The Icelanders, impatient with the tortuous processes of international negotiation and arbitration, have acted unilaterally and now, with the first firing of live ammunition at...

The Government's White Paper on Ulster makes the best of a bad job. If anything is going to work a cure, then the mixture made up by Mr Whitelaw and his aides, principally Lord...

William Craig sounds determined' to wreck the White Paper proposals — but to do so from within, and peacefully, after the elections for an Ulster assembly. This is just about as...

How Barber runs the Treasury Patrick Cosgrave In Budget week I wrote of Mr Barber as a Political Houdini — a magical figure who seemed readily able to escape from any...

Winking at perjury Dorothy Becker Textbook expositions on the law officers of the Crown are unlikely to depict any of them as winking at perjury, but the Attorneys-General...

Tactful quiet Ronan Fanning The political and church leaders who have for some time past pleaded against rash or instant reaction to the British Government's long-awaited...

Holding fire Paddy Reynolds For the first twelve hours of White Paper day plus one in Ulster neither the army nor police headquarters had logged a single 'incident.' This was...

No mourning Rawle Knox Within an hour or so of television's first exposition of Westminster's White Paper on Northern Ireland, the customers in Londondery's pubs were watching...

PUZZLE IS A GENIAL fellow and doesn't mind other journalists pinching his stories though, being only human, he would like them to acknowledge his own percipience. In Monday's...

Et tu, Britain Peter Rodda Adam Raphael's report from South Africa was the Guardian's front page lead story on Monday, March 12, headlined, 'British Firms Pay Africans...

Zephyr of change Frederic Bennett When Harold MacMillan made his famous Pronouncement in 1960 that a wind of Change was sweeping through Africa neither he nor anyone else...

the laird of Abbotsford There is a point in Quentin Durward at which the hero seeks to impress the Count of Crevecoeur with the consequence of his ancestors, the Durwards of...

Auberon Waugh Another Roadside A ttraction Tom Robbins (W. H. Allen £2.25) Love on the Coast William Cooper (Macmillan £2.50) "There are only three things that I like,"...

Jan Morris The Search for the Niger Christopher Lloyd (Collins £2.75) Some names have magic, some don't, and it is odd how often their subject-matter conforms. One might die...

Timothy Bainbridge British Romantic Art Raymond Lister (Bell £6.50) The Life and Art of Henry Fuseli Peter Homory (Thames and Hudson £7.00) Peter Tomory (Thames and Hudson...

David Harsent Delusions Etc John Berryman (Faber £1.50) Braving the Elements James Merrill (Phoenix/Chatto £1.75) One of the more surprising things about His Toy, His Dream,...

Christopher Gill Plutarch D. A. Russell (Duckworth £2.95). Shares in Plutarch, it is fair to say, are rising. Indeed, there has been a sharp increase in the academic market...

Bookbuyer The danger of having a warehouse fifty miles away from the sales, trade and editorial departments is that often the left hand doesn't know what the right foot is...

Hollywood, in loving memory Fifteen or twenty films have opened in London in the past couple of weeks but a miserable few, two at the most, are worth paying money to see. One...

Oxford bag Rodney Milnes When ever two or three musicologists (a !haggle, I believe, is the collective noun) are gathered together in one place, the conversation inevitably...

Youthful promise Evan Anthony I can't say that I actually noticed anyone nudging anyone else and remarking, "And he's just a boy," but it seems that at the age of forty-three...

Inside the millionaire chat-show interlocutor, David Frost, that frustrated stand-up comedian is still yelping to get out. Never successful in his cabaret attempts in London,...

Rare old bird Clive Gammon There seems to be a convention among television critics that one shouldn't ever notice old films. Well, certainly most of them aren't worth...

Benny Green The book which changed my life was Kipps. That is not to say it is the greatest book I have ever read, or the first one I thought was great, or even the first to...

Nicholas Davenport Farewell — but no laments, please — to Bretton Woods. On March 16 the international monetary system which bears its name came formally to an end. The...

Schweet profits Nephew Wilde My Uncle George (you may remember he advised investing in Sabina last July) is a very wealthy man. And like most people of means he is extremely...

Age comes upon all of us, sometimes gradually, sometimes suddenly; and even those who have seemed irrepressibly young eventually succumb. I thought the hitherto vigorously...

Bibby bet John Bull It is a far cry from the days when J. Bibby enjoyed a glamour rating in the 1968-69 bull market and at one point the shares then touched 280p. Now Bibby...

How much freedom? John H. Chambers A permanent problem presents itself to teachers in liberal western democracies—the problem of appropriately allowing children freedom at...

Two reports custos Reports from two much underrated voluntary bodies landed on Custos's desk this week. First was from the Family Service Unit, or FSU as it is known to many of...

Labouring the obvious John Rowan Wilson One of the luxuries of spending a few weeks abroad is that one is cut off from the British newspapers. It is possible, at least...

Sour sweet Pamela Vandyke Price " They asked for beef and he gave them a crisp," is one comment provoked by the Budget. I suppose that the improvidence and greed implied by...

Sir: Your ' Notebook ' (March 17), makes out a good case for the return of capital punishment — or, rather, for its re-legalisation, since we should always hope for its...

(wholly unsuccessfully) to dampen the writer's misguided admiration for President Nixon's public announcement of intention to restore capital punishment for certain federal...

Sir: A finer example than your cover article 'Fewer means Better' (March 17), of anachronistic interpretation of a situation leading to gross misunderstanding and crass...

article in your paper (March 17) that time at university provides "three or more comparatively idle and carefree years." Compared to what, I should like to know? Students by and...

From Sir David Anderson Sir: The great victory of Dick Taverne at Lincoln has been rightly hailed as a triumph for the individual against the rigidity of the party machine....

Sir, — Since Mr Benny Green's article, Caught in the Slips (March 10), is all about checking one's facts, is it unkind to ask him precisely where did Ouida write, "All rowed...

From Dr Eileen Crofton Sir, In the issue of March 3, 1973, your correspondent has written a singularly unpleasant piece (' Smoke Screen ') about a pamph let issued by the...

This coming Saturday horserace sponsorship celebrates its 100th birthday. In 1873 thanks to the generosity of the bookmaking fraternity, Lincoln's executive were able to offer a...

Sir: Israeli leaders have from the very beginning of the conflict, back in 1948, offered the Arabs peace negotiations. This offer still stands. It is in the light of this fact...

Sir: I was horrified to read your article (Skinflint, March 10), concerning Mr Walton's complaint about our firm and I am sorry you did not discuss it with us first. Indeed, it...

Sir: Now that the showers of wit and derision which greeted Dr A. L. Rowse's latest proclamation on the subject of Shakespeare's Sonnets seem temporarily to have slackened, your...