As Mr Heath observed in reply to the Chancellor's Budget speech, Mr Healey had a most difficult task: he had only three weeks to prepare his first Budget, and most Chancellors...

From Viscountess Bangor Sir: I wrote last week to Mr Patrick Cosgrave to congratulate him on expressing (without 'moderation', thank Heavens!) what so many of us feel about the...

Not content with mismanaging the country to the tune of about £2,000 million, he costs us yet a further £2,000 million by introducing the three day week episode — quite...

Sir; 1 marvel at the audacity of Mr Angus Maude (March 16) in soliciting support from young couples "who had been encouraged to undertake the responsibilities of home ownership...

Sir: In his Histories, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (Penguin Classics), Herodotus describes a contest for the thorne of Egypt between the incumbent King Apries, "who is...

Sir: I am sick and tired of reading in The Spectator that the majority of the British public do not wish to be members of the Common Market. You appear to be disciples of...

Sir: In your editorial of March 23 you say: . . . the election result constituted a decisive rejection of Phase Three, and the policy of standing up to wage claims." I beg to...

"folly" of a statutory incomes policy, and against "the absurd sophistries and complica tions of Phase Three" in particular (March 23), the following passage — from the 1973...

million Conservatives and Liberals against ll million Labour voters. Yet Mr Cosgrave suggests that Mr Heath's "espousal of a statutory policy ha s been decisively rejected by...

Sir: Criticism of the recent Press Council report has been directed at the findin g s. We are more concerned with the implications. It is of fundamental 'mPortance that the...

Investment income Si r : Mr Nicholas Davenport may be a soPhisticated and experienced ec°nomist, but he should not deal in outri g h t lies. May I q uote from his 4 tkiece in...

Sir: I read with g reat pleasure Mr Richard Usborne's preview of his forthcomin g second edition of Clubland Heroes, (March 16) and await with ea g erness its publication. I...

Miss Vandyke Price is up in arms A g ainst a monstrous Bluff: A book on4nakin g wines at home Like some commercial stuff. What! — make a wine that really tastes Like those one...

Sir: If your readers were to take Richard Wort's letter of March 15 seriously they would become very confused, Educational salvation in London is to be achieved by makin g the...

Sir: I have j ust read with g reat interest Christine Pemberton's article on the Oxford Union in your issue of January 15. Unfortunately. however. she includes Disraeli in her...

Sir: Dr D. M. Jenkins(Letters, March 23) accuses me of bein g as hostile to Reds under beds as to the Scarlet women in them. (and not content with that, he dra g s in the red...

Sir: 1 quite agree with Miss Reid's letter about the Communist menace. Visitors from Russia and Poland recently were appalled at our complacemy. We are such fools we never...

Patrick Cosgrave It is practically impossible to write about the fundamental kindliness and goodness of Sir Alex Douglas-Home without resort to cliche; and the strange thing is...

I Should like to start my stint by agreeing with my distinguished predecessor, Angus Maude, at any rate as to his complaint: "If we ar e to have another general election within...

David Holbrook What, I wonder, will the Labour Government do, about the deliberate debauching of public taste, by pornography and sadism, in commercial culture? In the GLC, the...

Emancipation not suppression Leo Abse \Yhen squalid and irrelevant sexual scandals hit a Tory government, there is always one Predictable but improbable scapegoat — the...

Reflections on defeat Derek Coombs Is it really a month since the result of the general election? It only seems like yesterday, remembering the count and the Yardley result....

CAP as a social policy Gerald Segal It can have been no easy task for Mr Pr e ; 1 Peart, meeting with the rest of the Agricur tural Ministers of the Nine, to achieve til e t;...

The troubles of Mr Bhutto Kuldip Nayar Permanent arches have been put up all along the road from the Indian border to Lahore, a distance of fifteen miles, to welcome the...

