The pay rise for the services announced by Mr Callaghan Ott Tuesday is probably the best that could have been expected from this government, which is to say that it is not ,...

Les secrets du Colonel B Ferdinand Mount Sometimes the law looks silly because it is silly. Sometimes the law looks silly because -policemen or judges are acting silly. And...

I never met Richard Cecil, but he' was bY all accounts an extremely attractive man a nd someone who could command extrao rdinary loyalty and affection. It is a pity L that the...

Jumping up and down Auberon Waugh Most unexpectedly, Saturday Night Fever arrived in Taunton last week. Goodness knows what the Senior Citizens were supposed to make of the...

peter Nichols Rome There must be man-traps throughout Italy containing the bones, rusted remains of Portable typewriters and plastic cases for anion cards belonging to all...

William Chislett Madrid Santia g o Carrillo, the secretary- g eneral of the Spanish Communist party, which last week at its ninth con g ress (the first le g al one in Spain...

Sam White Paris Well, have the French got the neutron 'bomb or haven't they? Put this way, the 'opportunities for teasing answers are end less and well-nigh irresistible, as...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington In the last couple of days before the vote on the accursed Panama Canal treaty, the mass Media went slightly crackers on the subject. The...

Patrick Cosgrave Listeners to the Parliament show on radio (or television) may have got the quite false impression that any old MP may get up at any old time and ask any old...

Jo Grimond It is time we stopped the competitive stuffing of our public galleries and museums With pictures, porcelain, furniture, etc. at the expense of the tax payers. It is...

Michael Becket British Leyland's rights issue of shares must be the most uninviting since the hemlock offer to Socrates. Even the company went out of its way to warn...

Geoffrey Wheatcroft Three years ago Lord Orr-Ewing, then Chairman of the Metrication Board, said that 'The country is now approaching a critical stage. . . it has always been...

Stewart Black If the popular press was to be believed, the 'real interest' for everyone in Mr Healey's Budget was the size of the concessions he was expected to make on income...

Gold and the dollar Nicholas Davenport It was said of my old friend Dick Crossman that his diaries revealed the extraordinary naïveté of an academic confronted with...

Sir: I have never before written about the Bevan libel action against the Spectator in 1957. It is a distasteful subject in that all of the following came out of it badly: The...

conversation five or six years old describing an incident fifteen years before that' may be unreliable: on the contrary. The conversation took place over lunch in Soho on 3 May,...

Sir: I read Stephen Glover's piece 'Chameleons in Rhodesia' (15 April) with considerable interest and it seems clear to me that the Western Powers' failure to support the...

Sir: Ms Gainham's rambling letter (15 April) would be charming in its illogicality if it were not so morally debased. In joining the ranks of those whose attacks on Stalin are...

Sir: In the Spectator of 1 April you devoted no less than three articles to the season's international rugby scene. In none of them was there any mention of Andy Irvine, an...

Sir: In your editorial of 1 April you express misgivings over the method of slaughtering livestock exported to France. Such concern is praiseworthy, but you are guilty of...

Sir: You can write as many sycophantic, mealy-mouthed leader columns as you like, but your correspondent, Mr Alan Walsh, IS right. The majority of people in this countrY have...

trade of historians, even of such brilliant and admirable ones as Oxford's Regius Professor. But to call my recent review of Peter Townsend's Time and Chance, which dealt...

Sir: Me poor Greek ignorant. You big English egghead. You pliss say to learned Swiss Alastair Forbes no spend so much time thinking of royals but more time learning write short...

A sort of loyalty J. Enoch Powell • History of Rome Michael Grant (Weidenfeld £12.50) The history of Rome; yes, but which Rome? Ab urbe condita in 753 BC to the formal...

Alan Watkins Sex Law Tony Honore (Duckworth E8.95) Dr A.M. Honore is fifty-seven, a Fellow of All Souls and Regius Professor of Civil Law at Oxford. His previous publications...

Ronald Duncan The Composition of the Four Quartets Helen Gardner (Faber E9.50) Has the title any musical connotations? I think not. Eliot corresponded with Stravinsky; but I...

Lynn Cardiff A World of Naturalists Joseph Kastner (John Murrary £7.95) Joseph Kastner's World of Naturalists is the New World of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; his...

Benny Green Sherlock Holmes and his Creator Trevor H. Hall (Duckworth £7.95) Evidently there is no end to books on, by, for and about Sherlock Holmes, whose bib liography...

Paul Ableman The Family David Plante (Victor Gollancz E5.60) Turner, asked to provide a sketch that would give an impression of the size of a man-of-war, took a plain board and...

Grandmammas Mary Kenny It is a standing joke among those who mock social workers and the child development industry that there is a book called The Dis appearing Grandmother...

Emma Tennant From Spring to Spring Alison Uttley (Faber £3.50) Wild Ghost Chase D. J. Enright (Chatto & Windus £2.95) Jackanory: Jonny Briggs and the Ghost Joan Eadington...

Home and abroad movies John Wells The Stud (ABC, Fulham Road) The Men Who Loved Women (Gala Royal, Marble Arch) The wife of a prominent newspaper proprietor appearing in a...

Last love Ted Whitehead Oen Juan Comes Back from the War (Cottesloe) On the Out (Bush) Impending death weakens our interest in economics — unless what we're dying of is want...

Switched-off Richard Ingrams After my rather lofty comments about Tony Garnett last tveek I thought the least I could do would be tune in to the latest episode of his Law and...

Whom indeed? John McEwen On the face of it you could hardly have two more opposed looking exhibitions than the Arts Council sponsored 'Art for Whom?' (Serpentine till 14 May)...

Blessed leek Manka Hanbury Ten ison One of the vegetables I have most respect for (especially at this time of the year when the choice is getting a bit thin) is the leek. I...

Clever dick Jeffrey Bernard The nearer we get to the Derby the more pieces we find to fit into the puzzle. Last Saturday, Ryan Price's colt Whitstead — by Morston out of a...