In their very different statements of policy on Northern Ireland in recent days both the Prime Minister and Mr Enoch Powell left out of account what is rapidly becoming the...

Industry and, to a lesser extent, the Conservative Party, have some cause to question the support they might be expected to receive from the Confederation of British Industry...

Sir: I have just recovered from a very new disease. They have a splendid new name for it. They call it "radiocystitis." It consists of a copious and alarming haemorrhage from...

From Professor Kathleen Jones Sir: Your leader (April 6) on the appointment of the next Archbishop of Canterbury shows a welcome understanding of the problems and...

Sir: Your atavistic hatred of the European Economic Community verges on the pathological. Britain has developed in a privileged position at the head of the greatest empire the...

Sir: A rather angry correspondent in your issue of March 29 seeks to advance the case for uniting Europe on the grounds that Europe has already suffered two world wars in this...

Sir: How comforting it is to be told by the Labour MP for Battersea North (Reality breaks through, April 13) that the Soviet Union has no aggressive designs on the West; but the...

Sir: Mr Tyrell Burgess should try to face up to the realities of education in Inner London (Letters March 30). Members of the teaching profession say that within the boundaries...

Sir: Martin Sullivan (April 13) shrewdly explains the story of Jonah to highlight the uncharity of some religious individuals and collectives who seek to arrogate to themselves...

Sir: Any learned judge, to be truly worthy of the epithet, must realise that a prison sentence, of whatever length, is inevitably of lifelong duration, since the stigmata...

Sir: I believe the Government is planning to reduce the amount of money it provides to finance the BBC World Service. Probably few people in Britain ever listen to the BBC's...

Sir: You printed a letter from a Mr A. J. H. Brown (January 19) who erroneously asserted that I had claimed in my column (January 5) that as a result of defoliation, "the land...

Sir: I dined once, city unspecified, in the house of a horrible hostess whose • idea of 'fun' was to invite persons certain to hate one another's views. On similar grounds, no...

Sir: I write with reference to your edi- tonal Abortion on demand (April 13). Termination of pregnancy becomes more and more unpleasant for all concerned, more dangerous to the...

Sit: With all due respect to your view's ' on the speculative reclamation and other land* dealing activities 'undertaken by members of Harold Wilson's staff, surely the whole...

Sir: Those who want to abolish private Schools frequently point to the advantage that 'posh' speech and good manners give a child. They want to abolish this advantage — by...

Mistakes of the image-makers Patrick Cosgrave The growing division of responsibility in Conservative Central Office over the years —there are now eight top people where there...

Take Mr Eric Heffer, the suave and urbane Minister for Industry. In truth, I assure my readers that is what the Prime Minister said to me. Well, his exact words were "Please...

Society's lost anchors John Linklater Successive paternalistic post-war g overnments have been conductin g the bi gg est and most costly experiment in benevolent...

Britain has only had a minority government twice before in this century, in 1924 and 1929, both periods when Labour were in office. I ignore the period from 1910-1915 when the...

Give an Act a bad name. Graham Jones Trade union opposition to the Industrial Relations Act has been largely artificial. Dest e some wild claims by trade union leaders, ‘ Ile...

Beware of summitry Wilfrid Sendall For many years I have been liable to rear like a startled filly at the mere mention of the term, `Summit Conference.' I associate it at the...

The wicked landlord Ruth Carter Publicly condemned as the source of much social evil and discontent, a landlord nowadays hardly dare admit his own existence without apology....

The unloved intruders Rawle Knox On Thursday before Low Sunday they descended on Northern Ireland. The bombers for once lay low, but Harold Wilson, Enoch Powell and a BBC-NOP...

Let our children go! Rhodes Boyson When our major political parties have taken up a particular stance on something they know little about, it is almost impossible to move...

Unacceptable features Philip Kleinman The Queen's double is up to her tricks again. Mrs Jeannette Charles, of Essex, whose resemblance to Her Majesty is striking, is the model...

Paper Mies Bill Grundy Humour, as everybody knows, is a very serious business. Humorists are very gloomy people. And people who talk about humour are stupid, no matter how...

The brave doubter Martin Sullivan A post-Easter reflection cannot omit some reference to an early example of Christian agnosticism. It occurred on the first Easter day itself...

Garden ornament Denis Wood One tends at first to shy away from ornaments through an ins tinctive feeling that a garden should be conceived as an integral whole and stand on...

Little ease Pamela Vandyke Price This being a season when one experiences a wish to get out of one's winter quarters, if only to postpone the duster-to-dirt confrontation...

Marconi centenary Rertiard Dixon Al though he was one of the e arliest Nobel prize winners in P hYsics, Guglielmo Marconi was really an entrepreneur-inventor rather than...

Richard Luckett on the making of a composer In his splendid new biography of Mahler* Henry-Louis de la Grange gives what we must presume to be the definitive version of a...

a nd wrong, reter Medawar T h T h k e Heel of Achilles. Essays 1968-1973. Arthur 'eestler (Hutchinson £3.00) A a „ rt hilr Koestler is a brilliantly clever man, this...

William Sargant The Freud-Jung Letters Edited by William McGuire (Routledge and Kegan Paul, in association with Hogarth Press £7.95) The reviewer was fortunate to know both a...

Leo Abse Conundrum Jan Morris (Faber and Fa ber £2.25) When the Queen, during her recent Far E a % tour, arrived at Jakarta, the streets, vve told, were cleared of...

Ronald Hingley Pushkin: A Biography Henri Troyat (George Allen and Unwin £8.95) Henri Troyat's comprehensive biography of Russia's greatest poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)...

A.L. Rowse Studies in Tudor and Stuart Politics and Government. Papers and Reviews 19461972 Two Volumes, G. R. Elton (Cambridge University Press £10.80) Professor Elton is a...

Peter Ackroyd Tear His Head Off His Shoulders Nell Dunn (Jonathan Cape £1.95) Concrete Island J. G. Ballard (Jonathan Cape £1.95) 'Character', the last refuge of the...

Scarlet O'Hara Benny Green Ever since I first read Appointment in Samarra in my teens, I have had the feeling that I would have detested John O'Hara. It is perhaps an unwise...

If Bookbuyer comes back to the matter of bestseller lists again, it is only because it is an important one and there is some pretty funnY business afoot. To recap briefly —...

T heatrical productions so ill-conceived that they would seem to have no prospect of succeeding With any sort of audience likely to he gathered together in a metr opolitan...

Panavision piety Duncan Fallowell Lying on mattresses in a grimy dungeon smelling of tired feet and hashish in Drury Lane — the long defunct Arts Lab, that is, not the Theatre...

A managerial combination new to the West End — Carl Denker and Anthony Chardet — is responsible for the presentation of the musical, Bordello, which opened at the Queen's last...

And he has Rodney Milnes In overall accomplishment Alexander Goehr's Arden Must Ihe stands head and shoulders above the other new operas of the last few weeks. First given...

The family way Clive Gammon Nose-wiping, vacantly backscratching, often inarticulate, always, seemingly, over-crowded, the Wilkins family of Reading soldier on under the...

Freaking out Evan Anthony "Everybody has that thing where theY need to look one way but they O M ,: out looking another way and tha t e what people observe. You see some° 11 0...

Nicholas Davenport The gilt-edged market had a rush of blood to its head last week when the Bank of England returned a further £149 million of special deposits to the banking...

I noticed the name of Mr Serge Semenenko, the Wall Street banker, in something I was reading over the weekend. I met him briefly on the yacht "Shemara" which he had rented from...