lister diary: George Gale Vestward look! Rawle Knox ilegies for dead soldiers 4sgrave: Home abroad iam White on Paris laggard on Kim Philby Mr Prior's suggestion to the 1922...

he strings? 2r 's election results are neither as good as was hoped for nor Id was feared. Had Fauiknerite Unionists, pledged to try lake the White Paper proposals,...

Sir: 1 recently read an article in the Pacific Islands Monthly for June 1973. It was entitled ' Even a Nuclear Cloud can have a Gold Lining.' It was from a special...

Sir: I have read Dorothy Becker's outburst in reply to my letter of June 16. Her first remark had to do with my address. I am indeed not a barrister of the Middle Temple —...

Sir: I have been called many things in my time (there was a Maoist pamphlet only the other day, for instance, which accused me of being not only the dregs of humanity, but even...

Sir: If the Pope holds himself LO be infallible, when speaking ex cathedra. then he should be very careful of what he says. The same applies to Dr Rowse when he lays down the...

Sir: I am very sorry that Christopher Sykes should have followed Dr Rowse in descending to personal abuse in an attempt to discredit Baconians. It is 99 per cent certain that Mr...

were a Descartes SocietY like The Francis Bacon Society then Dr Rowse might well call their' " crackpots" if they ascribed the works to his contemporary Corneille . No...

11-: President Nixon's "desperate linging to an office which daily he eakens " is, as you pointed out in st week's editorial, one of the sadest and most shameful aspects of the...

Sir: May an until recently homeless liberal attempt to encourage Mr An.thony Lejeune (" We homeless conservatives" (Jiine 23) to follow Mr Enoch rowell's advice re the next...

Sir: When Canon Hugh Montefiore's suggestion about the possible homosexuality of Christ (referred to in ' Husbands of Christ,' May 5) was reported in the press, a statement from...

Sir: Much muttering in Labour Party circles, and counter-mutters in the same circles, on 'nationalisation.' Ah, the efforts to find out remedies for national sicknesses — and...

Sir: Show a photograph of John Peyton to a hundred people in the street and I would guess that ninety-five of them would say: "Who is that? " Twenty-five people are killed on...

Sir: May I, through your columns, put , to Mr Enoch Powell and his adherents over the Common Market a point that I do not remember seeing canvassed anywhere? If Mr Powell's...

see the Spectator join the ranks of hypocritical double-standard supporters on the question of immigration. . As Mr Bond says, (June 30) "is not Immigration a 'matter for...

The results of the Manchester Exchange byelection, where Labour held the seat against a strong Liberal challenge, and the Tory lost his deposit, are not easy to interpret. For...

atrick Cosgrave a el II ly en, in the early hours of Tuesday mornSir Alec Douglas-Home left his birthday ty at Downing Street to fly to Helsinki for opening session of the...

Ueorge Gale IVIonday June 25 Leaving London the evening was fine, In Belfast it was pouring with rain. There had been a routine and rudimentary security check .at London...

Rawle Knox West of the Bann. Ulstermen think of the selves as different. The Bann River of cowl' runs in the north of the province, to its motP at Portrush, but as an idea...

Max Wyndham friese last few months have seep the rise to internationl prominence of Sam Ervin, the seventy-four year old senator from North Caro lina who is chairman of the...

Edward Norman This week the General Synod of the Church of England has before it a report by the Bishop of Manchester's committee on The Reform of the Patronage System.' If...

Medicine Clandestine diagnosis John Linklater An extraordinary incident recently made headlines in a popular daily under the title 'Sex Dossier Rumpus.' It appears that...

Bernard Dixon A moratorium on undesirable re search — it's a beguilingly attractive idea, much mulled over these days by some advocates of ' social responsibility in science.'...

In thinking of plants to clothe south-facing walls in the warmer parts of the country, the ancient fig is often overlooked. Its large, distinguished, three-lobed leaves, harking...

An odds-on winner, a ' win-only ' third and a stayer that never started — but was greedily backed ante-post — are not the stuff of which great fortunes are made. However, the...

At this season of roses I often wonder, subversively, whether all the trouble men have taken, over innumerable centuries, to multiply and elaborate the rose has been as...

Richard Luckett: words and music "That your book has been delayed I am glad. since you have gained an opportunity of being more exact. Of the caution necessary in adjusting...

Sam White Paris Was Yesterday Janet Flanner (Angus and Robertson £2.95) Miss Flan ner has a love of France which begins with her stomach and ends with her head. As she has _a...

William Haggard Philby: The Long Road to Moscow Patrick, Seale and Maureen McConville (Hamish Hamilton £3.50) What, another book on Philby? Yes, and a good one. The reader...

nugh Stephenson Mafia Nicholas Ga g e (Talmy Franklin £2.70) The Billion Dollar Killing Paul Erdman (Hutchinson £2,20) The Dollar Covenant Michael Sinclair (Gollancz C1.90) To...

Peter Ackroyd Forewords and Afterwords W. H. Auden (Faber and Faber £3.95) For the poet, the discipline of prose writing is necessary but subsidiary. It demands too much...

THE • GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS OF COMMUNIST CHINA . .a book jam-packed with judiciously selected information. Its significant advance over similar past attempts to outline the...

Tony Palmer The Demise of a Poet David Kaye (Calder and Boyars £2.50) The Flight of Icarus Raymond Queneau (Calder and Boyars £2.50) Crash J. G. Ballard (Cape £2.25) Art will...

Paperbacks I begin, this week with two paperbacks from Faber and Faber, a house not known for its lightheartedness. First, an edition of Aristotle's Ethics (E2.25) or, rather,...

Bookend Few of the new breakaway publishers can claim the success of the dynamic Mitchell Beazley duo. Within a year of leaving Lord Thomson's Nelson in 1969 they had, with...

Kenneth Hurren on the rock of other ages The new musical, Greose, at the New London, is an evocation not only of the world of the ebullient young of the late 'fifties but of...

Vegetable, animal, minimal Evan Anthony Who knows but that the way to an art patron's heart — and purse — may well be through his stomach. Operating on that premise, perhaps,...

Something for everyone Christopher Hudson • — Greenville, Ohio, during the American Civil Wars. A young man called Drew Dixon hides under a curtained table while the army...

Out and about David Rees One of the better features of BBC1 these past few weeks is the projected six-part Journey through Summer, which originates from Birmingham. The...

Institute and Market guesses Nicholas Davenport One begins to get bored by the continual wrangling of the professional economists. I made my protest against the Jayschool —...

Mitchell Somers John Bull The recent record of Mitchell Somers has been nothing to write home about. Pre-tax profits last year sank from £598,000 to £310,000 and in the first...

Nephew Wilde After a few drinks I find that I can, in a mellowed state of mind. be very liberal with my money. Yet in more sober moments (and there are some) I think (and I do...

Slater/Walker has been Savagely attacked by the Sunday Times on three successive weeks with pieces by a Mr Searjeant and a Miss Sullivan. I recommend the Sunday Times of July 1...

Benny Green About a hundred years ago in English cities, there appeared a new type of feminine sensibility, compounded of comically antithetical elements. It was a type so new...