roversy over Sir Harold Wilson's resignation i tnnours has not been stilled by Lady Falkender's lette r indignant, illogical and somewhat desperate J. r to the Times, in which...

An honourable settlement was at last reached in the wretched cod war, which had cost Great Britain £3 million. Under its terms tw , e ntY-four British trawlers a day will be...

Where are the wonder kids? John Grigg Politics is a game which is best played, as a rule, by those who start playing it young. Very few of the major figures in our political...

When Mr Michael Heseltine, bearing the Royal Mace of the House of Commons above his head, advanced on the Government benches last week, some members feared that he was about to...

Trying to be fair Auberon Waugh My reflections on the most suitable Englishman to lead his country out of its present decline were interrupted last week by a telephone call...

Richard West Milan The British Airways cabin crew on the plane „Milan were openly contemptuous of the Zseogers. 'I wish they wouldn't stand in c . ":„gangway', one steward...

Brian Inglis In 1957 the late Brad Connors of the Unite d , States Information Services rang Me UP the Spectator — I was assistant editor at th e time—to ask the name of our...

G e°rge Gale A Year ago, on 5 June 1975, we voted in the referendum on the Common Market. In rna nY ways it feels much longer ago: our concern then, whether we should stay in...

Hugh Trevor-Roper Sir Harold Wilson has sometimes allowed himself to be compared with Mr Gladstone. There are indeed some resemblances. Both W00 Many elections and enjoyed long...

Patrick Cosgrave Two questions arise out of the ferocious rows which disfigured the proceedings of Parliament in the last week before Whitsun; and neither of them—save in one...

Andrew Alexander In conversation recently with a director of a large and well-known public company observed that what we were talking about was yet another example of the way...

Christopher Booker Mr Peter Shore ' s decision last week not to use his powers to save the majestic eighteenth-century PLA warehouses at Cutler Street, just behind Liverpool...

Cash madness Nicholas Davenport In the January number of Lloyds Bank Review Lord Kahn, whom I rate as the wisest of the old Keynesian eeonomists, remarked that the men who run...

Eye. Private Eye has always far as I know, paid its own legal bills and is t he as in a perfectly correct moral posi t, he to require that costs that are due to ,.th (or to...

is a coincidence that Mr James Gold should be given leave to bring proE" 4 ,, ings for criminal libel against Private bc e at the same time as a similar charge was in°kught...

Sir: It is difficult to believe that independence will create the proud, virile Scotland of Ludovic Kennedy's romantic dreams. Given the present balance between the...

Sir: W hat are the known facts and policies upon which Mr Geoffrey Rippon expects business leaders to speak out politically, chiding us for our failure to do so? 1 am no...

Auberon Waugh and think that he is one of the few people in the world who perceive where the sickness of our society lies and the causes thereof, I am rather worried about his...

Sir: With reference to the article 'How to confer' in a recent issue: the only practical way to confer, especially between different nationalities, would be by a language that...

Sir: It is ironic that John McEwen should have ended his review of the Royal Academy exhibition (22 May) with an attack on Sir Basil Spence, for he reveals in his review an...

goes steadily on almost impercepti blY we would do well to ponder the following words of Charles Morgan in 1948: 'A man's liberty is that area of his life which his...

A room with a review IChard Shone m ents of Being: Unpublished Auto- g r aPhical Writings of Virginia Woolf !cl 'tett by Jeanne Schulkind (Sussex usiniVersity Press £4.80)...

'This book is his personal view of the last 40 years of world affairs, centred on The Times but not confined to it, and a good story it is for those with a taste of history and...

Jan Morris A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence John E. Mack (Waldenfeld and Nicolson £6.95) I must declare an interest, almost an involvement, in this matter....

ck T jungle book otton th a ,, – ;! 1 Liberation Peter Singer (JonaT o w avoid mass page-turning, there is t he a."' e full stop—is a minor national joke, 4s ri:st i 411...

Benny Green Oscar Wilde H. Montgomery Hyde (Eyre Methuen £6.95) To write one good book about Oscar Wilde is fortunate; to write three sounds very much like greediness. Some...

Roy Fuller An indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress Thomas Hardy (Hutchinson £2.95) Hardy's first novel comes down to us as though the manuscript had, since its final...

Brigid Brophy Ernest K. Gann's Flying Circus Ernest Gann (Hodder and Stoughton £7.50) Who is Ernest K. Gann ? Critics of style will get the answer in one: a committee...

Harriet Waugh Monsier Proust Celeste Al baret (Harville Press £6.50) I cannot believe that Proust was quite as ghastly as this book by his housekeeper Celeste Albaret shows...

Richard West Cricket in a Thorn Tree: Helen Suzman and the Progressive Party Joanna Strangeways-Booth (Hutchinson During the Transvaal gold-miners strike of 1922 the local...

Beckett at the Court John Spurling PProaching the Royal Court Theatre duri ng its current Beckett season, I saw a greyhaired man gripping another by both shoulders on the...

Centre stage John McEwen Anthony Green is one of the most distinctive figurative painters at work in England today and apart from having two paintings at the Academy, of which...

Parodistic Ian Cameron The Deluge (AA) Paris Pullman Hot Times (X) Jacey On the whole, film critics do their viewing in very privileged conditions. Unlike the paying...

E. V. Gatacre The British Story of the American Revolution, or. as the posters and wall charts have it, 1776, is at the Maritime Museum, Greenwich, until 2 October (85p, 45p for...

Fine shape Michael Church When a dance company have proved their collective worth as conclusively as the Stuttgart Ballet did in their first two programmes at the. Coliseum,...

Twin set Jeffrey Bernard Mirror on Class (2nd House, BBC 2) took a look at the way television has handled class in the past, particularly in the 'fifties. Richard Hoggart and...