As we were reminded during last week's 150th anniversary celebrations, the Spectator was a rare supporter of the Tolpuddle labourers, convicted and transported in 1834 for...

Scapegoat and spivmaster Ferdinand Mount September is an underrated month, a good time to patrol the garden and wonder why the lawn, even when dappled with late sun, does not...

As I write, a group of young people are standing uneasily on the pavement a few Yards up the road. They are picketing one of the Social Services Area Offices of Camden ouncil as...

Xan Smiley Without force — or without the genuine threat to use it in extremis — the Rhodesian problem will never be solved. Force of Zimbabwean guerrilla arms is still by far...

Richard West When John Vorster became Prime Minister of South Africa in 1966, his appointment was welcomed in print by Bernard Levin, who said that a man so brutal and bigoted...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Everybody agreed the results of the Camp David meetings were so nice for Carter. It would enhance his confidence, it would deter Congresspersons...

Roger Stevens The roots of the current unrest in Iran are complex and, by today's fashions, unusual. Disorders due neither to the conflict of two religions (as in Northern...

Tim Garton Ash Tirana Albania is the longest-running farce in the Western World. Since Edward Lear visited it in 1851, the country has been touched With nonsense. Ten years ago...

Christopher Booker The current, twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Encounter contains an article by Leszek Kolakowski, who was Professor of Philosophy at the University of...

Vernon Bogdanor The strongest tendencies displayed by the popular vote were, according to Lecky, 'a dislike to large expenditure, a dislike to centralisation, a dislike to...

Edward Pearce The decision of the Prime Minister to keep the servants, the houses and the cars a little longer has had at least one pleasing side effect. The Saatchi brothers,...

Scoop Patrick M arn ham Consider the case of the Daily Mail. For much of the time the Mail rivals the three 'serious' national dailies as a source of news. It provides much...

Is there any comfort to be found for those people who are slow in all they think, say, or do, and who are painfully conscious of their own slowness? They need consolation, if it...

The five per cent fix Nicholas Davenport If you were forcibly incarcerated in a lunatic asylum your first impulse would be to throw an appealing note over the wall, hoping...

Sir: In case Nicholas Davenport seriously believes (16 September) that the Central Statistical Office has rebased the index of industrial production from 1970 = 100 to 1975 =...

Sir: Mr Christopher Booker (9 September) says,'. . . one is a Jew first and an individual or a member of the human race second.' I wonder what study of Judaism Mr Booker has...

all the victims of racialism, Jews especially, for his logical good sense and fairness in commenting on the TV production Holocaust. It is certainly time that we Jews (and Jews...

Sir: Your correspondents' points are easily disposed of. No English court would accept The Testament of Adolf Hitler (London, 1961) – Martin Bormann's alleged notes on Hitler's...

Sir: Congratulations on your celebrations. The Provost of the Queen's College, Oxford, does scant justice in his history of thd paper to that former Southampton Scholar of...

Sir: In your issue of 2 September you published an article by Patrick Marnham entitled 'Fear of flying' which centred on the problems of low-flying in this country. It might...

Fairly honourable men George Gale Honourable Men: My Life in the CIA William Colby (Hutchinson £5.95) The Night Watch David Atlee Phillips (Robert Hale £5.95) The author of...

John Haylock Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village Ronald Dore (Allen Lane £7.95) Professor Dore has known Shinohata since 1955, paying many visits to the village,...

O.R. McGregor Education in Rural England 1800-19 14 Pamela Horn (Gill and Macmillan £15) Many overseas visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1851 attended the Royal Agricultural...

Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd The Face on the Sphinx Daphne Fielding (Hamish Hamilton £5.50) 'I never saw a girl with such beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness...

Benny Green The Street Where I Live Alan Jay Lemer (Hodder and Stoughton E6.50) Bookibecome indispensable for all sorts of reasons, some because they are masterworks, others...

Paul Ableman The Cement Garden Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape £3.50) This short novel is just about perfect, and! found it depressing. Not because of its theme, which concerns...

Hard corps Peter Jenkins Cousin Vladimir (RSC, Aldwych) Shout Across the River (FISC, Warehouse) Ubu (Young Vic) Measure for Measure (Downstairs, Roundhouse) David Mercer's...

Beastliness Ted Whitehead The Beast (Prince Charles) The story goes that when Frederick the Great heard that one of his cavalrymen had had sex with his mare, he commented:...

Free rein John McEwen Norman Stevens's exhibition of prints at the Redfern in now over, the work has been taken off the walls, but it can still be viewed on request —...

Gossiping Richard Ingrams At the Spectator's lavish 150th birthday party at the Lyceum last week I found myself bearded by the overpowering figure of Mr Robin Day. It was high...

Season's end Alan Gibson It has not been, to put it mildly, one of the more exhilarating cricket seasons, though some of the gloomier prophecies made about the progress of Mr...

Swansong Taki Not since Truman Capote's 1966 New York bash for '1000 of my closest friends' has there been such a brouhaha among the jet-set over a party. Back then it was...

Clocking on Jeffrey Bernard A heading in my local paper caught my eye last week, and that takes some catching when it's the Newbury Weekly News in pursuit. Usually, the...

Singing songs Geoffrey Wheateroft 'Strange, how potent cheap music can be,' says the hero of Ian Kilbannock's favourite play. (That's enough of clever allusions.) No singer of...