With the report of the Royal Commission on Population already overdue, but with the continuing cacophony of the birth prevention lobby still ringing in our ears, it is time to...

The statement of Mr Ron Hayward, the General Secretary of the Labour Party, to the effect that a left-wing dictatorship in Portugal would be as undesirable as any Other...

Mr Edward Short, the Minister in charge of what the Government is pleased to call its devolution unit, has indicated that, despite rumours to the contrary, there will be no...

It cannot be said that the statement by Dr David Owen, the Minister of Health, on the subject of sterilisation of retarded or otherwise inadequate children, was at all...

Sir: We act for Mr Bernard Shrimsley, whose attention has been drawn to an 'article headed 'The Expendables' on page 54 of the current edition of The Spectator under the...

Sir: Your strategy for surrender in Northern Ireland enunciated in your leading article (July 19) will give comfort to the IRA, though the arrogant attitude betrayed in the...

Sir: This week's press article, under the signature of Robert Ashley, came as a welcome relief following last week's from "Walter Plinge" which embarked on flights of fancy and...

Sir: 1 found your leader on proportional representation and the Liberal Party deeply disturbing. You endorsed the two-party system but spoke of the need to make the Labour and...

only one question to put to him. Is he the creature of Soviet expansionism, or is he a chump? I believe him to be the former, and thus, in effect, occupying a traitorous...

Sir: Let's give credit where credit is due: the floating pound hs done it fir last even if it had almost sunk out of sight in the process. The pressures of external discipline,...

Sir: Thank you for publishing Melmoth Grant's article 'Education Without the Myths.' Such an island of sanity daring to show its nose above the waves of nonsense and sensational...

no t physically dangerous. I used to be a child psychotherapist at the Davidson Clinic. When a certain little boy left me at the age of eleven after three years' therapy, I...

Sir: Martin Sullivan's article on comparative religion (July 19) discusses the Proble m of the relationship of C hristianity with other religious denominations, but evades the...

Leavis (July 19) with some difficulty. As a scientist I had hoped that the title might have P r esaged some interesting comments, E Mer cilia, on creativity as a vital aspect of...

Sir: I hope I am not .t.po late to congratulate Kenneth Robinson on his review, 'Cruelty to critics and horses' (July 5). It is the first time V have ever known a critic mention...

Sir: Ten per cent? Six pounds a week? Clarity is all we seek. The Boss is gaoled. The Statesmen thunder. While Unions are left to plunder. John Lavender 308 Pensby Road,...

Sir: Probably the greatest anagrammatic mystery in Shakespeare is the , identification of the letters M.O.A.I. in Twelfth Night. That Malvolio recognizes that all the letters...

Sir: 'Peregrine', whose acidulous egocentricities have further enlivened your pages of late, recently did less than justice to El Vino, Fleet Street's best establishment for...

Sir: The translating machines of your correspondent, A. J. H. Brown, would be quite unnecessary if the Common Market were to adopt a common language, such as Latin. If that is a...

Sir: I would like to put it on record that I am not co-author of Private Eye's Grovel column and this careless lie by your correspondent Peregrine was both hurtful to me and...

Hoist with the wrong petard Patrick Cosgrave The sort of difficulty the Government is going to have to face — and the rest of us compelled to observe — in the administration...

The press of the world very properly g ave credit to the great tradition of British jurisprudence tha t resulted in an Indian jud g e g ivin g judgMent a g ainst his own Prime...

The CIA work under g iound To bait the Russian bear. They do their utmost to confound, And pen him in his lair. No matter, for in space above, A handshake shows undyin g...

A word of sympathy and encouragement .for Bill Grundy, understudy to Eamonn Andrews on the telly. For the last month or so he has been given the impossible assignment of trying...

Man, as my Cousin Addison once had occasion to say, may be considered in two Views; capable of becoming himself either Happy or Miserable and of contributing to the Happiness or...

Waspe _ I see that Simon Gray's new play, Otherwise Engaged, in which Alan Bates has the star part, . has been scheduled to open on July 30 at the Queen's. If I were of...

I continue to watch the career of Old Etonian Christopher Shaw with an appalled admiration. Bookbuyer's regular readers will know Mr Shaw as the man who, in the early 1960s,...

