rtsts a time for the truth There is little doubt in the mind of anybody who has given real thought to the matter that we are in the middle of the most serious crisis the nation...

Royal commoners Sir: In your interesting editorial today on the Royal marriage you state that the Queen's younger children are 'born commoners.' I cannot myself see how this...

Sir: In Professor Allen's otherwise admirable article (' Can we blame the economist? ', October 27) he let loose the sentence, "To find another price inflation of comparable...

Patrick Cosgrave Before writing about the internal problems of the Labour Party and its strains and stresses it is as well to get one important thing clear: there is nothing...

Yesterday Sir Peter Daubeny and his lady came to lunch. When one reaches a certain age all one's friends seem to be either dead or knighted. Sir Peter happily is still very much...

If , one has ever assisted at any of the Aldwych productions of the World Theatre Season, in even the remotest social capacity, one is very swiftly convinced that only a lunatic...

Bill Manson You must get sick of it. All through the Vietnam war they went on about it: "But you have to think of them differently. Democracy as we practise it is not...

Max Wyndham Washington Lord Clark, now our ultimate guide to what is civilised and what is not, has spoken of Rodin's magnificent 'Memorial to Balzac ' having the power to...

Martin Lindsay So Walter Duke of Buccleuch is dead. We certainly straightened our backs and our bOws when he was commanding Her Majesty!s Body Guard for Scotland, seven foot...

Trouble in the air William Rankine After more than a month on the air, the London Broadcasting Company is still struggling to persuade advertisers to support a...

There was much to disturb Puzzle when the House debated the Cinematograph and Indecent Displays Bill. For one thing in the Special Public Gallery, seated in splendid isolation,...

Apart from these shocks there was even more disturbing news for Puzzle. One member, Mr Patrick Duffy, informed the House that in the fine watering retreat of Bath the police had...

There were strange and unlikely . sights in this confused debate. The gargantuan Eric Heffer made an impassioned appeal for the family unit which must have lit many a candle in...

Bill Grundy Do you remember the Men of the Trees? I don't know whether they still exist, but back in the 'thirties. I knew them as a slightly potty group of amateur foresters,...

You can't read racehorse training at university take it at tec,' or study it at night school. Practical experience is everything, but since trainers tend to keep their methods...

Rejected in secret Bernard Dixon Consider the following episode. A scientist, seeking funds to pursue a new research project, drafts a detailed application setting out his...

Martin Sullivan "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he ", says the Book of Proverbs. "The soul is dyed the colour of its leisure thoughts wrote the greatest of the Roman...

Traveller's joy Peter Quince . ' It is a very good time of year to get about the country on one's legs. Even more than the first bland days of spring, these restless,...

Richard Luckett on the rewriting of history The Englishing of Professor Braudel proceeds apace: with the publication of this second volume the translation of his The...

Alan Brien Russia Close-Up George Feifer (Cape £3.95) Ten Years After Ivan Denisovitch Zhores A. Medvedev (Macmillan £3.95) "Imagine — a sixth of the world's surface — and not...

Alfred Morris Turn Again Westminster Woodrow Wyatt (Andre Deutsch E2.95) Private Member Leo Abse (Macdonald 0.50) One of the more startling discoveries of political writers in...

good intentions Peter Ackroyd The Rachel Papers Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape £2,25) The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl Brigid Brophy (Macmillan £2.50) Well,...

Anthony Price The Central Questions of Philosophy A. J. Ayer (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £3.50) Speaking to Ved Mehta over ten years ago, Sir Alfred Ayer claimed that, were he to...

Paperbacks Now that hippydom has become a thing of the past along with peace and brotherhood and justice, its more respectable antecedents are coming to the fore. Pelican...

Frank Field Franz Kafka Ronald Gray (CUP £4.10) In his famous study of Kafka published in The Disinherited Mind Erich Heller, while vigorously attacking the views of those who...

Charles Nicholl Nightmare Culture: Lautreamont and Les Chants de Maldoror Alex de Jonge (Secker and Warburg £2.75) IT IS time Lautr6amont came out of hiding. It is ninety nine...

Sandra Paul Taking a fresh look at selected children's books I cannot help wondering why so many are written about old-fashioned children living in bygone decades. Perhaps it...

Starting point Benny Green Emerging into the forecourt of the Times building, I saw that the event was taking place at last and wondered if things were already too far gone...

Bookend The Society of Authors' black list of publishers who are slow in paying their authors is threa:p tened quite soon. So far three 'white lists 5 have appeared, and...

Rodney Milnes on the failures of our opera houses No one is quite sure if Renderecki's The Det'ils of Loudun it a 'real' opera, and I am even less *ire if music critics, who...

Showing how irslone . Christopher Hudso Truffaut's films get better and better. Day for Night (' AA' ABC) is in both senses a model of how to make a film. It opens with a shot...

Falco falters Robin Young "Probably the most adventurous and stimulating modern dance company anywhere in the world." says the programme note of the Louis Falco Dance Company,...

Wedding watch Clive Gammon By midday, with no sign of a diversion, not even by a linemuffing bishop or a fainting trumpeter, the fantasies began to build up. A well-mounted...

Conspicuously absent from the celebrations as The Mousetrap reaches its twenty-first birthday this weekend will be Peter Cotes. the man who directed the Agatha Christie piece...

without doubt be the London premiere of the piano concerto which Gerard Schumann has written for John Ogden. The first performances of the work take place in Portsmouth...

Behind the Stock Exchange slump Nicholas Davenport The great slump on the Stock Exchange last weeii, which knocked £1000 million off market values at one time, was caused by...

British property companies are making a rapidly growing entry into the continent of Europe — a move that should be actively discouraged especially in our present national...

Buying Slater Walker Nephew Wilde " - Royal wedding, balance of payments deficit, interest rates hike ... It's more like a bloody funeral." So ran the headline of the Morning...