It is too easily forgotten, a's we contemplate the present difficulty in our prisons, that these crises of the incarcerated are now a regular and, indeed, cyclic occurence in...

It is distaseful, when the Ugandan Asians are preparing for their flight from the country in which they have made their lives, and founded their hopes for so long, to advert to...

I am one of those crusty reactionaries who feel that the slide downhill of the Times as a newspaper began when advertisements were put on the front page; and was virtually...

Young Liberals around the grave Hugh Macpherson The first gathering in the annual summer political circus which we politely call the party conference season takes place at...

Problems of European security Adam Watson Dispassionate thinking about defence is rare in this country. The subject is distasteful: both the destructiveness and the cost of...

Enemies again? Kuldip Nayar India and Pakistan are back at square one. The same mistrust and suspicion which the two countries had tried to shed through a peace agreement at...

The big twister Oliver Stewart Concorde is the butt of insults. It is too expensive. It is too noisy. It smokes too much. It is commercially unworkable. It damages the...

The weakness of the Prime Minister Patrick Cosgrave Issues in British politics nowadays have a way of appearing and disappearing. And this is disturbing, because it suggests a...

The truth about Nixon Henry Fairlie Even in the United States, although one does not often meet them socially, there are people who support Richard Nixon and, gathered in...

OF BOOKS , ,1:1- ■ ( Norman Stone on the Russian agrarian revolution Victor Serge's book* is a good piece of reportage of the year 1918 in Russia, a year in which the...

the pathetic Auberon Waugh A Happy Man P. J. Kavanagh (Chatto and Windus £2.00) Poets are not people, in my experience, who should be encouraged to write novels. Although it...

Nicholas Richardson North Louis-Ferdinand Celine (The Bodley Head £3) Any consideration of Celine's novels raises the age-old question: just how far can an author's work be...

Juliette Harrison Secretary Mary Kathleen Benet (Sidgwick and Jackson £2.50) Have you noticed how dejected, degraded and downright miserable the female officeworker has become?...

Clive Wilmer Tennyson Christopher Ricks (Macmillan 0.95) The poetry of Tennyson is only just recovering from the early twentieth century reaction against all things Victorian....

Bookbuyer Bookbuyer has warned readers against vanity publishers — one he had in mind was the Janay Publishing Company Limited, who seem to have a sadly underdeveloped sense of...

Cinema A slice of sporting life Christopher Hudson An honest slice of reality means a great deal to people who spend their lives going to the cinema. At least it would appear...

Oh brother Rodney Milnes "It is important to bear in mind, from the outset of a performance of 11 Trovatore, that the Troubadour, known as Manrico, is in fact the younger...

• Theatre: Pick of the London plays: National Theatre production of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night with Olivier, Cummings, Pickup and Quilley (Old Vic); two wry...

Spike Milligan, I learn, has been ' blackingup ' again — to play another comic Pakistani in an episode of the new series of Till Death Us Do Part for BBC-tv. This is surely a...

In trouble at mill Clive Gammon Whoever Glasgow belongs to on a Sunday it is clearly not the traveller benighted there. I had doubted the horror stories of the Glaswegian...

Memory Lane Kenneth Hurren The trouble with Popkiss, the new musical at the Globe, like Mercutio's wound, is "not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'tis...

Cricketing cavalier Benny Green Twenty-five years ago this weekend the greatest English player of ball games of this century went in to bat against the South African touring...

Holiday season Pamela Vandyke Price For many years we have not had a war, a Crusade, the Black Death, the South Sea Bubble, the exaction of Danegeld or the fall of...

Sir, — "The Foreign Office hopes fervently that the Olympic authorities will sort out their own muddle" (report in an evening paper last week, referring to opposition to...

Games for many years, I was sorry to see that you had felt it necessary (August 26) to demand nothing less than the abolition of the Olympics. I am sure that after reading this...

by a BBC news broadcaster in this evening (August 21) 7 pm BBC radio news? Discussing the Rhodesians' chances of being allowed to compete in the Olympics, the newscaster...

Sir: Mr Blish (August 19) is perfectly entitled to disbelieve in all the evidence of poltergeists and to assume there is not such a thing as telepathy or water divining though...

19) held promise of much worthier fare than was served up for us in Mr Blish's quadruple book review. I gather that Mr Blish's built-in predisposition to discount all that I...

Sir: I am not surprised by the xenophobic response (Letters, August 19) provoked by your attitude towards the expulsions of British Asian citizens in East Africa. The absence of...

Asians; it is really necessary to take them in? For India resettlement of these people causes no social problems. Surely with good will on both sides the British government...

the letters from your correspondents Baird, Bond and Baker (no relation) (August 19). However, as is the custom of governments, I am sure that this one will take no heed of the...

From the Revd W. 1. Bulman Sir: I have bought and read The Spectator for over thirty-five years and I write to congratulate you as the only organ of opinion, so far as I know,...

two whole pages to a review of my book on international companies (August 26), particularly since, in your reviewer's opinion, it was a 'trivial and silly little book.' I could,...

Sir: As Peter Flinn queries my description of Willy Brandt, alias Herbert Frahm, as politically deep red, I give some extracts from Herr Branch's own book In Exile (1971), which...

Sir: I do not dissent from Mr Graham Greene's views on architecture which he is entitled to hold, but I could wish he were not forever silent about the iniquities of the USSR as...

Sir: It is, of course, unthinkable that Mr Davenport should stand at a bar when travelling abroad and I am sorry if I appeared to entertain such an idea. It is, indeed, we not...

Sir: In his review of Pablo Neruda's Extravagaria (August 5), Mr Doug las Dunn refers to "the dictator Gonzales Videla." It must be pointed out that Gabriel Gonzalez Videla,...

Sir: Are we witnessing the death throes of a worn-out system of democracy, a system which has taken several hundred years to run its course? Are we faced with the challenge of...

A bitter Lord Wigg is quoted as "wanting nothing more to do with the sport" once he retires as Levy Board Chairman in November. Such outspoken comments won't make life easy...

President Nixon and Wall Street Nicholas Davenport "This is the American Dream," cried President Nixon as he was embraced by Sammy Davis Jnr at the Miami Republican...

Diary • Young Lord Vestey the meat packing king is a handsome fellow. He has come across as likeable and able in being interviewed about the troubles at his Midland Cold...

Into the property pool Nephew Wilde The troubles on the industrial front never seemed so far away as during this last August Bank holiday weekend. And I am convinced that the...

Magic carpets John Bull Once again, following recommendations to buy Bond Worth Holdings and Carpets International in recent weeks, I am punting on a carpet share for the...

Poverty. Individualised justice Ruth Lister Custos wrote recently of a report received from a tenants' association in Southwark, which revealed that many families had not...

Education in social work Jef Smith Involved in social work at various times during the last ten years with miners on the fringe of Edinburgh, with railwaymen in York and with...

How to staff hospitals John Rowan Wilson If two men ride a horse, goes the old saying, one must ride behind. This bitter but inescapable fact is at the root of the most...

Squatters' rights custos Rights are breaking out all over, or so it is beginning to seem as far as squatters are concerned. Under the revised rules of both the High Court and...