It is rapidly becoming apparent that the principal argument of the pro-Marketeers in the forthcoming referendum on British membership of the EEC will be the supposed dreadful...

By pushing ahead its development programme, British Gas expects to be supplying at least 30 per cent of the nation's useful heat this winter. This Makes gas a lot more important...

It has not been a happy MCC tour of Australia. For the remaining two Tests, moreover, an .Australian team undiminished in its ebullience IS likely to rub the message of...

The Washington meeting of Finance Ministers which took the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the United States last week highlights the difficulty in which the western world has...

It is a matter for grave regret that the Employment Secretary, Mr Michael Foot, has finally rejected TUC calls for the banning of fee-collecting employment agencies for...

Sir: I am saddened by yet two more revelations — in one issue of The Spectator — that one must never take for granted that Parliamentart representatives speak, act and vote in...

Sir: In your issue of January 4, you publish a letter from Mr Lockhart criticising comprehensive schools. They have, he says, "long had a ,bad name," their new teaching methods...

Sir: Had Gertrude Stein observed that a 'Contract is a contract is a contract' instead of a 'Rose is a Rose is a Rose', she'd have uttered a profundity that G. M. Lewis...

Sir: As newspaper editors continue their campaign to protect editorial authority and maintain the traditional 'Freedom' of the British press from the closed shop provisions of...

Sir: Charles Stahl's column 'Writing on the Wall . Street', for December 28 is much to be commended, for so much of the comment on the 'legalising' of gold in the US has...

Sir! The Government has just given taxpayers' money to the Burmah Oil Company in return for a stake in the company, and a 51 per cent share in its interests in the North Sea oil...

Sir: So Mr and Mrs Reeve (January 4) see a connection between the deterioration of the world economic situation over the years" (which yearsIn Particular?) and "the general...

Sir: Before rushing into libellous condemnation of booksellers, you ought to. have read what the Sunday Times said about its year-end list of bestsellers. Because we began our...

Sir: Should we not ask Israel to re-join the British Commonwealth? It would reduce the danger of war considerably. It would give us new allies and new bases. The Arabs may not...

Sir: Skinflint (January 11) perpetuates the myth of Welsh comicality. May I assure him there is nothing aberrant about the names Llewellyn, leuan, Meredyth and Mair. Good,...

Sir: — The exhibition Bodybox that so offends the sensibilities of Willie Waspe, is the work of the Education Department at the V & A. This vigorous department is young, but I...

Sir: How strange. There is a Mr Wistrich who apparently favours the restriction of our liberties, i.e., the right to govern ourselves, in exchange for certain real or imaginary...

From Rev D. Eirwyn Morgan Sir: Tom Puzzle's column is quaint and Englishe, even if slightly undergraduate and sillie. Non-Tory and Welsh, may 1 enquire of him concerning the...

So far as we are aware no newspaper has printed the full text of Anthony Wedgwood Benn's recent letter to his constituents on the subject of the Common Market and the...

Patrick Cosgrave Last week, writing about potential division in the Labour Party, I suggested that what potential existed was far less likely to lead to disruption than some...

In the great days of daily newspaper production there were few men in the street who would not have recognised the Harmsworth brothers or the first Berrys or Lord Beaverbrook or...

have got the National Enterprise Board, has launched what he calls a "top people's think tank" called Professional Forum — PROF for s hort. Sir Fred does not stay in a job for...

Lord Listowel has been telling members of the House of Lords to economise with official e mbossed writing paper, saying that the quality may have to be reduced. I should have...

Woman's Realm, the weekly magazine, is being used this week by the independent Adoption Society of Peckham, formerly the Agnostic Adoption Society, to 'advertise' children in...

Fred Thoroughgood, MP, for years Had railed against the House of Peers And none attacked heredity With quite such bitter scorn as he, Or jeered at patronage, but when He said he...

There is a Species of Woman whom I shall distinguish by the name of Salamander. Now a Salamander is a kind of heroine in Chastity, that treads upon Fire and lives in the midst...

Gerald Segal The West has refound its basic unity. This seems to be the plainest message decodable from the series of meetings, some at summit level, others at foreign minister...

BM Manson These days they're going in for it in twos and threes. After all they haven't had a good tet a tet for at least seven years. Now on three sides of Phnom Penh, and on...

Kenya's rogue Parliament Patrick Marnham Unlike Rhodesians or Ethiopians the people of Kenya elect their own parliament on a democratic (albeit one-party) basis. Unfortunately...

As Vorster abandons Smith... Roy Macnab The first ever visit to South Africa of a British Foreign Secretary, in the opening days of 1975, may in future years be remembered not...

Report from Rhodesia Molly Mortimer Prime Minister, prohibited immigrant, guest of honour — Sir Roy Welensky has run the gamut in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia that was). Yet not...

