When politics is about cricket it is a sign that the English are taking their politics seriously. And, certainly, the issues sur- rounding the forthcoming South African tour...

The state of the politics industry JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE, MP Mr Pearl, the Leader of the House of Com- mons, has announced that the Commission on Industry and Manpower (successor...

The alternative to Croslandia W. A. WEST Professor West is at the Faculty of Urban and Regional Studies at Reading University. To say that the reform of local government is...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS The Tories, when they come to power, Will gladly seize their finest hour To slash the workers' wages, And in a rage of frenzied hate They will destroy the...

After the ballyhoo STANLEY JOHNSON Well, they have come and gone. For four days Strasbourg was host to princes, plan- ners and parliamentarians. Whole tracts of life-giving,...

Lines blocked TERENCE BENDIXSON Next time you are at a railway station and a goods train rattles past with a thud, thud, thud and a squeal have a good look at it. Those brown...

Enter Tito's policeman TIBOR SZAMUELY Next week a signal honour will befall these islands: we are to be visited, for the first time since the war, by a Yugoslav Prime...

Lords are sighing for work. The Government, taught by the fate of the Scotch Education Bill of last year, which was introduced first in the Lords, and consequently cut to...

Overheard in Beirut GEORGE GALE Journalists suffer from an incurable (because it is essential) disease of their occupation : they are compulsive dramatists. They see plots,...

J. W. M. THOMPSON For some reason the historians of the last war don't seem to have gone very deeply into the fact, a remarkable one in view of what happened in the 1914-18...

The measure of all things CHRISTOPHER BOOKER So strongly did Lord Clark's thirteen tele- vision lectures on the history of western civilisation (and their subsequent...

Fed up LESLIE ADRIAN That part of Germany where Herr Brandt's writ now runs is a land flowing, literally, with milk and honey. But, in flat con- tradiction of the voice that...

Old wives' tales JOHN ROWAN WILSON 'If you don't - wear your wellies you'll go blind', says the nanny to the boy in Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On. It is a line that...

Nation, race and the right DENIS BROGAN I have just been reading the first two books* in a new series, 'Roots of the Right', edited by Mr George Steiner. The venture is cer-...

G. D. RAMSAY Why did one group of Englishmen take to arms against another group not much more than three hundred years ago? Until recent times, there was general acceptance of...

TREVOR GROVE Play Power Richard Neville (Cape 38s) The Politics of Ecstasy Timothy Leary (MacGibbon and Kee 36s) Mr Richard Neville, spoofer extraordinary, editor of Oz and...

In retreat BARRY COLE Real People Alison Lurie (Heinemann 25s) Middle Ground Ursula Zilins4 (Longman 30s) What I'm Going to Do, I Think L. Woiwode (Weidenfeld and Nicolson...

MICHAEL BORRIE English Historical Documents: Vol IV 1327- 1485 edited by A. R. Myers (Eyre and Spot- tiswoode 10 gns) The score is nine down and three to go as this monumental...

FRANK NORMAN The Frying-Pan Tony Parker (Hutchinson 45s) Grendon Underwood is Britain's only psy- chiatric prison. Without doubt, it represents the only ray of hope in the...

CLARENCE BROWN We Yevgeny Zamyatin translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney (Cape 35s) Written in Petrograd in 1920. this fantasy of a future totalitarian state has never been...

PHILIP ZIEGLER A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles J. F. D. Shrewsbury (cut. 160s) Bubonic plague is one of the world's great killers. Pasteurella Pest is, its...

PENELOPE HOUSTON One of the more awful of the cinema's recent sights has been the ageing film-maker in faint pursuit of the hippies, wheezing along panting `do your own thing'...

Norman beaches FRANCIS HOYLANI) At the New Grafton Gallery until 28 February are a number of smallish paintings showing places familiar from the work of various nineteenth...

Things that hurt HILARY SPURLING Jonathan Miller's production of King Lear, mightily praised when it opened at Not- tingham in- October, trod the boards of the Old Vic last...

Sea change CLEMENT CRISP Just when I began to fear that the Royal Ballet had given up new choreography as a bad thing—and heaven knows that much of the choreography we see...

JOHN BULL A great deal of heat is being generated about the second mortgage business—and about mortgage brokers. I start with Mr Andrew Breach, chairman of the Bristol and...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Having been warned by this journal amongst others that the White Paper on the Com mon Market was npt 'an economic assess- ment', as it purported to be, but a...

Sir: May I comment on Auberon Waugh's dissection of the Codex Croydoniensis (14 February)? Most interesting of all were his remarks on the belated decision to give pensions to...

From Anthony Thwaite, Lionel Bloch, Geoffrey Kennard, George Chowdharay- Best, Dr E. 1. Mishan, L. E. Weidberg, R. L. Travers, F. .1. A. Cruso, Carola Oman, Harold Braham,...

Sir: I wonder what gave your correspond- ents, Mrs Brown and Messrs McCarthy and Grant (Letters, 24 January and 1 February), the idea that I was an advocate of BST? My letter...

Sir: I have seldom disagreed more with any article than I do with Mr Simon Raven's under the above title (7 February). Having given up work some six years ago and done nothing...

Sir: What canting nonsense is this (Letters, 7 February)? By all means let the Scotch call themselves Scots or Scottish if they want to. But why should English people be nagged...

Sir: Pace Randolph Vigne (Letters, 14 February), I would say that George Gale's description of Peter Hain as a 'character- istic child of our time' (7 February) is a...

Sir: Father Huddleston has asserted in a letter to the Times (20 January), that Negro violence is due 'to 'racial attitudes which for generations have been contemptuous of the...

Sir: Mr P. J. Barnwell, in his letter in your issue of 14 February, says, 'Is not your re- viewer Carola Oman rather hard on Countess Bertrand when she dubs her "this silly...

Sir: I regret that in my piece last week (14 February) an error remained uncorrected in the final copy. The £10 million a month said to be drawn from the taxpayer by the...

LOOK! this has gone far enough Sid Freud is seventy-three and lives with a midget. 'I used to work in a freak show way back. I used to keep Little Herbert here in a cardboard...

No. 593: Package tour Mr Richard Crossman has recently been quoted as saying that in his view it would be 'quite unjustifiable to guarantee an abor, tion as part of a package...

Across 1 Rhinemaiden having a water-wave, of course! (6) 4 The old city turns it on in Surrey (8) 9 Immature ghosts! (6) 10 Smacks for a Liberal appearing in party rosettes?...

PHILIDOR D. Hjelle (1st Prize equal, Montreal) White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 478 (Fossum) l6/2B2p2/...