The government's decision, announced by Mr Chataway, not to allocate the fourth television channel for the time being will please those who think that there is quite enough...

Recent events in Gwelo and other Rhodesian towns suggest that the business of extracting Britain from the messy and sometimes bloody heritage of her African empire is going to...

I o ngratulate Nigel Lawson, the former edito r o f or the Spectator, on being adopted Leic estershire What looks like a pretty safe seat in Leic estershire. By the time the...

It seemed very noticeable on Tuesday morning, the day after members of Parliament returned to Westminster from their Christmas recess, that the political weather had changed:...

There are nasty winds blowing down Fleet Street. The Daily Mail has advertised its average circulation for the second half of 1971 as 1,753,846. Its average circulation for the...

It is clear that Vere Harmsworth's family pride, which at the last moment precluded a deal between the Express and the Mail, is becoming very expensive pride indeed. It is not...

The Guardian is now as big as, or bigger (and better) than, the Times, but both papers are losing money heavily. The Guardian's position is precarious. It is kept going by its...

The awards were deserved, hut dullish. The Financial Times received an award for its Arts page, the Sunday Times for its investigative reporting, Bernard Levin was the columnist...

A Greek Street fortnightly reported that an " emotional " Harold Wilson recorded his recent Ulster television broadcast following a lunch at 99 Gower Street. Spectator lunches...

The Government gains ground Hugh Macpherson Nothing dismays the medical practitioner more than when a patient obstinately insists on living when medical science decrees that...

secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Alf Morris courageously fought to have his Disabled Pe rsons Bill made the last Act of the Previous government and in consequence...

What the clerics say Frances Howard and Francis Fuchs "How do you bring a Unionist government to its knees unless you bomb them out? Our bishops say you can't bomb a million...

The new American whore dolls Geoffrey Wagner I hadn't been doll-hunting — at least not in mini form — in Manhattan for quite a While . Last Christmas the search for...

In confidence John Rowan Wilson The Patients' Association, a voluntary body set up to protect the interests of individuals who may be ground down by the impersonal bureaucracy...

Clouded Sun Dennis Hackett However successful the Sun is at communicating with its readership—and, with an increase of 778,000 on its corresponding figure in 1970, it is...

The Secondary World of LBJ The book*, like the man, is big. It i s It i s them, difficult, in considering either of to avoid sentences like that, so much se that one begins to...

Edward Norman King William IV Philip Ziegler (Collins £3.50) It was always part of the intention of the liberal historians, from whom so many of our views of nineteenth...

boring member of the working classes called Albert, whom she worships. When he dies, she has insufficient emotional or intellectual resources to cope with life without him —...

Isabel Quigly Autobiography is a rash, revealing business yet modest-looking people go in for it every week. It can mean falling into a hole or climbing up a mountain — a...

Richard Luckett Berlioz, Romantic and Classic Ernest Newman, selected and edited by Peter Heyworth (Gollancz £3) The Lives of the Great Composers Harold C. Schonberg...

Dick Davis The Life of Fulhe Greville Ronald A. Rebholz (OUP £5.50) English interest in Fulke Greville's poetry has revived recently after long indifference, although in...

The extraordinary hubbub on the Guardian that followed last week's revelations about the Women's Page editorship, makes one wonder how their staff have time to produce a daily...

Sir: Never had I expected to see the pages of your magazine openly used as a platform for neocolonialism, yet here are two gentlemen in your Letters column (January 1) virtually...

Sir 'Joseph Lee on Modern Ireland*, December 4, writing of the wrongs of the present Border extols the hypothetical advantages of a 15 per cent minority instead of a 35 per cent...

Sir: Dr Bernard Dixon's picture of the 'itinerant scientist' (January 15), is no doubt a well-meant attempt to prove that the natural sciences have now finlly replaced theology...

I nsPiring Spectator Sir: The Spectator has not always come up to my expectations during the past year, but No 7488 of J nuar, ..7 1 , 1972, raises hopes. Unlike the gallant...

