The Government's prices and incomes policy may be working, in the narrow sense that no union has yet succeeded in forcing an exception to be made. The country, for the time...

The Independent University — "an institution," according to one of its own publicity documents, "supported by private endowment and students' fees . . ." but determined to...

Hugh Scanlon showed himself in a curiously divided mood at lunch on Wednesday. He was anxious to do a deal on pay with the Government, but seemed still to think that the...

I am lachrymose. There is, I'm afraid, no denying it. I cannot say I discovered, but I can say I faced up to, that fact during the last six weeks when, each Sunday, I was a...

Who are the right ? Patrick Cosgrave There is in progress at the moment a struggle for the chairmanship of the Monday Club between the incumbent, Mr Jonathan Guinness,...

John Whiting's new-found play Eric Salmon Strange as it may seem, ten years after his death, there is a new, complete, full-length stage play by John Whiting. Only a handful...

In Amin's footsteps Jack Bannon A Ugandan black who works in Kenya returns to Kampala to visit his family. On his way home he stops to buy a case of beer, and the porter who...

What the Bishop saw Edward Norman Christian truth is not easily sifted from the cultural values of men. It was a proper instinct which suggested the importance of initiation...

Mr Mu q9 e.ri4v Mid LS KU . ilftS t111'011111.. M attclitstc i r Votb.tY 31AnLy to clevion.5tra,tt BJ d tilat 'tt's riorotroo vvd that a Mt sr of P 02tdatiOt1 311.0aLl Stao...

PUZZLE SENDS HIS CONGRATULATIONS to Neil Marten, who has just been readopted as Tory candidate for Banbury. It seems there was a move among members of the local executive to...

Philip Larkin's poems are characterised by vocabulary and technique as scrupulous as his ear and eye. One can be quite sure that whatever he undertakes he will carry out with...

Auberon Waugh The Breast Philip Roth Jonathan Cape £1.50) In the Bunker Constantine FitzGibbon Macmillan £2.50) There is a certain nobility in the spectacle of a man who finds...

Hugh Brogan From Resistance to Revolution Pauline Maier (Routledge and Kegan Paul £4.00) For some years now a new school of historians has been hard at work re-casting the...

Richard Luckett Prancing Novelist: In Praise of Ronald Firbanh Brigid Brophy (Macmillan £8) Other tombs boast their piles of wreaths; on Ronald Firbank's there repose but a...

The Bush Rebels Barbara Cornwall (Andre Deutsch £2.50) This is an eye-witness account of three months spent with the guerrillas fighting the Portuguese in two obscure parts of...

It cannot, of course, be said that with the deaths of Hugh (Binkie) Beaumont and Sir Noel Coward the whole edifice of homosexual domination of the British theatre will come...

Not so willkommen; Kenneth Hurren l itaa About halfway through the third, leaden act of the Bochum Schauspielhaus production of Little Man — What Now?, which opened the new...

Lost perspective Christopher Hudson As any film producer knows, if you want a pot of gold you first have to build your rainbow. Ross Hunter's rainbow is the Shangri-La of...

Home movie Clive Gammon Now what am I supposed to say about David Bailey's home movie, Warhol (ITV, as you cannot help being aware)? Not having, like almost everyone else in...

Beauty mistreatment Robin Young Perhaps that will teach them to let Sleeping Beauties lie. Our professional ballet critics having jibbed and jibed at the last Royal Ballet...

Benny Green The death in Baltimore last week of an obscure old punter called Benjamin Caplan is a reminder that immortality can come to a man in the oddest ways. For Caplan was...

Planting a tree Peter Quince In sanguine moments it is possible to think that a noble, leafy luxuriance will come upon this country as a result of the 1973 tree-planting...

Nicholas Davenport During the last account on the Stock Exchange equity shares, according to the FT ' Thirty ' Index, scored an advance of 27 points — the best effort since...

The bounce in Avon Nephew Wilde "I don't like the look of some of your Far Eastern holdings one little bit and if you asked me what to do, I would emphatically tell you to...

I am, if not exactly a connoisseur, then an avid watcher of TV ads. I often wonder why they do it. The other night, for example, I was watching a lavish Bovis ad about a new...

Good haul John Bull Last week Aberdeen witnessed an invasion of North Sea oil men. They were largely trying to sell their wares and size out the competition in the huge...

Molly Meacher After the recent emphasis on fairness for the lower-paid, the rates crisis has presented the Government with a nasty obstacle. Apart from the general concession...

Double helix Bernard Dixon Twenty years ago this weekend, two Cambridge scientists, Francis Crick and James Watson, were putting their finishing touches to the typescript of...

Sir: If I might be permitted to add a note to Dorothy Becker's admirable and important article (March 24), it is unfortunately the case that the right of an ordinary member of...

that abuse of which Dorothy Becker complains; it was called the dispensing power, and it was declared illegal in the Bill of Rights in 1689. Dorothy Becker's article strongly...

war-time Funf) has spoken (Letter in the Times, March 20). The fatal drawback to it is that, in the context of human fallibility, its use is irreparable. And that "for all but...

Sir: The correspondence in your columns regarding the possible reintroduction of capital punishment is as timely as it is interesting. No one, who is neither a sadist nor a...

Sir: Mr Gadd's letter against euthanasia ends with the question, "Why put an end to that?" With your permission, I propose to answer it, and in very simple terms. The shortage...

Sir: In your leading article (March 24) you call upon our Government to defend our fishermen and you suggest that "the essence of the quarrel is simple." I am all in favour of...

Sir: There are two nations in Ireland today, the British-Irish nation, and the Irish-Irish or Gaelic Irish nation. There never was one Irish nation, never even a feudal kingdom...

politicians realise what a dangerous precedent would be created? The indefinite suspension of Stormont was a partial victory for gun-law. Now the terrorists have secured...

of the White Paper on Northern Ireland Is indeed it's omission of any specific mention of education, but I believe an attempt to impose secularisation on schools woild be...

Sir: I read Barbara Hardy's review of Donald Davie's Thomas Hardy and British Poetry (March 10) with disappointment at what seemed to me her misrepresentation of both the scope...

Sir: You have published nothing better from the pen of Simon Raven than 'Milton Shulman and the box populi ' (March 17) — a superb philippic on philistine values. Of course much...

Unless you possess supreme confidence in your judgement, information or pre-race dreams, the Grand National should be approached like the lottery it is. You don't honestly...

Sir: If the Duke of Devonshire goes to such lengths, in order to avoid listening to Mr Powell, what on earth will he do if and when his Constituency Association is threatened...

being treated abominably by the so called Conservative Party and the conformist press, presu..s!cause he is remaining loyal to his Queen and country and to conservative...

Sir: Pamela Vandyke Price (March 3) really lets the cat out of the bag — or should it be the oyster out of the shell? — when she claims that over-indulgence in the convoluted...

What I find disturbing is that more and more countries are turning to sugar production because Admass provides a ready market. Western Europe is increasing production of beet...

Sir: You find it objectionable (March 17) that "grown people" should take students seriously. I, of course, am less upset about it. Indeed, I am positively pleased to see that...

sorry apology for a leading article on the front page of your March 17 issue entitled ' Fewer means better.' Whoever wrote it must have obtained his facts from a Christmas...

Sir: Custos (March 17) comments on the recent statement by sir Keith Joseph on heating allowances for families and old people. He is quite right that a general misconception now...