For some months now, unemployment has been well above the level any post-war government apart from the present would have regarded as socially or politically tolerable. Even the...

Matters have come to a pretty pass when, in the governing of an important and constitutionally integral part of the United Kingdom, the interrogation of British citizens,...

Now that Mr Jenkins has managed to Make it again to the deputy leadership of the Labour party — against a substantial and indeed triumphal 126 left wing votes for Mr Foot, it is...

There is a curiously unfair view of politicians, often heard in pubs and at dinner, which states they are quite incapable of telling the truth. The populace, of course, never...

Perilous distortions John Graham Until quite recently at my college in Oxford it was compulsory for the under graduates to attend College Chapel. One day the Dean of the...

Patrick Cosgrave replies to Louis Claiborne I would be the last to argue that we in this country have nothing to learn from others , particularly so when the subject is race...

Holy supercommunion Edward Norman Shortly after the middle of 1967 a substantial majority of the parish churches in the country adopted a new form of the Holy Communion. It...

Deduce, intuit? Bernard Dixon I see that Professor Dennis Gabor, whose Nobel Prize for Physics was announced this month confessed to having had the idea behind his discovery...

Gabriel Pearson on Dylan Thomas The energies that went into repudiating bylan Thomas after his death and in combating the glib and ghoulish publicity he SO lavishly fed with...

John Kenyon Hogarth: His Life, Art and Times Ronald Paulson (Yale 2 volumes E17.50) In the eightenth century even art was a subdivision of politics. The abrupt dismissal of...

Not to Disturb Muriel Spark (Macmillan £1.75) A Dark Corner Celia Dale (Macmillian £1.75) A writer who has given as much enjoyment as Muriel Spark builds up an enormous fund of...

The Leyland Papers. Graham Turner (Eyre and Spottiswoode £2.75) I picked up this book with the feeling that it was perhaps just another one of those business histories, very...

That Anthony Blond should write a book about publishing; that he should call it The Publishing Game; that he should go to Jonathan Cape Ltd to have it produced; that Jonathan...

In a recent letter circulated to its members, the Booksellers Association pointed out that it was not within its province to make recommendations concerning particular books....

The National Theatre is finding it tougher than the Royal Shakespeare to fill two houses simultaneously. While the RSC draws near-capacity for its Aldwych repertory, the...

Dada's children Evan Anthony There was once a lousy Hitchcock film, Spellbound by name, in which the attempt to marry Freud to Dali resulted in some dallying with Freud. Even...

London Film Festival Tony Palmer This year's London Film Festival began on Monday and continues until January 1 at the National Film Theatre. Organised by the redoubtable Ken...

Unnatural causes Kenneth Hurren Vanessa Redgrave, whom you may have thought had succumbed forever to the lure of the moving pictures, is back on the boards (to stretch a...

Sir: I was not impressed by the letter from Lord Avebury on November 13 appealing for financial assistance for the defence of Mr Peter Hain on the charges of conspiracy being...

Sir: I must take issue with the statement made in your leader of November 6 that the forecast of a 4-4i per cent growth rate makes the economic argument for joining the EEC a...

derogate from the powers of a subsequent Parliament.' — Hatsbury vol 33, p.377, Authority of Statutes: Clearly, therefore, Edward Heath has no power to sign a treaty which does...

Sir: In reply to Mr FitzGibbon's [eau in your issue of Novemb:r 13, during the second world war Ireland was a !upposedly 'neu tral ' naticn. In reality, only neutral in so far...

November 13) is that no member of the British Army has, or even has had, any responsibility for interrogating civilians taken into eustedy in Northern Ireland. Wynard Thompson...

Ireland in the last two years. But in a quarter of that time (the first six months of this year to be precise) 714 people have been murdered in New York alone, 62 of them by...

Douglas Brown's case for the establishment of the long-planned Council of Ireland, the Northern Irish MPs have voted 10-2 against the Treaty of Rome and so, unlike our own MPs,...

Sir; The morality of a pseudoindependent 'tax-evasion' island state in the Irish Sea within sight of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish coasts is doubtful. Several political...

Sir: In your article' No consent, no entry' (November 6), you made no reference to the large pro-Market vote in the House of Lords. This vote seems to me important and...

(November 6), I find your argument hard to follow. You suggest that there is no reason for the Government to lose office by going to the country and that.the only other method...

Sir: Dr Hansford-Miller (November 6) is absolutely right, but it is unlikely that universities will change. The arrogance and selfsatisfaction that characterise most of the...

Sir: Mr Slater (November 6) suggests that were Mr J. B. Priestley to ". . . cross polemical swords with Mr Waugh . . . He would make mincemeat of him." I am sure that mincemeat...

6), that he cannot even make a decent job of being bitchy. His review of My novel Onward Virgin Soldiers was like something from a fifth form buffoon. How can a criaic expect...

Sir: Having falsely accused me of 0 " fiveford to tenfold" exaggeration of black South African infant mortality rates (Letters, October 9), Dr J. L. Insley has nos' r resorted...

The more I see of Mr Heath and his Government the more I like what they are Up to — the EEC legislation excepted of course. On December 12, 1970, I suggested in this column that...

Mr Connally and the currency crisis Nicholas Davenport Mr John Connally, the Secretary of the US Treasury, is big, brash and as tough as Texans go, but being ignorant of inter...

The English, defeated at the battle of Castillon in 1453, thenceforth relinquished their rule over the Duchy of Acquitaine. But they never did abandon their influence throughout...

Peter Quince It has been a wonderful autumn: on that everyone is agreed. Whatever the winter holds in store for us in the way of meteorological travail, we shall long remember...