer The beleaguered hardback, beset by rising prices and increasingly undermined by simultaneous paperback publication, takes another blow on May 28 this year when...

New productions on successive evenings at London's two opera houses demonstrated just how blurred the lines between them have become. At the Coliseum: Siegfried, one of the most...

Anna Mahler, sculptress daughter of the composer, is less than enthusiastic about the new play about him, Mahler, which opened at London's Arts Theatre Club this week, and she...

Fringe benefits Kenneth Hurren There has been precious little doing in the West End lately, and it was really only because of the withdrawal symptoms that I even contemplated...

Travelling light Christopher Hudson The only film of George Cukor's which Graham Greene reviewed — Romeo and Juliet in 1936 — he described as "unimaginative certainly,...

Benny Green I can remember years and years ago getting involved in one of those embarrassing conversations with a youth club leader about what I intended doing with my life. I...

Nicholas Davenport Monetary history is a series of crises recorded in an agony column and the present crisis ends with a devaluation of the dollar by 10 per cent, the floating...

Europe and family planning Francis Wintle Let us make no mistake about it: Europe as a continent is rich, and its population is only expanding slowly compared with much of the...

Have a heart Bernard Dixon Every few months, there lands on my desk a fat dossier recounting further steps towards the development of an artificial heart. Much of this...

The Sporting Life recently published a letter chastising bookmakers for their narrowminded habit of refusing antepost wagers on races sponsored by their rivals. On Monday,...

Sir: The thoughts of Enoch Powell on Vietnam were 'too hard to resist and so I purchased The Spectator for the first time the week of February 10. I am, and will remain,...

From the Lady Latham Sir: I have recently skipped through David Caute's book The Fellow Travellers. This I soon discovered was all it was worth — the inaccuracies were so...

Sir: Please give me space to support Oswald Baxter (January 27) in his protest about the type now used for Jac. It is bad enough to have to keep the Throwaway Supplement in the...

From the Revd Hubert V. Little Sir: Your editorial 'An Act of Deception' leads me to report our Society's protest at the way in which the public has been misled by the...

Sir: How can ' Bookbuyer ' (February 10) pass off as new yet another set-up claiming to give advice to writers of verse? And what can be the benefits accruing to a neophyie who...

Sir: I would like to thank you for your kind feature in the Bookend Column (February 3), but may I correct one apparent misapprehension? The policy of budget-cost novels...

Sir, I am writing a book on J. T. Grein and his Independent Theatre in London, and would appreciate any information from readers on it, and particularly its Manchester branch...

Sir: "Why? " asks The Spectator in his notebook, referring to recent Protestant violence in Ulster. Does he really not know? For fifty years the minority ' refused to recognise...

Sir: I must congratulate Mr R. J. Bevins on his article under 'Where have the good men gone' in your February 3 edition, not for his good sense, but for being so able to show...

Men Gone?, February 3, J. R. Bevins, as anybody who remembers him on a political platform will agree, would be well advised to keep off the subject of bores. It was necessary...

Sir: For many years I have been Head Guide at Montacute House and have also acted as administrator and been in sole charge of the house during the absences of the late...

Sir: On January 20 you published a letter from Dr J. R. Wilson about 'Infamous Conduct '. Dr Wilson asserted that the General Medical Council's definition of serious...