T he Queen's Speech on Wednesday necessarily had a e,ertain air of unreality about it : until Mr Healey introCILICeS his next economic package we will not really know what the...

As Parliament ended one session and was reopened the Government showed all the signs of having lost its nerve. Mr Healey at last presented to the Cabinet the IMF's terms for its...

Thatcher Mark Two John Grigg 'r ile general verdict on Mrs Thatcher's reshuffle is that it marks a swing to the right. NOW that her leadership is firmly established—so the...

To the extent that it belonged to the Astors, albeit the Astors of English adoption, the Observer was in Anglo-American hands. The ownership (or 90 per cent of it) now passes to...

To the funhouse Auberon Waugh One of the comforts of an English writer for the civilised man is that if he waits around long enough he will secure a copy of the Arts Council's...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington America is perhaps the only nation since the invention of the city-state to hold its elections in early November and then wait until the end of...

Sam White Paris T he game that the former prime minister J acques Chirac is playing with the President of the French Republic is called 'heads I win, tails you lose.' How...

Mark O'Neill Belfast In an Ulster prison cell a nineteen-year-old man lies on the floor. He is naked but for a blanket and moves only to eat and to relieve himself in a pot....

Patrick Cockburn The Syrians have emerged as the real winners from the nineteen months of fighting in Lebanon. They have won because at the end of the day their multitude of...

Adam Fergusson The devolution blockbuster of the week—it may yet be of the year—has come not from Westminster but from Scotland: the burst ing forth there of an organised,...

Richard West Cambrid ge , to Malcolm Muggeridge, was a Place of infinite tedium; of afternoon Walks in a damp, misty countryside; of idle d ays, and foolish vanities, and...

Christopher Booker It was hardly surprising that on television on Monday night Mr Peter Shore wore the apprehensive look of a man who has just Put a match to a slow-burning...

Hans Keller The degree to which patriotism undermines even the strongest sense of reality is still not fully appreciated, because nobody is quite unpatriotic enough to...

Ghostly Jeffrey Bernard The poshest racecourse in England, Ascot, has an extraordinary grandstand. As far as I'm concerned it's a multi-million pound concrete shambles. On...

Robert Lekach man For forty years three versions of Keynesian doctrine have lurked within the covers of The General Theory of Employment, interest and Money, economic gospels...

The Bank's limit Nicholas Davenport At long last the Bank of England has aPPlied a touch of dirigisnre to the moneyl enders' market. I have never understood Why a Labour...

Sir: If Mr Pryce-Jones wishes to establish a reputation for accuracy, could he, instead of hitting little tennis balls at me, answer the following questions which I politely ask...

Sir: I am puzzled by Mr Christopher Booker's quotation from Evelyn Waugh's Diaries, where Professor J. K. Galbraith is apparently described as 'an ungainly and deeply garrulous...

Sir: The Opposition's efforts to frustrate controversial government action for which there is no mandate are laudable, but the filibuster action by three or four Conservative...

Sir: If, as the context suggests, Stuart Holland (16 October) is referring to Marx's Labour Theory of Value, the passage in which he states that profits result from labour...

Sir: W. A. C. Harvey, in his fury at the honours conferred on those principally responsible for Britain's involvement in the Suez episode (Spectator, 13 November), states, inter...

Sir: This country's position today is no t dissimilar to those years when we Wer e fighting a more sensational, a more physical , war, but with the same ultimate objectiv e of...

Sir: A man of so many preoccupations as Lord Hai!sham may be forgiven when his memory deceives him regarding a couple of small facts. In his review of Mr Speaker, Sir (near top...

Mr Richard Ingram in his article on Old times' refers to the Reverend Jimmy James as the Revd James. Why, then, does he not call Sir Lindsay Ring, Sir R ing? Violet R. Ormerod...

