The Crossmaglen murders have rightly unleashed a storm of Opposition criticism of the Government and its Northern Ireland ministers. Conservative anger is all the more justified...

Research Department From Sir Keith Joseph, MP Sir: Politicians need thick skins, and more often than not permit press comments to pass in silence: Otherwise we might rarely...

Sir: At the end of the debate on the Health Service in the House of Commons on Friday, November 21, Dr David Owen was left speaking to only eight MPs. By showing such...

Sir: Your obituary of Cardinal Heenan gives the impression of having been written by an enemy not only of the great cardinal but also of the Catholic Church. Hugh Ross...

Sir: I am sure that all pensioners are grateful to our benevolent Prime Minister for the increase in pensions due in early December. , But have they considered where the money...

Sir: Although he devotes the whole of his November 15 column to me, Bookbuyer does not quite indicate what my article in the New Review was about — even in the relatively...

Sir: Mr Edward Heath is again showing signs of the latent paranoia which appeared from time to time when he was in office. You may think it quite futile to compare his conduct...

Sir: In view of the fact that home rule for England would follow from indepen dence for Wales and Scotland, voauld not the Conservative Party predomin ate in an independent...

Sir: To demonstrate the splendid qualifications of some Asian doctors, Mr Arrilt Roy (November 15) invokes the name of one of them and appends the initials "RGN, DOMSI, DORCS,...

Sir: John Linklater says in his interest ing article on the power of the vol l (November 22) that will power is denied by humanists who see man as the sick molecular joke" and...

Sir, Mr Folkes (November 8) correctlY points out that 'a doctrine of individua l conduct' and 'a doctrine about Govern ment policies' are two quite distinctlY separate...

E:1 Trouble, trouble, trouble: that is what Mr Cecil King has created with the second volume of his Diary, that and nothing else. Lady Macleod has complained that a passage a ....

A Bill of Rights Patrick Cosgrave When, more than ten years ago, I began to write for The Spectator the then editor, Mr . Nigel Lawson (now Conservative MP for Blaby),...

Mr Ford fumbles Leslie Finer Washington The American political writer Richard Reeves, an expert White House watcher, has written a new book with a whimsical title. It is...

John Organ The Spanish Civil War came to its true end on November 23, 1975, as the coffin of General Franco was lowered into a marble vault in the basilica which political...

The Irish-American file Godfrey Barker England versus New York, Boston and Chicago: are we really fighting a new American R evolution in Northern Ireland? Last week's r...

AUEW election Jim Higgins Hats off for Mr Scanlon, two minutes silence for the blasted career of Mr Bob Wright, a little respect for the fallen, if you please. In the current...

Not playing the game Hans Keller A f ew years ago I gave a lecture on football law reform to an assembly of referees. I enjoyed it SO much that I was incapable of noticing w...

Christmas books Benny Green on guys, dolls and real people Oh the day after Damon Runyon died, his son was plagued by incessant telephone calls from Certain old ladies, and it...

John Terraine

Arms and Uniforms: The First World War, Parts /& II: The Second World War, Parts f & II Liliane and Fred Funcken (Ward Lock £3.95 per volume) Artillery: The Big Guns Go To War...

Richard Hough says, giving but one example, "the fighting ship is one of historY's most beautiful and fearful creations." A History of Fighting Ships shows that this is indeed...

Nikolaus Pevsner The Genius of the Place Peter Willis and John Dixon Hunt (Elek E12.50) The two compilers of this anthology have both major books in the press, the first on...

Simon Raven Memoirs of William Hickey Edited by Peter Quennell (Routledge and Kegan Paul £5.95) In 1808 the lawyer William Hickey, after many years of practice at the Indian...

Quentin Bell In Vogue: Six Decades of Fashion Georgina Howell (Allen Lane £12.00 from February 1 st . £9.75 until January 31st, 1976). 20th Century Fashion Ernestine Carter...

Alan Brien Shoulder to Shoulder Midge Mackenzie (Allen Lane £7.75 and Penguin £3.50) In 1918, fifty years after John Stuart Mill moved the first bill to enact women's suffrage,...

Larry Adler Hollywood Garson Kanin (Hart-Davis, MacGibbon £4.75) My Story Marilyn Monroe (W. H. Allen £2.95) Could be I'm getting cynical. Here are two books, one by Garson...

Geoffrey Grigson Samuel Johnson and His World Margaret Lane (Hamish Hamilton £6.95) Thomas I-tardy. An Illustrated Biography Timothy O'Sullivan (Macmillan £6.50) Dylan Thomas....

Kenneth Hurren The Sound of Two Hands Clapping Kenneth Tynan (Jonathan Cape £4.95) Twenty-five years ago Kenneth Tynan described his first book, He That Plays the King, as "a...

John Groser Salting — A Course of My Life. Edward Heath ( Sidgwick and Jackson £5.50) Whatever history decides about Edward Heath, politician, sailor and now author, one thing...

Shorts Peter Ackroyd The Times Anthology of Ghost Stories (Jonathan Cape £2.95) Winter's Tales edited by A. D. Maclean (Macmillan £3.95) Black Faces, White Faces Jane Gardam...

Signs of the times or signs of the trade? For several years Fontana have been selling paperback editions of the incomparab le Ngaio Marsh, and for several years they have been...

The new Machines Robert Ashley I suppose the symbol of 0 'sixties, the cult-figure of that culiar period, was Bob Dylan, the milliona ire - protester. In his National Health...

In captivity Martin Sullivan It was a long time ago, nearly 2,500 years to be exact, when the Jewish people departed from their homeland, leaving a scorched earth behind them,...

Comprehensive politics Rhodes Boyson The Government's proposed Bill to require all local education authorities to make plans for the abolition of selection in secondary...

OF THE ARTS Theatre Poet and peasant and nuts Kenneth Hurren The Fool by Edward Bond (Royal Court) A Month in the Country by Ivan T urgenev, translated by Ariadne Nicolaeff...

Sick joke Kenneth Robinson Lenny Director: Bob Fosse Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Valerie Perrine, Jan Miner 'X', Odeon, Haymarket (111 minutes) This film begins by telling us, in...

At the Hayward John McEwen The first of two shows of new work by British artists is to be seen upstairs at the Hayward till December. Work by six artists is on view. David...

For the birds John Bridcut The Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society is presented so sparingly — only sixty-seven recipients in over a century — that it is coveted as...

Market assessment NIcholas Davenport It is time to re-assess the strength and/or the weaknesses of the security markets in the City. From i ts low point of 146 on January 6 the...

Back to barter Bernard Hollowood One of the matters omitted from the Queen's Speech was any reference to the increasing use of barter in our trading system. Barter, the direct...

You may well have missed a little-publicised finding put out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development saying that many of the politicians and forecasters...