For the moment, Fleet Street enjoys a respite in the battle between the Newspaper Publishers' Association and the National Graphical Association. But it is a respite only: it is...

Whatever may have been said by Mr Anthony Crosland, the proper reasons for not proceeding Wth the Channel Tunnel are its logistical irrelevance and the technologically immature...

The handling of the IRA's Christmas truce, and all that followed it, has been marked bY exceptional ineptitude, both on the part of those busybody clerics who bustled to and fro...

We complained last week that President Ford had yet to present to his country and to the world a coherent economic strategy for hi s administration. He had now presented a twit'...

Tether and the 'Fr Sir: The editorial treatment of my Lombard column in the Financial Times has been the subject of some comment in your paper that may have tended to create a...

Patrick Cosgrave If I start with a reference to the sorry condition of the Tory Party, I hope readers will not immediately turn to another page, on the grounds that this record...

Whatever you may think of John Stonehouse, and it's probably not much, he has brightened a gloomy winter. The case he has made against a Select Committee to consider his...

Madame Prunier, the owner of the boring fish r estaurant in St James's Street, celebrated her birthday last week. With the Caprice closing and the Savoy Grill admitting that...

Tne Scottish Daily News has joined the old Fischer Bendix plant in Liverpool in getting a grant from Mr Tony Benn's Department of Industry to start a workers' co-operative. They...

In a week when the Department of Industry has been making generous grants to industries that have no chance of reaching self-sustaining existence, the Imperial Typewriter...

I see that Hugh Fraser, Lady Antonia's husband, and Lord Longford's son-in-law, is to be a candidate in the Tory leadership election. Fraser, it is said, does not seriously...

The official inflation figures are no joke; the reality is even more disturbing. One handy indicator I have is the British Rail breakfast which, in the past couple of years, has...

When Cedric Higginbotham fought The last election, he besought His voters not to be misled By anything the Tories said, For workers, in demanding more, Did nothing to make...

It is a lamentable thing that every Man is full of Complaints and constantly uttering Sentences against the Fickleness of Fortune when People generally bring upon themselves all...

A Senior Officer Following Mr Merlyn Rees's statement last week, envisaging, at least, the eventual withdrawal of the army from Northern Ireland, the idea of such a withdrawal...

Toby O'Brien Now that the new session in Parliament has started the person I am most sorry for is my old friend, Mr Speaker, Selwyn Lloyd. By all accounts, from my...

, fear that I am not among those who are weeping salt tears over the difficulties in which at the moment the Central Intelligence Agency IS finding itself. Seldom can there have...

(To the tune of 'Daisy, Daisy') OPec! Opec! Lend us some sterling, do! We're near shipwreck, All on account of you. We're paying you all our money, But this won't seem so...

In the early days of the second world war the various intelligence services were always arresting each other. I was told the following story by the late Sir Desmond Moreton, who...

Of course there will never be any espionage centre as remarkable as Lisbon during the last war. I spent three months in the summer of 1940, the months which covered the fall of...

I had a letter recently from my old friend, Sir Arthur Bryant, the historian. Arthur is one of the kindest and nicest of men but alas, I fear, he committed an atrocity in the...

The first of a new series of articles dealing with matters relevant to British membership of the EEC and the forthcoming referendum 1. Public opinion The remarkable and...

Zdicine and morality Fox on sex on the box John Linklater Modern teaching method makes Wide use of television or video-tape, largely because instruction absorbed...

Bill Grundy Due to a curious concatenation of circumstances too complicated to detail — which roughly means I have no idea how the hell I got there — I found myself, the other...

Philip Kleinman To censor or not to censor? That is the question I would like to return to this week, and the subject is of such importance that I make no apology for doing so...

Denis Wood At its simplest the cropping of a kitchen garden can be reduced to: three kinds of sprouting broccoli for picking between September and April, one kind of broad...

Martin Sullivan I came across a cutting the other day which I have kept beside me for many years. It is an extract from a copy of the New Zealand Listener and from the pen of...

Simon Raven on the perverse Mr Kingsley On Thursday, January 23, Charles Kingsley will have been dead for one hundred years. He is chiefly remembered for his juvenile classic,...

Terry Pitt Political Change in Britain David Butler and Richard Stokes (Macmillan £15.00) When David Butler and Richard Stokes produced in 1969 the first edition of Political...

Margaret Drabble Oliver Goldsmith, A. Lytton Sells (Allen and Unwin £6.75). Professor A. Lytton Sells has written a most engaging, informative, readable and eccentric...

Alan Brien Vassal': The Autiobiography of a Spy John Vassal! (Sidgwick and Jackson £4.50) It takes a while to accept that Vassall, by Vassal!, is actually a book meant to be...

Peter Ackroyd The Decay of the Angel Yukio Mishima (Seeker and Warburg £3.00) If the publishers are right and this is the "climax" of Mishima's work, I am very grateful to have...

THE GREEK VIEW OF LIFE by G. L. Dickenson and *SAHARA CONQUEST by R. St. Barbe Baker, — Box 543. DEATH BE NOT PROUD, Elizabeth Nicholas, — Box 545. THE END OF SOKARNO by John...

Benny Green Creative people who are not obliged to use language in their work very often have a disconcerting mastery of prose, almost as if composing a witty and perceptive...

Bookend If the Observer thought it could quietly drop its fortnightly bestseller lists without anyone noticing, it was oddly mistaken. Both the Bookseller and the London...

The End of Me Old Cigar by John Osborne (Greenwich Theatre) Macbeth 'by William Shakespeare ' (Young Vic) Laura, adapted from Strindberg ' s The Father by Steven Dartnell...

Kenneth Robinson • . The Prisoner of Second Avenue Director: Melvin Frank. Stars: Jack Lemmon, Anne Bancroft. 'A ' Warner West End One (95 minutes).. California Split...

Rodney Mines Among the many felicities of Anthony Besch's excellent new production of The Magic Flute for English National Opera Company is the fact that we hear so much of it....

Waspe (st, A down-turn in their London fine art auction business of 25 per cent during the last quarter has caused Sotheby's to recoup a small percentage of their losses by...

Facts of life for Mr Healey Nicholas Davenport It must have come as a shock to Mr Wedgwood Senn — and perhaps to some contributors of The Spectator — that Mr Ilealey's plan...

Rees-Mogg and the personal column Bernard Hollowocid Krugerrand. For sale, £85 or nearest offer, one Krugerrand in fairly good condition. Owner in need of interest or...

Nationalisation of the airframe manufacturers will not be the unmitigated disaster which at first it seems. To be sure in the short term all three companies will lose income:...

Charles R. Stahl Don't buy gold for investment. Gold is strictly an insurance of last resort. Don't buy gold from strangers or anyone you know who is not considered to be 24...