Are we really too free? Ferdinand Mount Alexander Solzhenitsyn's speech at Harvard in June has just been reprinted in full in The Times (26 July), and in the current issue of...

In all probability we have now seen the last of the Parliament elected in October 1974. It has been a divided and O ften fractious Parliament. To the extent that it has...

Whatever the rights and wrongs of test-tube babies, one cannot but squirm when a child is used as a promotion stunt by the Daily Mail. The same newspaper in 1975 promoted an...

Honey still for tea Auberon Waugh Montmaur, Aude T he French have an greeablydecontracte air about them this year. For fifteen years now I have come to this remote area of the...

Vincent Ryder The non-aligned ministerial conference in Belgrade last week was like the transAtlantic balloonists. It hoped it was drifting in a safe direction, it had to chuck...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Every day the television announces that the dollar has dropped to yet a new post-World War Two low in relation to Japanese and German money....

Desmond Stewart Alexandria During Nasser's presidency, 23 to 26 July acquired a quasi-liturgical position in the Egyptian year: the first date commemorated the Cairo coup of...

Breaking-up Day has come in hundreds of Schools all over England, and boys have descended upon their happy parents and their peaceful homes. This has always been a serious event...

William Chislett When Franco died some Basques in Guernica, the traditional heart of the Basque country destroyed during the Civil War, toasted his death with French champagne....

Norman Lamont A former Cabinet Minister once told me of the only dealing he ever had with a Japanese politician. It was to do with Japanese subsidies for shipping, and he had...

Christopher Booker `Tyranny develops out of no other constitution than democracy — from the height of liberty . . . the fiercest extreme of servitude'. — Plato, The Republic...

Colin Brewer The successful delivery of Mrs Lesley Brown's much-publicised test-tube baby has set a number of interesting ethical cats among the theological pigeons. Some of...

John Torode Ours is a nice house. At least it was until eighteen months ago when Camden Council laid its compulsory claws on the prope rty. Since then it has been left standing...

Fit to print Patrick Marnham What is the point of a newspaper? According to our Ambassador in Washington it is `to find out what is going on and print it'. This week several...

Over the period since the 1964 general election there has been a substantial intake of scholars and academics by all the parties ,represented in Parliament. It can safely be...

Sir: Did you know that Jill Craigie's review (29 July), which kindly placed my Separate S.Pheres 'among standard works on the subject', was really a spoof, and was written by a...

Sir: You express thankfulness (29 July) that We no longer have the lash of poverty to drive people to work. Yet the carrot works only when the donkey is hungry; the stick is...

Sir: The editorial in the Spectator of 29 July was its usual masterly and elegantly written self: this made its unusual lapse from accuracy all the more astonishing — Wilde did...

Sir: How pleasant to read Peregrine Worsthorne's unfashionable and discerning panegyric on domestic service (July 22). He is surely not quite accurate though in saying that...

Sir: If Auberon Waugh had bothered to find out what Cardinal Hume actually said he might have been struck, as I was, by an explicit reference to the fact that More actually gave...

Sir: 'After all,' I wrote last Saturday, 'what distinguishes people from each other is their egos, not their ids, nor indeed their unconscious superegos, and once we have...

For the sake of argument William Waldegrave The Foundation of the Conservative Party, 1830-67 Robert Stewart (Longman £1 2.00) Conservative Essays Edited by Maurice Cowling...

Alastair Forbes Double Harness Lord Drogheda (Weidenfeld £10.00) R uminating, in the very brief interlude between retirement and death, his long years as General Administrator...

Raymond Carr The Civilizing Process Norbert Elias translated by Edmund Jephcolt (Blackwell £8.50) Why do we no longer look to see whether our chair has been fouled before we...

Benny Green Thou Swell, Thou Witty Dorothy Hart (Elm Tree Books £5.95) When a man thirsts for a glass of water, there is precious little point in filling his balloon with...

Fresh-minted Rodney Milnes The Return of Ulysses (Kent Opera) The Rake's Progress (Glyndebourne) How times do change. Until recently it was thought that the greatest block to...

Rosey futures Taki What do the Shah of Iran, the Kin g of Belg ium and Rainier of Monaco have in common except claims to royalty? And what is the common denominator between...

Denver ladies Marika Hanbury Tenison If you happen to be looking for a cure for obesity I suggest you follow my example and throw open your house to a group of lady American...

Eversince I started watching television way hack in the mists of time grey-haired men in s uits have been coming on to discuss the state of the British economy — spokesmen from...

T Oiya totters F laYmond Keene Baguio After a quiet draw in the fourth game of his title defence, an Open Ruy Lopez which followed the second game for fourteen Moves and lasted...