Sir: Mr Robert Moss in his Article 'Power to the People' is immensely heartened about what is going on in Portugal and is encouraged to feel that a genuine hope of democracy has...

Sir: At the end of your highly deserved tribute to the late proprietor and editor, you state your belief that The Spectator's battle against British membership of the European...

Sir: I would like to draw attention in your letter columns to the lamentable case of Mr Garfield Todd, former Premier of Rhodesia. He seems a forgotten man, yet this unfortunate...

Sir: British industry is constantly bemoaning the fact that its order books are always shrinking and citing this as justification for closures and lay-offs. If my experience of...

The survival strategy of Harold Wilson Patrick Cosgrave Mr Harold Wilson, as is well known, is manic depressive. (To say that, by the way, is in no sense insulting, nor meant...

My Wednesday evenings for some time ahead are made; for the BBC, in its collective wisdom, has decided to re-run ORTF's Les Rois Maud its ('The Accursed Kings'), which tells of...

(with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson) I come from haunts of stars and stripes, I make a sudden scuttle Between two most demanding types As back and forth I shuttle. I...

Murder Incorporated John Laffin The only surprising aspect of the terrorist arms cache found in London recently is that anybody should be surprised that international...

A guest star is born Tom Margerison It was in 1054, twelve years before the most remembered date in English history, that the Emperor of Khaifeng received his chief astronomer...

Break-up of a community Andrew Lycett Charles Njonjo, the Kenyan Attorney-General, was once in trouble with his people for saying that he would not travel in an East African...

Rank misconceptions Michael Stourton It seems quite understandable that in the 1920s Dorothy Sayers could perceive that the doings, and still more the misdoings, of titled...

Dare to hop on a bus David W. Wragg The British have always prided themselves on a high standard of safety in public transport. Accidents happened abroad, where trains and...

A year since Watergate Al Capp Watergate is a year gone and, most of all, I miss Lowell Weicker, which you can understand if you will recall that he is six-foot-six and for...

The biggest reclining Buddha in the world Duncan Fallow ell We were bumping somewhere around the edge of Rangoon when my crown fell off. "What the blazes! ... thit!" I found...

The other Day passed me by in his Carriage a Member of the Club, with that pale and wan Complexion which we sometimes see in young People who are fallen into Sorrow and private...

I find it very hard to take seriously the calls for everlasting world peace made by Kenneth Rose's friend Emperor Hirohito and Prime Minister Takeo Miki to mark the thirtieth...

The justification for having in London such lavishly subsidised theatre companies as the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the English Stage Company at the...

A new bookshop is always welcome but there is a delicate irony to this month's opening of the Greater London Council shop in Charing Cross Road. When, five years ago, publisher...

Benny Green on Buchan, a hundred years on Before the end of this century, some cultural historian will write a book which follows through in close textual detail the...

Maureen Duffy Childhood's Pattern Gillian Avery (Hodder and Stoughton £3.50). Most mornings I thank the gods who control such things, presumably those three ladies with one...

Nigel Nicolson Max and Will. Max Beerbohm and William Rothenstein. Their friendship and letters 1893 to 1945 Edited by Mary M. Lago and Karl BeckSon (John Murray £5.50) Zuleiha...

Frank Muir Irish Eccentrics Peter Somerville-Large (Hamish Hamilton 0.95) Most people — excluding a small list of neglected wives, starved children, beaten-up watchmen, ruined...

Mary Whitehouse Film Censorship Guy Phelps (Gollancz E5.50) Inevitably the story of Film Censorship is one of warring interests. The days when the British Board of Film...

Max Egremont Working Studs Terkel (Wildwood House £5.95) Working is, according to its author, about almost everything under the sun. "This book," writes Mr Terkel, "being about...

Danny Halperin Krishnamurti The Years of Awakening Mary Lutyens (John Murray £6.00) At one of a number of meetings held at Eerde, Holland, in 1928, Jiddu Krishnamurti told a...

The new • artlessness Peter Ackroyd The Aura and the Kingfisher Tom Hart (Quartet £3.95) The real history of taste will never be written, but some recent images and...

Press Losing sales in a 'growth' market Robert Ashley You may remember that last week I was going on about the forthcoming death of Nova. On reflection I realise I ought to...

George Davis and apologetic anarchy lain Scarlet George Davis must be Gne helluva chap. It's no good my adding my own small voice to the chorus of condemnation of the action...

Tinkering with genes Bernard Dixon I apologise not in the slightest for returning to a subject which I have mentioned several times in recent months: genetic engineering. The...

Worldly wealth Martin Sullivan Christ employed the parable as His most constant teaching form and told, in all, forty of them. A parable is like a joke, meaning literally,...

Tales from Ireland Denis Wood Writing in The Nationalist recently, Bill O'Brien told the story of a boy who, despite a voracious appetite, dwined and dwindled until he became...

Theatre Mysterious in the East Kenneth Hurren Jingo by Charles Wood; Royal Shakespeare Company (Aldwych) On the Rocks by Bernard Shaw (Mermaid) Eager, as always, to advance...

Peak viewing Kenneth Robinson The Eiger Sanction Director: Clint Eastwood. Stars: Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Jack Cassidy 'AA' Empire (120 minutes). I don't think I...

Tout ensemble Rodney Milnes To continue from where I left off, the idea of any industrial confron tation that may or may not be necessary at the Coliseum, but which interfered...

Teriade's influence John McEwen In the summer of 1973 Bryan Robertson wrote a newspaper article imploring anyone in England with the slighest interest in art to go at once and...

Mr Wilson and the economy Nicholas Davenport If the Government is to spend £2 million on advertising its anti-inflation programme it is going to be wasted if Mr Len Murray of...

Low dividends depress share prices and discourage investment in equities, and that prevents companies raising money in the market, so government must not interfere with...

SET in reverse Bernard Hollowood How would you like to be paid E1.50 an hour to fill bottles with water from the Thames north bank and empty them into the river on the south...