The nauseating prurience of the popular press in its treatment of the breakdown of Princess Margaret's marriage should not conceal from us the fact that the Princess's...

Today energy is a scarce and costly resource, to be managed rather than just used or consumed. Energy management implies that the consumption of energy is carefully planned and...

Summer Time came in with a spell of . bitterly cold weather: eight inches of snow fell on some parts of England. The change aggravated European problems, as the various ....

The puppets fall down Patrick Cosgrave A fortnight ago—less perhaps—nearly any journalist in Westminster—nearly any dispassionate observer, for that matter—would have held to...

It didn't take long for the evidence of Fleet Street's new labour-management harmony, discovered by the Royal Commission on the 'Press, to look flimsy indeed. Following a...

Report from the Front Auberon Waugh Languedoc In a mountain village once dedicated to the Catharin heresy, some sixty kilometres north of Perpignan, I am led blindfold into the...

Amit Roy 'We can't show breasts,' Vinod Mehta, editor of Debonair, India's first 'girlie' magazine, said despairingly. The Bombay-based monthly had been persuaded to drop its...

Martin Walker Barcelona Since Franco's death, Spain has confounded those critics who confidently prophesied instant chaos after the removal of his trembling old hand from the...

Xan Smiley Salisbury When Rhodesia becomes Zimbabwe there will presumably be nepotism, tribalism, bloody factional infighting, hypocrisy, inefficiency and sloth—all the usual...

Nicholas Ridley The argument about whether we should have a prices and incomes policy, or not, seems to take place without reference either to the outside world, or to the...

Mary Kenny There has been a controversy recently about dried babymilks, the powdered milk formulas given to most babies in this country under the age of six months. The brand...

Norman Lamont Some hopes have been expressed that Mrs Thatcher, when she becomes Prime Minister, will revive hereditary peerages. Though it is good to know the spirit of Tory...

James Hughes-Onslow It's exactly a year since my house was converted to North Sea Gas, that gold bar in Britain's backyard, and five straight idiots from the North Thames Gas...

Elisabeth Dunn There was this woman who had two problems. One was that she was stout and the other was that she could never say no when her neighbour asked her to babysit. To...

Nicholas Davenport IfI were Mr Healey I would still be very indignant at Mr Wilson's abrupt abdication. Here was the poor Chancellor recovering his poise after a vicious attack...

Greece turns left Sir: So Professor Devletoglou is at it again. The last time I commented on one of his articles he was arguing in a contemporary of yours, ostensibly from a...

Sir: Councillors in receipt of attendance allowances (introduced some time after the 1973 elections for the reorganised local authorities were over) appeared, so far as the...

The nanny state Sir: May I add to your comments on compulsory seat-belts in cars ? I have driven vehicles of many kinds for not far short of fifty years. I must have driven...

Lord Norwich on the Normans of south Italy, I was very disappointed by his facile, indeed at times fatuous, review of the recently published works by Professors Douglas and...

Sir: Why should we, as working classes, have bottles of inferior, expensive, vinegary, rubbishy — and now bloody expensive — continental wines in our cupboards when we can have...

Sir. The dangers to our society stressed by Solzhenitsyn are virtually identical with those cited by Lloyd George in his diagnosis of the Russian Revolution published some forty...

Sir: Though I haven't seen the film Moses I can well imagine that Kenneth Robinson's assessment of it as bad and boring is probably a gross understatement. But to describe, as...

Sir: It was with delight that I read Patrick Cosgrave's article 'Lengthen the dole queues' on 31 January 1976. It has seemed almost beyond my understanding the naivety of both...

Blood, thunder and Gore Peter Ackroyd Washington, D.C. Gore Vidal (Heinemann 21.50) Burr Gore Vidal (Heinemann £2.75) 1876 Gore Vidal (Heinemann £4.10) 1876, the latest of...

Shiva Naipaul World of Hunger Jonathan Power and Anne-Marie Holenstein (Temple Smith £1.95) The Poor of The Earth John Cole ( Macmillan £2.95) A World Divided edited by G. K....

Alan Brien The Young Romantics Linda Kelly (Bodley Head £3.75) Revolution and Improvement 1775-1847 John Roberts (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £7.95) 'French flu' Arthur Koestler...

Duncan Fallowell Lost Profile Francoise Sagan (Andre Deutsch £2.75) The Family Arsenal Paul Theroux (HaMish Hamilton 0.75) 'He left both windows open and the night ail',...

Benny Green The Athenaeum; Club and Social Life in London, 1824-1974 (Heinemann E12.00) I come to a celebration of the Athenaeum Club with all the detachment and dispassion of...

GIOVANNI DI PAOLO by John Pope Hennessy (Chatto & Windus). THE HERMITAGE World of Art (Thames & Hudson) Box 681. LIFE & TIMES OF THOMAS CORYATE by Michael Strachan (OUP). P. A....

Hilary Spurling Unwritten Memories Katia Mann edited by Elisabeth Plessen and Michael Mann. Translated by Hunter and Hildegarde Hannum (Deutsch £3.95) Thomas Mann's widow,...

David Levy Stalin's Masterpiece: The 'Show Trials' and Purges of the Thirties—The Consolidation of the Bolshevik Dictatorship Joel Carmichael (Weidenfeld and Nicolson £6.95) In...

Christine Brooke-Rose Paris At a literary dinner in London last year, the conversation was wholly about who had reviewed what where. Unable to express an opinion when asked, I...

Between the lines John McEwen When Peter Phillips arrived from Birmingham at the Royal College of Art in 1960 he responded immediately to the new freedom inherent in American...

Spaced out Kenneth Robinson The Man Who Fell to Earth Director: Nicolas Roeg Stars: David Bowie, Candy Clark, Buck Henry, Rip Torn Leicester Square Theatre 'X' (140 mins)...

Honky-Tonk Kenneth Hurren Mardi Gras by Melvyn Bragg, songs by Alan Blaikley and Ken Howard (Prince of Wales) 13 Rue de l'Amour by Georges Feydeau (Phoenix) Out of Practice by...

Workmanlike Jeffrey Bernard hist occasionally I'd like my set to blow up. I Mean, what is the point of sitting there tut ting and seething unable to turn the w retched thing...