There is no need to get unduly excited by last weekend's somewhat stagey evidence, in the shape of masked men by the side of temporary barriers made of buses and the like...

Corridors TOM PUZZLE PASSES the following extract on without comment. It is taken from an Aims of Industry pamphlet entitled Economic Argument.' " The fundamental difference...

Piccadilly plot Roger Barnard The rough ride which the latest proposals for Piccadilly Circus have received from press and public alike should surprise no one, least of all...

Graham Martin Ariel Like a Harpy: Shelley, Mary and Frankenstein Christopher Small (Gollancz £3.75) There can't be many nineteen-year-old novelists who have broken upon the...

Richardson %t e 'Icbard Poirier (Fontana Modern rs 40 13) kkh,"riters have found themselves as v ely entertaining as does Mailer li 1, °°/°rie sense he might have called all...

Are publishing editors a dying breed? In an article in last week's New Statesman, Giles Gordon suggested that their function may increasingly be taken over by the literary agent...

Sir Derek WalkerSmith's committee-stage amendment to the Finance Bill, seeking a zero rating on works of art for VAT purposes, was neatly 'bought off' by the Chancellor with an...

Meanwhile, theatre people have another focus for their indignation in Westminster City Council's plans to demolish the Criterion Theatre as part of the latest scheme to...

Low society Kenneth Hurren

The city of Munich has long been associated with excess. From the extravagance of its architecture in the eighteenth century to the lunatic extremes of Ludwig II in the...

Sir: I fail to understand why the present Government's refusal to grant a referendum on the Common Market should be treated as evidence of contempt for " Parliament or for the...

Sir: It is curious to be reading letters about the New Statesman in The Spectator. But here goes, with another letter, though one which wasn't rejected by the New Statesman....

Sir: The article by Vernon Coleman, 'General Practice ' (April 29), is not up to the usual standard of worthwhile comment in your esteemed weekly. It does not have sense or...

Sir: In my article on disability published in your issue of April 8, I spoke of DIG's campaign to get the terms of reference of the Attendance Allowance widened so as to bring...

From Sir Walter Adams and others Sir: Norman Bentwich, who died in April 1971, was a man with a wide range of interests. He had been, amongst other things, AttorneyGeneral in...

Sir: I am carrying out research in the theory and history of yoga in connection with the Yoga Quarterly Review which is at present the only scholarly journal on this subjeot in...

Sir: Mr Scott (Letters, May 6) does not refute my main point, which was that at Slimbridge there exists, for the curiosity of the public, a collection of birds, many with their...

Aunt Maude's legacy Nephew Wilde LAST Tuesday was a gloomy day. I woke with a deplorable sense of guilt that only increased from the moment I dressed in my darkest suit to the...

arisen between Sir Keith Joseph and his liberal critics on the question of the measures taken by the DHSS to investigate the private lives of women claiming social security...

s °rgari isational recommendations of y be, eehohni Committee's report went far ond Prev. the local bringing together of tl!: arid 1°1181Y f ragmented welfare, childreil t hat...

Right scrutiny Bernard Dixon Recent debate about the future of university science has thrown up hints of a very odd alliance indeed, between the traditional guardians of...