What exactly is the policy of the British Government in Ulster, and what is the resolution Mr Wilson and his ministers foresee for that unfortunate province? The question is...

The GLC and various other local authorities have now sent out many thousands of summonses to those who have refused, either on grounds of principle or because they cannot...

Israel and Arabs From Dr Paul Laic Sir: It was a welcome relief to read Patrick Cosgrave's references in his Middle East article (August 23) to the remarkable Open Bridges...

Sir: In this, as in too many other topics, people today ignore the severe work of former authors. In this case they ignore the great work of S. G. Hobson. His work on workers'...

Sir: Valerie 'Riches (August 16) has detailed what she. chooses to call the "numerous tentacles of the unholy alliance" of organisations working in the birth-control field. Mrs...

Sir: Your motoring correspondent Peire Paul Read (August 23) writes divertingly about how he came to be the owner of a "middle-aged bourgeois" Renault 16. The path we followed...

From Group Captain C. E. Williamson Jones Sir: I belive that I have hit on a way to cure inflation which is practicable and which the nation will watch with keen interest, like...

From Lieut Commander N. Paulley, RN (Retd) Sir: Although the Tories changed their leader in February, it is clear that many Positions of power within the party remain safely in...

Sir: How much one must support the verse on Metric Madness by Ogilvy Lane (August 23). The only objection is that those who ought to take notice Will not take such sentiments as...

Sir: Shortly after reading Philip Crabtree's letter in your issue of August 16, I ?e' ad the Ottawa Citizen's account of the one-day strike of about half the corps of...

Sir: Hugh Lloyd-Jones may disbelieve in the 'Mosaic authorship and veracity of the Pentateuch (August 23). But if he pretends to be a scholar he is not entitled to assert with...

Sir: Peregrine writes (August 23) that he has travelled the length of Loch Ness once or twice and he knows that there is no monster. He arrives at his conclusion with arrogant...

Patrick Cosgrave In November last year Sir Keith Joseph made a speech in Birmingham containing some ill-advised remarks about birth control. There was an intense and hostile...

Being had is never a very happy experience, and I have recently been pretty comprehensively had. The story goes like this. In July The Spectator carried a leading article on...

There was one depressing aspect of a recent visit to Israel, and it lay in comparing the Christian Holy Places with those of the Moslems and Jews. The old city of Jerusalem is...

Eamonn de Valera, whose long innings has 'just ended at the age of ninety-two, was perhaps the only figure of the Irish Revolution – except, possibly, Pearse – to attain the...

I am continually at war with the medical profession, especially on the question of smoking and lung cancer, and the engagements in that war usually occur when I have the...

Jim Higgins George Woodcock's dictum that what happens during the other fifty-one weeks is infinitely more important than the decisions of a,five-day seaside junket receives...

John Organ Spain's 13,000-strong officer corps, which for so long appeared monolithic in support of General Franco, is growing increasingly restless as the dictator, nearly...

The do-it-yourself war Rawle Knox When, you may ask, is a ceasefire not a ceasefire? In Ireland the answer is when someone in the bloody crowd blows the restart whistle. That...

Grey skies for home services David W. Wragg Britain's domestic air services receive scant thought from a public which can conveniently travel by car, train or long-distance...

The old laws break down Tom Margerison That old war-horse of radio-astronomy, Sir Bernard Lovell, succeeded last week in turning the often dull British Association...

The dedicated diplomat of African unity David Hamilton Haile Selassie, who died last week, was one of those men of whom legends were made in his own lifetime and about whom...

Dual loyalties David M. Jacobs With increasing numbers of immigrants of different religious and ethnic backgrounds in this country, the problem of dual loyalty is becoming...

My elegant but anachronistic colleague Tom Puzzle was slightly offended by my recent mention of battery-powered fans for cooling the arm-pits. He is himself a devotee of the...

I learn from usually unreliable sources that the House of Commons is ordering thousands of pounds worth of German crockery. This is the first progressive gesture made by this...

One Spectator reader who took a very serious view of our recent disclosures on squatters was the senior waiter in my St James's Street Club, Joe Stott. Stott, as he is known,...

The gleaming white objects which brightened the murky Thames during last week's Festival of Sail included tall ships, short ships, oyster smacks and Mr Edward Heath. Further...

A man cannot live on oysters and smoked salmon alone. (Indeed I think that oysters are about the only things that are safe from a Peregrine's claws). This was my message to the...

