Does Mr John Pardoe wear a wig? This question—vital to British politics—is symptomatic of the great debate between the men struggling for the leadership of the Liberal Party. Mr...

It was hot. London had its longest heatwave ever recorded with the temperature in the nineties for several days. People drowned, Overcome with exhaustion. Hundreds of commuters...

How much, how soon ? John Grigg The other day I was asking an eminent man, much concerned with economic policy, if the TUC would accept an adequate revision of the Price Code...

A lot of nonsense has been put about in the effort to save three British mercenaries from the firing squad in Angola. It was right that Mr Callaghan should appeal to President...

A Frenchman at the court Auberon Waugh Perhaps it was no more than an attack of persecution mania brought on by knowledge of my country's abject state, but I can't help...

Xan Smiley God's stepchildren—that's the sad sobriquet of South Africa's 2.4 million Coloured People, outcome of three hundred years' miscegenation. While Soweto burns and...

David Rudnick Some are born great, some achieve greatness, while others, like Portugal's newly elected president, literally have greatness thrust upon them from right, left and...

To Kerpel There was nothing remarkable looking about the clothing shop. Up a couple of steps to the glass front doors and then into an unadorned room with two counters, crowded...

Jeffrey Bernard When the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Donald Coggan, made his Call to the Nation some eight months ago it went by unheard as far as I was concerned. I expect...

Christopher Booker In his review in last Sunday's Observer of one of the latest pieces of Sunday Times selfglorification, The Crossman Affair, Lord Goodman fell into...

Andrew Alexander The past weeks have seen much advice offered to pensioners with their small entitle ment of index-linked bonds about whether they should cash in the 20 per...

Hugh Macpherson Were Lord Macaulay alive in these permissive days he might amend his view that there was nothing quite so ridiculous as the British public in one of its...

Shirley Robin Letwin Not even Oscar Wilde would dare to say now that 'democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people'. Amidst the ruins of...

Heat waves in markets Nicholas Davenport As far as this commentator is concerned the visit of the French President was a wash-out. In all the platitudinous public statements...

'Lady in waiting' is hardly fair to Mrs Thatcher and his advice to her that she should desperately woo Mr Heath whose leadership lost us two successive ,lections, Mr Peter...

Mrs Thatcher as expressed in his rambling article, with its carping criticisms and gratuitous advice, is that she had the nerve to defeat Mt Heath who, Mr Grigg implies, is...

against Mr Heath, Mrs Thatcher 'showed extraordinary ruthlessness and disloyalty to the man who made her a Cabinet minister.' Maybe so. But Mr Heath's advocacy during the...

Sir: The long, strangely incongruous list of members of the National Committee for Electoral Reform given in the 'Notebook' of last week seems to show that what might be crudely...

Sir: The outline of Auberon Waugh's political sex extravaganza (19 June) provides enthralling reading but unfortunately has the demerit of being a closed book and therefore of...

Sir: Mr Baird is obviously not a regular reader of the Spectator, otherwise he would not have written the splendidly fatuous letter published last week. To rebut Mr Baird's...

Sir: As Mr Cook (19 June) says, the numbers game is one which two can play at. I could extract arbitrary dates through the years to prove that the cost of postal services...

Sir : The satirical piece to which your correspondent refers ran as follows: I knew a man of industry Who made big bombs for the RFC And pocketed lots of £ s d And he (thank...

Façade and reality Francis King Edith Sitwell: Fire of the Mind An Anthology by Elizabeth Salter and Allanah Harper (Michael Joseph £7.95) Joyce Cary: Selected Essays Edited...

Robert Skidelsky Cecil Rhodes John Flint (Hutchinson, £4.75) Today one is praised for giving up empires, not founding them. Once Cecil Rhodes was a popular hero. Millions...

Christopher Hill The English People and the English Revolution 1640-1649 Brian Manning (Heinemann £9.50) Nineteenth-century historians used to • speak of 'the English people'...

Anthony Blond The Weeping and the Laughter Viva King (Macdonald and Janes £5.95) There is no greater tribute to the beneficial effects upon a child of a broken home than the...

Duncan Fallowell Equinox Lorna Pegram (Gollancz £3.80) How I Became a Holy Mother Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (John Murray £3.95) 'Clare was looking, after so many years, amazingly .....

Benny Green Still Glides the Stream Flora Thompson (Oxford University Paperbacks £1.50) Somewhere in the letters of Rupert Brooke there is a passage where he describes a dream...

Good-time music Robert Cushman The first act of the evening at the London Palladium usually has my sympathy. Very often that is all it has; certainly it can boast very little...

Women Ian Cameron The publicity for Wives (Phoenix, East Finchley, X certificate) describes it—putting the words in quotes as if someone had actually said them—as 'sparkling,...

Marriages Rodney Milnes Any fool can mount a new production (and many do) provided the cheque book is the right colour. Revivals are a different matter, a matter in which...

Antipodes John Bridcut Australian music may perhaps be likened to the seed sown upon stony ground, which withered away because it had no root. If the Sydney Opera House is a...

Ghostly Kenneth Hurren Blithe Spirit (Lyttelton Theatre) Three Sisters (Cambridge Theatre) The late Noel Coward's 'improbable farce', Blithe Spirit, has been around for...

Pastorale John McEwen !von Hitchens (Waddington 1 and 2 till 3 July) is a painters' painter. If you really look at his pictures you will soon find that they are more to do...

Don't look now Jeffrey Bernard The thing to do with television at the moment is to ignore it. I know I'm going to get out of here as soon as I can and take myself off to the...