Is Wallenberg still alive? Maurice Samuelson Just thirty years ago, one of the noblest' individual exploits of the second world war came to an end and one of the cruellest...

Toby O ' Brien The pantomime season is still with us, but, alas, not the traditional pantomime of my youth With its unscanned rhyming couplets and its unvarying 'business' of...

and the Ministry of Defence. Some years ago some clown in the Ministry Of Defence gave the number of my house in Chelsea as the number of a department of the War Office. At all...

morning programme which caused the Post Office to ask me whether I would like them to intercept all calls for my number. Alas, my wife got so incensed because her girlfriends...

Bridge on the River Kwai in which the prisoners come marching back whistling the tune of Colonel Bogey. It annoys me, as I invented the song about the Nazi leaders, to hear it...

Metrication Greenwich is good for you Oliver Stewart It is at once the tercentenary of the Royal Greenwich Observatory and the year in which we, in this country, are expected...

(As a result of recent dicussions on sovereignty, new words have been written for the National Anthem.) God save our Gracious Nine, Grant them a grace divine. God save the...

Bill Grundy The other night I was taking a glass of buttermilk with the editor of the Daily Express, Mr Alistair Burnet, when who should walk into the office but Mr Jocelyn...

No more 'night starvation' Philip Kleinman Do you suffer from "night starvation"? The chances are you haven't asked yourself that question for quite a time, if ever. If you...

Hampstead charms Bernard Dixon The Hampstead Scientific Society has just published a splendid little booklet chronicling its doings and personalia, both eminent and amateur,...

Balanced accounts Martin Sullivan A century or so ago Emerson wrote an interesting essay with the title 'Compensation'. He was provoked to do this by a sermon in which the...

Leo Abse MP on the murder trade of the London abortion clinics Early next month, yet again, the House of Commons will be presented with another amending Abortion bill: the...

William Sargant The Age of Madness Thomas Szasz (Routledge and Kegan Paul £5.95). This reviewer first did a 'locum' at the old Hanwell Asylum, now renamed St Bernard's...

Jan Morris The Long Afternoon: British India 1601-1947 William Golant (Hamish Hamilton £4.75) Not another? I say it who shouldn't, as a contributor to the genre, but there...

Antony Flew The Philosophy of Karl Popper edited by P. A. Schilpp (Open Court and Alcove Press £15 for two volumes) Popper Bryan Magee (Woburn Press £2.50) The Philosophy of...

Larry Adler Drew Pearson Diaries 1949-1959 edited by Tyler Abell (Jonathan Cape £7.50) There is no English equivalent of the Superstar Trained Seal. No Drew Pearson, Walter...

High sentiment Peter Ackroyd The Last Hours Before Dawn Reg Gadney (Heinemann £2.90) Tug-Of-War Julian Fane (Hamish Hamilton £2.75) The Gypsy's Curse Harry Crews (Secker...

How's that? Benny Green In the simulated chaos which the world persisted in making of the end of 1974, as it persists in making of the end of every year, I forgot to comment...

Bookend The financially hard-pressed National Book League — which is a registered charity — has just been offered the freehold on its Albermarle Street premises near...

Rodney Milnes on Joan Sutherland and the travestied Traviata The Royal Opera's latest extravaganza is La Traviata with Joan Sutherland, at seat prices up to Just under a tenner...

The behemoth cometh Kenneth Robinson The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Director: Ted Kotcheff. Stars; Richard Dreyfuss, Denholm Elliott, Micheline Lanetot. 'X' Odeon,...

I am surprised to see that a public appeal has been launched to raise £52,000 to keep in this country — at the National Portrait Gallery — a collection of Victorian photographs...

Kenneth Hurren, The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter (Shaw Theatre) The Sash by Hector MacMillan (Hampstead Theatre Club) King John adapted by John Barton (Aldwych) With the...

Poor start Evan Anthony It is entirely possible that somewhere there is an exhibition that has bravely opened in this new year that is absolutely first class — exciting,...

Lessons from Burmah Oil ... Nicholas Davenport. When the crunch comes as it must do over the next few months — that IS, the grinding of the policy teeth of the right and left...

Gerald Frost As Sir Don Ryder considers further ways he can help the ailing motor giant which as an IRC member he helped cobble together, he might spare a thought for firms...

u p to 25200 The Reference Division of the Central Office of Information is a prime mover in the projection of Britain's image throughout the world. Its specialist researchers...

Do we really need finger -bowls? Bernard Hollowood Nothing could be more British than the series of letters appearing in the Times under the heading 'Is There a Crisis?' I am...

'What God abandoned these defended And saved the sum of things for pay'. But indeed who shall be saved? As companies increasingly crowd round the Whitehall doors, their begging...