Sine the October 1974 election, there has been a dreadful sameness about Mr Healey's conduct as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His economic forecasts have invariably been wrong....

At last, anti-climactically, the two interminableyawn stories of the last few months came to an end. No normal observer had kept up with the number of times Mr Ian Smith had...

Leading from behind John Grigg The Conservatives have a miserable record on devolution. Ever since the last war it Should have been obvious that this was a cause which they...

There used to be something called the Silly Season, during high summer, when nothing real happened. Now August seems sensible --sensible weather, sensible cricket and racing—and...

Legitimate public curiosity Auberon Waugh David English, the editor of the Daily Mail, has no matrimonial difficulties; he has never had a homosexual experience and has no...

Xan Smiley Geneva The seediness of the Geneva make-believe long since began to oppress even the most carefree and detached of conference watchers. The elements of Edwardian...

Charles Foley San Diego 'WHALE HUNT!' reads a huge sign on the quayside. 'See! learn! about whales before it's too late!' The little blue-andwhite excursion boats at the end of...

John Biggs-Davison The great bicentenary draws to a close. A warm bath of nostalgia for the land of ancestral or spiritual origins has washed waves of pilgrims and tourists...

Patrick Cosgrave 'Those who live by patronage,' wrote Mr Alan Watkins in a celebrated piece on the dismissal of the late Michael Wolff from Conservative Central Office, 'will...

Christopher Booker The great debate over public spending becomes increasingly disconcerting. Indeed it is like nothing so much as one of those little plastic fairground toys...

Elisabeth Dunn Roy Elattersley has been Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection for three months now and he has grown suitably bland, stout and reticent in its...

Kamikaze woman Jeffrey Bernard I'm keing followed and I don't like it. Almost every time I strike a bet with my unlicensed bookmaker in my local pub the wager is duplicated by...

The future of capitalism —I Nicholas Davenport A much more important subject to discuss than Mr Healey's (measly) Christmas pack age is the future on capitalism. Last week I...

Sir: As he contemplates a government spending cut of £5,000 million compared with the £50 million he resigned over twenty years ago, Lord Thorneycroft laments, 'would that we...

political pressures which have persuaded recent governments to increase public expenditure, and pay for this by inflationary means, in order to buy votes; and he sees salvation...

Sir: I have read what Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien has to say about Terror, law and Press freedom (4 December) with great interest and a large measure of agreement. But as a mere...

will be happy to leave public life, having done something to stamp out violent extreme nationalism in Ireland,' brought back memories of a clearly very violent, Pyjama-clad...

Sir: The public controversy over the global scramble of eager purchasers of the Observer will presumably ease with the successful bid of Mr Robert 0. Anderson. One of the more...

Sir: In Alexander Chancellor's interesting review (27 November) of Edward Heath's book Music--A Joy lOr Life he said at the end, 'Thank God Mrs Thatcher has (household painting...

Sir: I am puzzled by what seems to be a new trait in your editorial policy, namely the vilification of Mr Edward Heath. In your issue of 27 November in a review of Mr Heath's...

Sir: In his article of 27 November, Nicholas Davenport kindly replied to my complaint about him advocating recently that the Government should take over the overseas portfolios...

Sir: I do not know who Richard Williams is, nor indeed who he thinks he is. But the only effect his review (4 December) of Tony Palmer's book All You Need Is Love had on me was...

abhorrence because it brings into disrepute the name of the whole unit, as well as that of the individual. Perhaps the same may also be said of political parties? It is sad that...

The love machine Peter Conrad The Goddess of Love: The Birth, Triumph, Death and Rebirth of Aphrodite Geoffrey Grigson (Constable £6.50) Gods are picaresque characters,...

Robert Skidelsky Resistance: European Resistance to Nazism 1940-45 M D. Foot (Eyre Methuen E6.95) The Russian Version of the Second World War edited by Graham Lyons (Leo Cooper...

John Kenyon The Growth of Parliamentary Parties 1689-1742 B. W. Hill (Allen and Unwin E7.95) The Politics of Deference: A Study of the Mid-Nineteenth-Century English Political...

Benny Green The Bells of Hell Go Ting-a-Ling-aLing Eric Hiscock (Arlington Books 0.75) The Great War to End Civilisation continues to exact such appalling reparations on the...

Nick Totton New Writing and Writers 13 (Calder £4.95) Blue Skies Helen Hodgman (Duckworth £2.95) The Fortunes of Fingel Simon Raven (Blond and Briggs £3.50) For To End Yet...

BAUDELAIRE. Selected Writings on Art by Charvet. Also James Tarrant Adventurer by Wills Croft. Write: Moss, Tocknells Court, Painswick, Glos. LEWIS CARROLL by Florence Becker...

Duncan Fallowell A Tonic to the Nation edited by Mary Banham and Bevis Hillier (Thames and Hudson E2.75) I was two years old when taken by my betters to the 1951 Exhibition,...

The new plunder of art Huon Mallalieu From time to time there are outcries in the press and in artistic circles about the sale of yet another of our national treasures...

Running wild Clancy Sigal Marathon Man (Plaza 1 and 2) My Name is Nobody (Gala Royal) The Scarlet Buccaneer (Empire) Exhibition (PigaIle, Jacey) Most of the suspense in...

Art bazaars John McEwen It is a widely accepted canard that original works of any sort of art, particularly those being sold in the West End, are prohibitively expensive. No...

Love bite Ted Whitehead Dusa, Fish, Stas & Vi (Hampstead) Dracula (Royal Court) It's a shock in EOC year to come across a play about a woman who kills herself for love. But...

Marriage of minds Rodney Milnes I don't imagine that Sir Michael Tippett would have dreamed back in 1955 that twenty-one years later the most marvellous production of his...

Ariadne's yarn Rodney Milnes Ariadne auf Naxos (Covent Garden) A Night in Venice (Coliseum) The Royal Opera has some ghastly operatic curse on it this season. They have laid...

Ordinary life Richard Ingrams Everybody, including Frederic Raphael, the author, has been cashing in on the success of The Glittering Prizes, the BBC's 'widely acclaimed'...