In some of the strictures made against the export of live food animals there is a touch of hysteria. In all of them there is more than a touch of reason. There are good grounds...

No room to swing a mace Ferdinand Mount Uncle Matthew's only argument for keeping peeresses in their own right out of the House of Lords was that, if once they got in, they...

News from Israel at times like this always gives an impression of a land exclusively Peopled by unshaven violinists rushing out between rocket attacks to gather oranges arid...

Masquerading as progressive Auberon Waugh One small crumb of comfort to emerge from Ethiopia last week was the news that the 'broad mass of the people', having murdered...

Nicholas von Hoffman Washington Whatever political and propaganda advantage the Israelis might have received from the PLO massacre north of Tel Aviv was lost here by the...

Anthony Mockler So the Ethiopian Empire has survived. It is beginning to-look as if 'the time of troubles', the traditionally chaotic period that follows the death or disability...

Thomas Szasz The present popular protest against Soviet Psychiatric abuses is not only a flagrant case of selective indignation, it is, so far as prominent American...

Thomas Balogh The Budget is but a few days away. Thus the Publication of the White Paper on North Sea Oil last week was perhaps not altogether coincidental. The Government is...

June Lait The work of Sir Karl Popper is of great value to one struggling to find a conceptual framework for the ragbag of ideas that underlie what those who teach it call...

Tony Craig A strong case can be argued, at a time of cheaper mortgages and falling interest rates, for freezing council rents. The corollary is higher government grants (and,...

Roy Assersohn The Wilson committee is halfway through its marathon inquiry into the workings of the City. The complacent dismiss the exer cise as a costly irrelevance, arguing...

Our Easter egg Nicholas Davenport Of all the oil slicks threatening our shores the oiliest is the Government's White (it should have been Green) Paper on North Sea Oil. As the...

Sir: The facts recorded by Count Nikolai Tolstoy concerning the fate of some two million Russians in 1944-7 are hard to take. But Christopher Booker is right; they must not on...

Sir: Mr Booker (Notebook, 18 March) accuses me of not having read 1- 01. 1 Bethell's and Count Tolstoy's books. might be forgiven if I had not, since together they require at...

Sir: John Grigg (18 March) must be looking through National 'Heath' coloured spectacles. Translate 'stubborn' for 'brave' and 'myopic' for 'far-sighted'. He may be respected...

Sir: It must be galling for Lord Houghton of Sowerby to discover that an organisation of whose aims he evidently disapproves has had the effrontery to set up shop in his former...

Sir: Could I enlist both your support and that of any interested readers of the Spectator in a campaign we are conducting for press freedom and human rights in Pakistan?...

The presse working Robert Blake The Oxford University Press and the Spread of Learning: An Illustrated History Nicholas Barker (Clarendon Press: Oxford University Press £10)...

John Grigg Arms and the Wizard: Lloyd George and the Ministry of Munitions, 1915-1916 R. 'J. Q. Adams (Cassell £8.50) In May 1915 the last Liberal government was replaced by a...

Benny Green Electric Delights by William Plomer, selected by Rupert Hart-Davis (Cape £6.95) The title is taken from a phrase of Charlotte Bronte's, 'The electric delight of...

Emma Fisher Henry's Fate and Other Poems John Berryman (Faber £2.75) Tossing and Turning John Updike (Deutsch £3.50) Frequencies R. S. Thomas (MacMillan £2.95) Berryman's...

Alex de Jonge The Sound o fMusic, it has always seemed to me, was the great box office success of its time because the char-h-banc loads of ladies from the WI who flocked to it...

Two books from Penguin are recommended to amateurs of natural history: The Naturalist in Britain by David Elliston Allen (£1.25) is a social history, the first on its subject,...

Paul Ableman The Professor of Desire Philip Roth (Cape £4.50) This may well be Philip Roth's most serious novel. I can't be sure because I have not read them all. But humour,...

Subversive improprieties Rodney Mimes The Grand Duchess of Gero!stein (Camden Festival) Spinalba (Camden Festival) Temeriano (Riverside Studios) Everything about Camden's...

Softsoap Mary Kenny I was talking to Robin Day it was last summer about the reason why Ian McIntyre, the Controller of Radio Four, was subject to so much criticism from BBC...

Anecdotes Ted Whitehead Zigoman la (Bush) The Spring Term Project (Hollywood) Class Enemy (Royal Court) Veronica Quilligan faces a novel acting problem in the role of Sylvie...

Puniness John mcEwen Stephen Buckley is the English artist of the moment, and vestiges of his first suite of !tchings, recently exhibited at Anthony ?t . okes, can still be...

Sinking Richard Ingrams The possibility of world supplies of old films running out must be worrying for the television companies, especially at Easter time when they rely...