S ir: Few things recently have depressed me more than your silly, ignorant and shortS ighted leading article on Enoch Powell (13 November). To suggest that our membership of the...

correct in saying that the engine of our most recent inflation was the creation of Mr Heath's government, he is surely unfair to disregard the possibility that the present...

Sir: I have been appointed by the executors to edit the letters of Evelyn Waugh. Could I appeal to anyone who has, or knows the whereabouts of, any letter by Waugh to get in...

Sir: The call for a government of national unity owns a belief that no single party is adequate to govern in the present circumstances. Can it then be reasonable to believe that...

Sir: With one or two others, Richard West seems to hanker after Auberon Waugh's choice of the elegant phrase and the spiteful intent. His comments on David Winnick and his legs...

Sir: Your issue of 6 November quotes Mr John Lindsay as saying there is much to be said for forbidding presidential candidates from buying expensive television time to advertise...

Problems and pleasures of champagne Geoffrey Wheatcroft Hilaire Belloc drank champagne 'to raise me from the dead, a thing I need constantly' and of all drinks it provides...

Pamela Vandyke Price Perhaps the saintly can withstand the rigours of the winter solstice and the intersib stress of family reunions without alcohol—but I don't know anyone...

Marika Hanbury Tenison If you dread stuffing the turkey at midnight, fiddling with fairy lights that won't connect, burning your fingers trying to set the pudding alight or...

A resonant Bellow Anthony Burgess To Jerusalem and Back Saul Bellow (Secker and Warburg £3.90) It was proper, if not necessarily just, to give all the Nobel prizes to...

Leo Abse The Facts of Life R D Laing (Allen Lane 0.25) Our guru Laing, we now discover in this Painfully personal work, was born cursed. His mother, immediately after his...

Alexander Chancellor Music: A Joy for Life Edward Heath (Sidgwick and Jackson 25.95) In 1972, when I was a correspondent in Italy, the British Prime Minister came to Rome on an...

Alastair Forbes F riends, Enemies and Sovereigns John Wheeler-Bennett £4.95) (Macmillan F ootprints in Time John Colville (Collins £4.95) Of Generals and Gardens Peter Coats (...

Nick Totton The Widower's Son Alan Sillitoe (W. H. Allen 0.95) The Glittering Prizes Frederic Rapha el (Allen Lane 0.75) The Stuffed Dog Peter de PolnaY (W. H. Allen 0.75)...

Benny Green The Party that lasted 100 Days: The Late Victorian Session Hilary and Mary Evans (Macdonald and Janes £5.95) There are a great many technical terms connected with...

Olivia Manning Women of Iron and Velvet Margaret Crosland (Constable £4.95) Victor Hugo Joanna Richardson (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £10) The jackets of the books in hand tell us...

Punk and the Sex Pistols Edward Jones When Britain's biggest record company, E rsit, and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the citadel of the self-regarding avantgarde,...

Ghostly laughter Ted Whitehead The Ghost Train (Old Vic) Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy (Mayfair) Any Woman Can (Gay Sweatshop) Are You Sitting Comfortably? (Pirate Jenny) Arnold...

Voluntaries Anya Linden Created originally for the Stuttgart Ballet in 197 3 as a tribute to John Cranko, their late director, Glen Tetley's ballet Voluntaries was given its...

Master casts John McEwen The present show at the Lefevre Gallery is worthy of their fiftieth anniversary. Degas died without ever seeing any of his sculpture cast in bronze...

English music John Bridcut During the interval of the Britten-Auden aperetta, Paul Bun.van (in the English Music Theatre's enterprising season at the Sadler's Wells Theatre),...

Atrocities Clancy Sigal F for Fake (Essential and Electric Cinemas) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Scene 1 and 2) Death Weekend (Ritz) Schizo (Warner 4) The Confessions of...

Looking back Richard Ingrams According to Christopher Booker in last week's Spectator Peter Hall gets £21,000 a year for an hour's work per week reading lines off an autocue...