'The new movement' Ian Meadows Three years ago at a Palestinian refugee camp George Habbach, leader of the Palestine Popular Front, emerged from the shadows and gave a press...

The other day I was driving in an hack through the Town when my attention was taken by a newsboy who shouted: "Heath to be replaced — Tories will rebel." Uncertain of the...

Newspapers under pressure Bill Grundy Let me ask you a serious question. Could you get along without the national press? I ask the question because you may very well have to,...

Award winners Philip Kleinman The advertising awards season is upon us again. Last Thursday night the ball started rolling with the National Broadcast Advertising Festival,...

Social concern Bernard Dixon Scientists are unique among professional people in that though their work often has tremendous repercussions in society, they do not have to meet...

The Samaritan story Martin Sullivan From time to time, it is a useful exercise to take a well known Biblical narrative and to subject it to close literary criticism. As an...

Asparagus Denis Wood This vain and transitory life would be the less supportable were it not for those vegetables of which we eat the stems and shoots, chief among them...

Consuming disinterest Pamela Vandyke Price This is the season when those who !re putting off attempting to clean '.1? their living quarters after the Winter, go all 'best buy,'...

Joan Robinson on Galbraith, women and economic sense Professor Galbraith has cast himself for the role, among economists, of the child who remarked that the Emperor had no...

peter Ackroyd Texts for Nothing Samuel Beckett (Calder and L l oYars £1.95) i 'leinzeit Russell Hoban (Jonathan Cape £2.25) Mutual Observation Edith De Born (Eyre Methuen...

M.I. Finley The Etruscan Cities and Their Culture Luisa Banti, translated by Erika Bizzarri (Batsford £5.50) Several ancient civilisations, notably the Egyptian and the...

Quentin Bell The Rise and Fall of the Matinee Idol Edited by Anthony Curtis (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £3.75) "I sat" writes Philip Hope-Wallace in a characteristically excellent...

Roy Fuller Sl oinburne: The Portrait Of A Poet Philip H enderson (Routledge and Kegan Paul £4.95). The enormous (and unexpurgated) edition of S winburne's letters, the last...

Colin Wilson Wilderness Man: The Strange Story of Grey Owl Lovat Dickson (Macmillan £3.95) How would you describe a man who spent most of his adult life living-out a fantasy...

Fun with the Philistines Benny Green THE truth is that the humour of Philistinism is an easy touch. We are all familiar with the joke about Henry IV Part One abdicating in...

B ookend The British book trade is often guilty of parochialism and this columnist is as guilty as the best of them. In an effort to make some amends, albeit fleetingly,...

Kenneth Hurren on plays as directors' playthings The late Shakespeare had a fairly wretched time on my wideranging beat last week, and only one who had lost his capacity for...

Over the rainbow Christopher Hudson As I prophesied a few months ago' science fiction in the cinema has come of age. I cannot remember the last time I saw a futuristic film in...

Conservative reckoning Rodney Mlles Nothing is more boring than the s ort of opera-buff cocktail party Where enthusiasts reminisce oh-so k nowledgeably about obscure Works...

Merda, he says Evan Anthony The Tate Gallery is showing, among other things, a tin (labelled 'Merda d'artista') purported to contain the excrement of Piero Manzoni, an Italian...

Fifteen-year-old Yorkshire lad Kevin Moreton, who is playing in Runaway at London's Royal Court Theatre, plainly has much to learn of theatrical tact — and it was, Waspe...

Last Saturday Pontam excelled himself for me by coming last in the Lincoln. Next Saturday I'm packing it all in, and fleeing the country for a land where my creditors and their...

Nicholas Davenport Having given my prognostication of the budget I will leave a detailed analysis of it till next week. Here I will set down the icy underlying economic...

Developers—future indefinite The Earl of Kingston In the last five months of 1973, the property industry suffered some of the most savage attacks which have ever been made on...

Denis Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has shown the utter barrenness of socialist economic thought. fully comparable to that demonstrated in a different direction until...