Part 5: The panic Condensed from the book by Martin D. Weiss The following section, with the exception of certain past statistics, is entirely fictional. It was written during...

Good place to be expelled from Maurice Samuelson It was sadly preditable that, having applauded Mr Yasser Arafat on its rostrum, the United Nations General Assembly would...

Unanswered questions at Wilson's summit Gerald Segal I take it as a reasonable measure of the success of the British delegation (Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Foreign...

Alternatives to prison Reginald Maudling MP Mr Dennie Briggs's recent book, In Place of Prison* is a serious study of a serious social problem. The amount of thought and...

Robert Skidelsky on Hitler and 'high politics' Mr Maurice Cowling is high priest of a school of political history which concentrates on what it calls High Politics. According...

H u m ph ry Berkeley Hawker ,bf Morwenstow Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape £4.95) Richard Hawker was born in 1803 and died in 1 - 875. He was Vicar of Morwenstow, a small and...

Michael Ivens. The Practice of Politics and Other Essays K. W. Watkins (Nelson £3.95) Political C ulture Walter A. Rosenbaum (Nelson £3.50 and £1.60) Modern totalitarian...

African comic Peter Ackroyd African Horse David Pownall (Faber and Faber £3.50) Mr Wrong Elizabeth Jane Howard (Jonathan Cape £2.50) The Untouchable Juli James Aldridge...

• What should they read? Gillian Freeman The Thumb le Boy Josef Guggenmos translated by Olive Jones (Methuen £1.95). How the Sun was Brought Back to the Sky Mirra Ginsburg...

Alan Brien How To Read Donald Duck Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelar (Idea Books £1.95) The Thorny Paradise Edited by Edward Blishen (Kestral £2.95) What do children get out,...

New frontiers Benny Green In all three of the municipal libraries whose defences I have succeeded in penetrating lately, I have noticed a profound change in the contents ofthe...

Lord Hailsham Apart from Lord Denning, Sir Leslie Scarman* is probably the most politically articulate of our full-time judiciary, and as the first Chairman of the Law...

Clive Schmitthoff The unbelievable has happened: European Community Law has penetrated into the sanctum sanctorum of English law, Halsbury's Statutes. A European Continuation...

lain Scarlet The English Sentencin g System Sir Rupert Cross (Butterworths £6.40 casebound, £5.00 limp cover) Police Powers in England and Wales L. H. Lei g h (Butterworths...

Education Threat to university independence Rhodes Boyson, MP Socialism and liberty are never bedfellows and the real difference between left and right in this country is...

Even the 'FT' Robert Ashley The isle is full of noises, but one noise I never expected to hear came the other day from Bracken House. I know that time, like an ever-flowing...

Old versus new Philip Kleinman One of the bi gg est problems in advertising is deciding whether and when to chan g e a successful campai g n. Is it better to g o on tellin g...

Rationing the NHS John Linklater We heard, last week, that the Government had decided to stop pourin g more and more money and resources into health care. The annual cost of...

Ecumenical setback Martin Sullivan The cause of ecumenism is never advanced by a debate which aims at some kind of victory over one's opponent. For fear of falling into that...

Good show Denis Wood When I went to the Royal Show I had very much in mind a book which I had just read, Can Britain Feed Itself? (Merlin Press) by Dr Kenneth Mellanby who...

Festal virgins Philip Bergson Film feskivals are weird but wonderful gatherings, regularly developing lives of their own, quite independent of the films they are meant to be...

Glenda's Hedda Kenneth Hurren Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen (Aldwych Theatre) Made in Heaven by Andrew Sachs (Chichester Festival Theatre) Clarence Darrow by David W. Rintel...

Black Rod and Steiger Kenneth Robinson Hennessy Director: Don Sharp. Stars: Rod Steiger, Lee Remick, Richard Johnson, Trevor Howard, Eric Porter 'AA' Empire (105 minutes) I've...

The Equity balancing act Nicholas Davenport, The sharp reaction in share prices since the issue of the £6 White Paper should be interpreted not as a sign to get out but as an...

'Suggestion Box' matters Bernard Hollowood There is no better way of studying the mood of industry than by making a careful examination of the contributions to the suggestion...

I believe it was Shaw who said that if all economists were laid end to end they still would not reach a conclusion, so it is a trifle worrying when they not only produce...