From the Correspondence I receive, I may cast my Readers under two general Divisions — the Mercurial and the Saturnine. The first are the gay part of my Disciples, who require...

I was hoping to ignore pop festivals but after the Daily Telegraph's alarmist reports of killer drugs, nudes and excreta how could I? I went to the Reading Festival rather than...

Bad news for anyone who has become a fan of the Sensational Mohawks Circus Troupe since I wrote about them a couple of months ago. You will remember them as the last bareback...

I'm glad to see that the Irish Senator Paddy McGrath has been reading Peregrinations. A few months ago I said that as his company, Waterford Glass, was sponsoring several races...

W as pe The return of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead to the West End has Prompted the shrewdly enterprising Soho Poly lunchtime theatre to plan a revival...

My tale this week is of a very disillusioned man — a civilised American anglophile called David A. Jasen, author of the new 'authorised' biography of P. G. Wodehouse published...

Germaine Greer on Thatcher, a saint without miracles Hagiographers are not what they used to be. Neither Russell Lewis nor George Gardiner, whose books entitled Margaret...

Robert Skidelsky James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century Bruce Mazlish (Hutchinson £6.50) On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill...

Margaret Drabble Byron's Letters and Journals Volume Four: Wedlock's the Devil. Edited by Leslie Marchand (John Murray £5.75) Lord Byron's Family Malcolm Elwin (John Murray...

Peter Washington Collected Poems Stevie Smith (Allen Lane £8.50) From the Joke Shop Roy Fuller (Andre Deutsch £2.25) North Seamus Heaney (Faber and Faber £2.95) In the Hours...

Neville Braybrooke My Father and Myself J. R. Ackerley (Bodley Head £3.00) The Secret Orchard of Roger Ackerley Diana Petre (Hamish Hamilton £4.95) In 1966 Joe Ackerley sent...

Richard Luckett Robespierre George Rude (Collins £4.95) Robespierre: or the Tyranny of the Majority Jean Matrat (Angus and Robertson £6.30) Cesare Pavese defined destiny as...

Jan Morris The Golden Riviera Roderick Cameron (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £4.95) Many of us of a certain age had our first glimpse of the South, our first sip at the beaker, in...

Artfulness Peter Ackroyd The Needle Francis King (Hutchinson £3.45) The Gamekeeper Barry Hines (Michael Joseph £3.50) There has always been a dark side to Mr King's novels,...

Goofy Benny Green So keen was I to read David Jasen's book about P. G. Wodehouse* that I actually went into a bookshop and bought a copy; greater love than that no reviewer...

Education The revolution that never was Rhodes Boyson, MP In Dur wasteful 'welfare age' every MP receives letters alleging that people on social security buy colour...

John Linklater A report published under the auspices of the National Foundation for Educational Research, seeks to abolish the present slatutory period of compulsory reli g...

The departed Martin Sullivan Should we pray for the dead? The answer to this q uestion has divided Christians over the centuries, and recent attempts at litur g ical reform...

New York letter Summer in the galleries Ruth Berenson New York this summer has been packed with tourists from Europe battening on the dollar's unhappy state. Most of them...

Teutonic plague Kenneth Hurren Happy End, music by Kurt Weill, book by Dorothy Lane, lyrics by Bertolt Brecht; English version by Michael Feingold (Lyric Theatre). There are...

Unholy family Kenneth Robinson Marjoe. Directors: Howard Smith, Sarah Kernochan. Star: Marjoe Gortner. 'AA' Screen-on-Islington-Green. (100 minutes). 'You've never seen,'...

Confessions Rodney Milnes I was wrong, hopelessly wrong, . about Mary Stuart on nearly every count eighteen months ago. The only possible extenuating circumstances are that...

The information machine Bill Jamieson It was Professor Ralf Dahrendorf himself who warned in a recent television interview of the dangers of too participatory a democracy....

It is a sign of real depression when Slater Walker Securities Ltd reports a sharp drop in profits. For the six months ended June profits have slumped from £10 million to £2.2...

Bernard Hollowood We all know how the weather influences our attitude to work. A clerk glances up from his ledger and observes that the sky is an uninterrupted wash of blue,...

Charles IL Stahl The current outcry in the United States against the sales of grain to the Soviet Union and the fear that such sales will greatly aggravate domestic inflation...