Sir: If your Willa Spew (January 15) must drag my name into her ravings I wish she'd get things right. I did not go out of my way to recommend Jack Rosenthal's play Another...

From the Rev W. T. Armstrong Sir: Your Editorial Assistant might have been better employed last week correcting your Film Critic's English usage. She is at least literate, even...

Sir: May I point out that in the Times of January 17 another eminent public figure, Mr Stephen Murphy, secretary of the British Board of Film Censors has joined Lord Rothschild...

Sir: I must congratulate you for printing that splendid and subtle attack on the BBC by Gylel Brandreth It imitated those selfrighteous people who think that the BBC con do no...

Sir: In a delicious comment on a recent letter (complaining that despite the change from one staple to glue The Spectator still tends to fall apart) you said you must try to...

Sir: The three pages of book reviews on the 'Problems of the Germans' (January 8) raise some interesting issues, but typically dwell on what is ' nasty ' and negative in the...

bored by them. The same to the French and Italians ourselves. Nothing will fit us bell, to live human lives alongside vast bureaucratic machinery e ) industrial superstructure...

From Miss Margaret Stephens rc Sir: I am sorry that The Spect (January 8) uses " taking " think it means "having." its vertisement on page 41 it 511 i ) "Thinking of . . ....

Sir: May a muddled member 01 , 4' public ask three simple questl ° ,f about Malta to which no one in, .!01 ' press or on radio or televll' seems yet to have suP l r answers, or...

Sir: Your reference to 'Ponsonby's Law' (The Spectator's Notebook, January 8) is misleading. The ' law ' (more frequently described as a ' rule ') does not, as you suggest,...

John England 239 World's End Lance, Quinton, Birmingham

Sir: The letter - of Mr Hopkins (January 1) underlines a truth rarely remarked that Britain is confronted by a long term strategy on the part of her enemies — they set their...

Sir: Your contributor Benny Green (January 1) is mistaken in supposing that "White's entire military career consisted of getting into Ladysmith and not being able to get out...

Sir: I just finished reading Mr Hugh Trevor-Roper's review of Dr Dodd's The Founder of Christianity in your publication '(January 23, 1971). The upshot of the review is that Dr...

Jones, CH, author of The Whitehall Diary, former Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet, and personal assistant to Lloyd George, Bener Law, MacDonald an- 1 Baldwin. I should be most...

„ Kenneth Hurren Mr Val May, the director of the Bristol Old iffevic, clearly and rightly takes an enchanted leasure in the reconstructed and newly opened Theatre Royal, and...

Faithfulness is not enough Tony Palmer One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Curzon) demonstrates above all else the dangers of translating what has been successful in one...

Robert Moss Limited is a public company at Kidlington in Oxford, and is in the plastic injection moulding business. The founder, Mr R. R. Moss, has placed a large part of his...

Geoffrey James, Chairman of Compass Securities, worked for Fred Cleary of Haselmere Estates until three years ago, when he started on his own He buys and converts property —...

Now that the first premium bond prize is £50,000 I am surprised that the National Savings Authorities don't copy the football pools and get publicity from the presentation of...

Those who like the works of men more than the works of God will be profoundly moved by the £30 million Slater Walker Dual Trust. Slater Walker are selling big share holdings in...

Skinflint reader Bernard Levin has sent me this letter: 10 DEVONSHIRE PLACE, LONDON, WIN I PS. 0/-937 004. January 7th 1972

Thirty years on Patrick Cosgrave The Welfare State ' is a phrase, a myth, an idea, a condition which, in one way or another, epitomises for our moment of history the age -...

There should be no hesitation about every one admitting that there are, in each coun try, persons bred solely for export. This must be so, for how otherwise could any nation...

The Balearics Carol Wright Last year, 900,000 Britons took holidays on the Balearic islands. Majorca is Europe's premier (in numbers) holiday spot, eclipsing the Blackpools...