It sometimes happens that generals who get their tactics all wrong nonetheless possess the strategic instinct which enables them to win battles. So it may prove with Mr Heath...

Ministers have been at pains to insist that Lord Carrington's new Ministry for Energy is not just t he old Ministry of Fuel and Power writ large, lit it is for all that. As...

Ian Gilmour, who was, as is well-known to readers, the owner of The Spectator which he had bought from Sir Evelyn Wrench from 1954 until 1967, has the sincere good wishes of the...

Subsidising students Sir: I must protest most strongly about Skinflint's disgraceful attack upon students in his column (January 5). One of my daughters is a university...

Sir: Mr Jones (Letters, January 5), has let his imagination outrun all reality. No clockwork duck, with which he amusingly compares me, could, I would have thought, ever change...

Sir: This Government was wrong in the first place to set up a Prices and Incomes policy which they could (or would) only half activate properly: naturally, the incomes half....

Sir; I would like to make a few points which Mr Lamont's parliamentary delegation may have missed (January 5). He implies that the tourist industry has potential. Malawi has...

Sir: Today we face a 1940 situation , ha t the blockade for our food and fuel Is from prices forced ever higher bY Wag e d and fuel costs, plus inflation and w orl , shortages....

Sir: Mr S. John Peskett (Letters' January 12) rightly takes the Govern' merit to task over its doctrinaire P° 116 1 ornfnoetexcludingchilcdhraerngeftsom natio museum admission...

Sir: In his otherwise fair and balanee d e piece on the Irish mining scen (December 22) Richard Hall relies rather too heavily on such phrases n a s : seizure," nationalisation...

,SIr: "It is said of Macaulay, idolator of uante, that his oratory represents the last sunset g lories of the Au g ustan Style, althou g h whether he was q uite as bad as that...

Sir: With reference to the article by C,hristine Pemberton in your edition of anuary 5, I would point out two Inaccuracies: Disraeli was never a member of the Oxford Union, and...

° it: Mr Gammon was presumably illServed (January 5) by the printer inthe r atter of C. L. Dod g son's surname. His anslation from Oxford to Cambrid g e can by no means be so...

One can hardly say that Roy t ei arns g ave a flatterin g account of entolo g y in his review of December t .29 but it is nevertheless stran g e to see hat Or g anisation...

Sir The tirade by Beverley Nichols on the workers' (January 5) reminds me of the riposte g iven by Oscar Wilde when accused by the Warden of his colle g e of loiterin g ,...

Sir: It is not true to say, as Mr Bernard Dixon does in his article on the effects of defoliants and weedkillers used on a massive scale (January 5) that the land of South...

Sir: Mr Desmond Shaw's remarks (Letters, January 5), about the 'tyranny' exercised by the 'Roman church' over its Irish members seems to betray a profound lack of knowled g e of...

Sir: I am most distressed to have upset Clive Gammon by sayin g that I nearly fell out of my seat lau g hin g at parts of Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? I'll make a...

The view from Dublin Patrick Cosgrave I arrived in Dublin—glad, despite the excitement here, to get away from the political hothouse of London for a couple of days —...

at Harnpton Court where my house was built by Christopher Wren as part of the development of the Palace put in hand by William III at the end of the seventeenth century. The...

Robert Lindsay The Bill to amend the law on abortion will receive its second reading on February 22. Here, Robert Lindsay, a barrister and freelance writer on legal and social...

Tk IVIegups aotopte,d to satit tile Hire ck Laboarexs nowadays recall; the Tai.e, of the, reasartts 1410 Were wont to tOrn. ClOWtt thtir owt HotkstS to roast tile g 9 s they...

Reds on the mantelpiece Edward Pearce • We have two crises. One concerns the future of the whole country and is too transcendentally awful to be dealt with in a single...

Gerald Segal All the signs are that the Russians are trying t ° impose from off-stage a hard-line, Sovietoriented policy on the meeting of some eighteen West European Communist...

