Britain's merchant seamen ought to adopt a new insignia : that of scapegoats-in-waiting to Labour Government. In 1 966 they were supposed to have knocked Mr Callaghan off...

Mao Tse-tung's death had world wide repercussions. At the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London a play on Mao was cancelled after death threats. President Tito of Yugoslavia...

John Grigg In his Government changes Mr Callaghan acted true to form, as a prudent party manager rather than as a bold and creative political artist. Like his two immediate...

there must be many red faces in the City of London. The reddest of all Should be the face of the Bank of England, Which showed a confidence in Jim Slater now seen to be...

Richard West My colleague Auberon Waugh, who normally writes this column (and we all here wish him a quick recovery from his illness) is less well-known as the chairman of the...

David Bonavia Hong Kong Was Mao Tse-tung a genuine visionary or just a successful revolutionary and a developmental strategist with a soniewhat overheated imagination? On this...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington There are days when this election seems to be between not Ford and Carter but the Ford family versus the Carter family. Never have families been...

David Levy Moscow They have a weekly programme on television here called Man and the Law. In a single half an hour per week, its camera verite technique makes Western press...

Patrick Cockburn Nicosia In a dusty hall in Nicosia last week, its floor strewn with cigarette butts and empty Coca-Cola bottles, the vote was counted in the first...

Anthony Burgess At this moment of writing I celebrate the completion of eight years of voluntary exile from the land of my birth. I have known, like many other British subjects,...

John Horgan Dublin The Republic's new package of security legislation, which inched its way on to the statute books this week after substantial reservations had been expressed...

Ian Bradley

prospect of self government for Scotland and Wales is conducted as though these were entirely new issues in British politics. In fact they have occupied the attention of...

Jim Higgins The National Union of Seamen is an interesting little union. Its history is studded with examples of its willingness to be very unpopular with the rest of the trade...

Z .1LE. Recording of Mermaid Theatre production (1975). L F '....H! Spectator Box 718. DO o IT sung b Eartha Kitt on 78 r.p.m. Write Spectator ciy 719. An y books by Francis...

Love-hate Jeffrey Bernard There's a betting shop in Berkshire where most of the customers can only just reach the counter. Most stable boys are compul sive punters and if you...

Where are the cottages? Michael Hanson The saleroom at Webbs Hotel, Liskeard, was crowded the other day when a firm of Truro estate agents and auctioneers, Stratton and...

Samuel Brittan If there is one aspect of Keynes which unquestionably dates him, it is his attitude to the democratic process. In his economic writings he was concerned with the...

Labour and money Nicholas Davenport The last time we had a Bank rate of 13 " „ was in November 1973 after the Arabs quadrupled the price of oil. It was a big mistake because...

Sir: After reading John Grigg's article ( and much that has come out in the press generally lately), I am forced to ask, do we still have freedom of speech in this country, or...

Sir: Like many English people, Mr K. L. Bailey (II September) thinks that the United Kingdom is a nation. It is a state (not the same thing) formed from three nations (England,...

Sir: I found Mr Robert Skidelsky's article (7 August) profoundly interesting but his conclusions—`That economic decisionmaking needs to be depoliticised, that is, anchored...

Sir: 1 am compelled to protest at Richard Ingrams's review Bells and Balls (4 September). 'Time and again [says Ingrams] you are reminded by the filmed sequences showing...

Sir: Quentin Bell (14 August) criticises Ronald Pearsall for arguing in Public Purity, Private Shame that the decline of religion in Victorian Britain was associated with...

the correspondence concerning 'The Post' by the content and the tone of Mr Young's response to previous correspondents. Mr Young reacts excessively to any criticism of the...

Sir: 'Why should Mr Mulley be overruled by the Law Lords?' one hears it asked about the Tameside ruling. Maybe the answer lies in another question—'Why should there be a...

exist without having seen or heard a Wagnerian opera—rather as I survived without ever having visited Brighton until quite recently, and hope so to continue without ever...

Bertie and the beast Robert Blake Edward VII Christopher Hibbert (Allen Lane £5.95) 'Most of his time was spent in the pursuit of Pleasure, and all of it was spent in...

Peter Ackroyd W. H. Auden: Collected Poems edited by Edward Mendelson (Faber and Faber £8.50) Now at last we-have the great poet, caught by Edward Mendelson in what is a work...

Anthony Nutting A. P. Herbert: A Biography Reginald PoUnd (Michael Joseph 27.25) Among the many futile reforms enacted by the Labour Party in office, perhaps the Pettiest and...

John Kenyon Louis XIV and Absolutism and Louis XIV and Europe edited by Ragnhild Hatton (Macmillan £10 each, £4.95 paper) Less than twenty years ago anyone who did not read...

Nick Totton Blaming Elizabeth Taylor (Chatto and Windus £3.50) An Instant in the Wind Andre Brink (W. H. Allen £3.95) Rising R. C. Hutchinson (Michael Joseph £5.00) Blaming...

SOMERSET Historical Descriptive Biogiaphical. Published 1 908 in Mates County Series by W. Mate & Sons Ltd. Bournemouth X, London. Write. Sir C. Chancellor, Hunstrete House,...

Benny Green Scarlett and Rhett and a Cast of Thousands Roland Flamini (Andre Deutsch £4.95) As I was saying seven days ago, the history of Hollywood is essentially comic...

Llew Gardner Story of My Life Moshe Dayan (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £6.95) Moshe Dayan's story is the history of Israel. He has given an eye for his people and exacted Biblical...

Peter Dickinson Schubert: A Biographical Study of his Songs Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Translated and edited by Kenneth S. Whitton (Cassell £5.95) A great singer is not the...

James Hughes-Onslow I've Lost My Little Willie! Benny Green (Elm Tree Books £4.95) Why is it, in vulgar postcards, that the women, once they've ceased to be nubile and...

Hans Keller A boring introduction is necessary : in 27(X) words' time, it may not seem all that boring. There is a thing called Recontres de Tenerife. Spanish Radio organise it...

Rodney Ackland More than half a century ago, during the summer of 1925 when I was a seventeenyear-old actor, out of work and looking for a job, I presented myself at the...

Red Macbeth Rodney Milnes Outand indoor Barbara Hepworth in the Botanical Gardens (almost upstaged for .Parched Englishmen by the sight of a battalion of water-sprinklers...