ARTS Strangers in Belmont HILARY SPURLING The Aferchant of Venice, which opened at the National Theatre last week, is set against high. crumbling walls, balconies, a covered...

Norman Douglas Sir: I am writing a biography of Norman Douglas and would be grateful indeed if any of your readers who knew him were to get in touch with me, or allow me to...

Cricket, lovely cricket Sir: I fully appreciate your dilemma (2 May). In a world going up in flames in Cambodia, Vietnam and Suez, apart from a thousand other evils that...

Angelica Kauffmann Sir: I am writing a book on Angelica Kauffmann and should be grateful to any reader who possesses or knows of correspondence or any other material in which...

Oxford letter Sir: I hoped that, after the parody in the Timecs, we had heard? seen? the last of your 'Mercurius'. Whoever he is, his Wardour Street, arch, twaddle is a...

Long to rein over us ... Sir: I Rvish to see Gale, G. in my study at 9.15. Column 2. Line 30. Statu tory. (Statuarv?) 0, Tempora, etc. P. H. Canhamn Headmaster, Kabalega...

Red hands across the sea Sir: British politicians will have to learn that elections in Northern Ireland are just as free as they are in England. Mr Quintin Hogg x',il have to...

Six weeks to judgment. \ir Jimes Reston once remarked that it is cals to put American troops on the mainland of Asia. The problem is to get them off again. This was the problem...

PICTURE BOOKS Rich and rare Candida LYCETT GREEN So rich the feast of illustrations in these books, that when they arrived in the house for reviewing, my daughter Lucy (five)...

Spy's eye view JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE Rridh Foreign Policy since Suez Donald Nl\,clean (Hodder and Stoughton 55s) Retrospective studies of British foreign polic% by former members...

Dark laughter C. M. WOODHOUSE House Arrest Helen Vlachos (Andre Deutsch 30s) The Nieiholo Pericles Korovessis (Allison and Busby 30s) It is hard to know whether to laugh or to...

ART Uneasy rider BRYAN ROBERTSON Bs coincidence, the catalogue for the Tate (jallery's exhibition of Larry Bell, Robert Ii' in, and Doug Wheeler, three artists from I os...

BACH FESTIVAL Rite of spring GILLIAN WIDDICOMBE Lina Udilandi is probably the craziest woman I know. She has this festival complex "hich produces this complex festival....

PUNISHMENT Judges' misrule GILES PLAYFAIR The Home Secretary and the Lord Chief Jultice are reported to be at odds about how t,, deal with murder. To judge from their...

THE PRESS Bloody madness BILL GRUNDY By thc tinm this appears in print the British press. %%fhich has many ills, ma) liame decided to end the heartache and the thousand...

CHILDREN'S BOOKS The perilous realm MOLLY LEFEBURE Contemporary Britain, it is said, provides a highly favourable climate for the growth of esoteric superstitious cults. Even...

Going down JOHN BULL It used to be said that inflation was good for equities --or at least, that if f ou feared inflation, equities provided some protection. Yet here we are,...

AMERICA Mr Nixon scares his own side MURRAY KEMPTON N-ewv York-The Mr Nixon we saw last u eek may or may not have frightened Hanoi, but he had clearly frightened far too many...

IMMIGRANTS Paks and bashers RAWLE KNOX May Day looked to be the first day of spring east of Liverpool Street. In and around the tenements of Spitalfields market, where...

LETTERS From Alan Seymour, E. A. Welch, John Kerr, L. E. Weidberg, A. S. Winder, P. H. Canham, James Harding, Lady Mayer. Radical scholarship Sir: I have looked in vain in the...

PERSONAL COLUMN A matter of principle JOHN ROWAN WILSON Dear Mrs Castle. At a time when National Wage Increase and Runaway Inflation Year is moving into full swing, 1 should...

Ancient Greek THOMAS BRAUN Atheons at War Rex Warner decorations by William Stobbs (Bodley Head 21s) Professor Warner's excellent Penguin trinslation of Thucydides offers 553...

First verse JIM SLIP The Young Puffin Book of Verse (Puflin is) This Way Delight Herbert Read (Faber Paperback 8s) Homize froln the Sea R. L. Stevenson edited by Ivor Brown...

Dream days ISABEL QUIGLY -4stercote Penelope Lively (Heinemann 21s) The White Dragon Richard Garnett (Puffin 4s) .4nne's Terrible Good Nature E. V. Lucas Gollancz 21s) Thle...

MONEY The end of the money game WILLIAM JANE WAY New York--Mr H1. Ross Perot has just lost i45l million in a day. He's the fellow who parlayed' a computer software outfit...

Swing song GERALDINE SYMONS The Swing in the Suimmerhouse Jane Langton (Hamish Hamilton 21s) The Shadow on th/e Sun Rosemary Harris (Faber 20s) Alice went to Wonderland down a...

Travellers' tales LEON GARFIELD I'le Ho)use in the Waves James HamiltonPaterson (Faber l6s) I he Devil's Children Peter Dickinson (Gollancz 20s) I he Guardians John...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY Whatever happened to Barbara? PETER PATERSON Whatever happened to Mrs Barbara Castle? In all the speculation about the shape of the next Labour...

VIEWPOINT Prometheus bound GEORGE GALE The most important modern function of the President of the United States is to take once in a while a critical decision which no other...

HISTORY BOOKS Hard sell PETER VANSITTART Pedagogy, thankfully, is no longer enough. Brute facts need not inhibit a book from becoming a work of art. For the book must survive...

SPRINGBOK TOUR Simply not cricket Peregrine WORSTHORNE This journal's reaonms for believing that it *would be wrong to call off the South African cricket tour wvere set out...