A lemon among Orangemen Rawle Knox The drumming of Brian Faulkner out of the leadership of the Unionist Party was duly sounded and the optimism of the steadfast has been...

Conspiracy of silence? Michael Brett-Crowther Major A. Ramsay Tainsh, MBE, an environmentalist who lives and works in Sweden, has specialised in food, water and fuel problems...

Observing the Midshipman Wilson in his place the Commons, pale with righteous wrath, t'uzzle quickly opened a clean notebook. For e vidently something was up. Indeed it was. For...

Prostitution in London (3) The new professionalism lain Scarlet lain Scarlet, the writer and broadcaster specialising in crime, delinquency and penal matters, is the author...

Molecular biology Bernard Dixon I gave a talk recently to a group of young, 'high-flying' civil servants, as part of a course on decisionmaking in science. Afterwards, was...

Renewed protest Martin Sullivan Protestantism is in the air once more. A few years ago it seemed discredited and so many clergymen were anxious to be known as Catholics that...

The incomparable Max Bill Grundy When the Economist Intelligence Unit's report on the troubles of the press was published some years ago, I interviewed Sir Max Aitken about it...

In the greenhouse 'Denis Wood, Maud came in with some more instructions the other day. "Look here," she said, "Now you have got that new greenhouse, and that new-fangled...

Terry Pitt on an albatross of the Left It would be neither interesting nor relevant to set out here a comprehensive expose of Dick Taverne's political position. I leave that to...

romance peter Ackroyd 9, 0 With Me What You Will Joyce Carol ‘ r dtes (Gollancz £2.90) rite Spider And The Fly Graham Lord ( Ramish Hamilton £2.25) I n May 1950 Leo Ross...

British Nationalisation 1945-1973 R. KelfCohen (Macmillan £5.50) Once again Mr Kelf-Cohen has made a momentous contribution to the many volumes that have been written about the...

Max Beloff „,The Open University Opens edited by Jeremy i lMstall (Routledge and Kegan Paul £2.50) The largest university in Britain — its 35,000 Rart-time students outnumber...

Kenneth Hurren The Set-Up: An Anatomy of the English Theatre Today Ronald Hayman (Eyre Methuen £4.00) If I'm not careful (and it's touch and go) I'll find myself reviewing the...

J.H. Prynne London Lickpenny Peter Ackroyd (Ferry Press 60p) Letters from Sarah John James (Street Editions 90p) Spleen Nicholas Moore (Blacksuede Boot Press 50p) Selected...

A suite in Haker Street Henny Green 1 886 was a very good year for being a Publisher, especially of fiction of the less pretentious kind. Stevenson lay in a convalescent bed...

Bookend For Britain's oldest surviving book imprint — the noble house of Longman — 1974 is a very special year. In June the company will be 250 years old and will no doubt be...

Rodney Milnes on operatic options and questions When production standards at London's opera houses are criticised managements can reply that until they are subsidised on the...

Choregraphed violence Christopher Hudson -A It is not at all surprising that film-makers should be capitalising on the Kung-Fu phenomenon: it.is the most economical way yet...

Crisis comforts Clive Gammon One tiny bonus to come out of Mr Heath's crisis is that quirky, amused smiles have become rarer on the faces of Messrs Kendall, Baker, Gardner,...

The edge of the precipice iicholas Davenport The profits of industrial companies r ,ePorted in the Financial Times in ' 9 73 increased by some 25 per cent e ver those of 1972....

. . . on the beautiful River Shannon or for a short Spring season on the River Barrow. Write for our Colour Brochure and Barrow leaflet with details of 4, 5, 6 and 8 berth...

The extent of the hold that the major US banks and institutional investors have on the largest corporations through street names or what we call nominee names has come to light...

Holidays clearly work wonders and it was back to work in splendid style with the 13-2 winner of the Blue Circle Chase — for the second year running, please note — plus an...