Thursday, November 18: As the 37th soldier was gunned down in Belfast, Mr Wilson labelled the situation des perate' in another quarter of the city. Hopes of a Common Ulster...

FREEDOM OF BROADCAST SPEECH The demand is raised that television programmes dealing with Ireland should be censored. They already are. The BBC exercises a form of...

The economic malaise this country has suffered since the war, usually summarised in the stop-go myth, supposes a contradiction between a healthy balance of payments and a...

Hugh Macpherson ' It'.' ti - relltime Minister's mind turn late at night as he sits cross-legged on the Downing Street carpet practising sheepshanks and running bowlines on an...

Dennis Hackett The Free Communications Group was born two years ago, an unwanted child, and oft referred to in Fleet Street boardrooms with the perjorative epithet such...

John Rowan Wilson When the United Nations set up the World Health Organisation in 1948 it found itself confronted with a minor but teasing problem. What exactly was health,...

SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK Denis Foreman of Granada TV invited some journalists to see the banned World In Action report on Ireland ' South of the Border.' The report was essentially...

Woman in a doll's house August Strindberg The Woman Question, upon which the foundations of our society are now said to rest, seems to me to be overrated. The Woman Question,...

Anti-lib Patrick Cosgrave Of course Women's Lib is a bore, partly because it has no sense of humour, partly because its various activities have little relevance to the very...

Alive and well and living in Belfast Jean Gardner I suppose the word Belfast in England is synonymous with gun-fire, blazing buildings shattered by bombs. It must be if your...

Auberon Waugh on Cecil King To anyone who has ever worked for him, C ecil King will always hold a certain f ascination which can best be measured by those who read what he has...

Colin Wilson Kathleen and Frank Christopher Isherwood (Methuen, £4.50) It is curious that before I knew Isherwood and before I had read a word by him, I had been so convinced...

James Morris Hammond Innes introduces Australia (Andre Deutsch £2.25) Land of Fortune Jonathan Aitken (Seeker and Warburg £2.75) Nine or ten years ago, soon after my first...

Kenneth Minogue A Contemporary Guide to Economics, Peace and Laughter John Kenneth Galbraith (Andre Deutsch £2.50) The main barrier to reading a book by John Kenneth Galbraith...

J3hn Casey Public Affairs C. P. Snow (Macmillan, £3.00) Lord Snow describes this collection of essays as "a selection of the public statements that I have made from 1959 to the...

The Compleat Naturalist Wilfrid Blunt (Collins £3.50) For a very reasonable price, this book provides a lively introduction to the life and work of Carl Linnaeus, enhanced by...

Mr Geoffrey Cass, up until last week chief executive and group managing director of Allen and Unwin Ltd, "left the firm," so we are told, " after disagreements on matters of...

This week The Mousetrap, running inexorably into eternity, edges into its twentieth year at the Ambassadors Theatre. It has become a sort of joke thriller; nearly everybody in...

Battle for the pre-school viewer Mike Sparrow A new victim has fallen prey to the Powermanias lurking in television — the Pre-school child. He is readily geared to Openly...

Theatre Thinking of Christmas treats? This is the time to be booking up. London has a rich variety of children's plays including Peter Pan which is back after a year's break...

Comic effects Tony Palmer Comedy disguised as art must surely be the most difficult thing to accomplish satisfactorily in the cinema. Given a finished film to be probably: a...

Ladies' night Hugh Macpherson Der Rosenhavalier is a woman's opera. That is not to say that it is a mish-mash of domestic devotion and virtue rewarded but an evocation of the...

Playing fair Duncan Fallowell By Christmas the autumn gush of records Will verge on inundation and reviewers everywhere will be casting bleary, overfed faces at the postman to...

Rock candy Kenneth Hurren Fortuitously, I can add slightly to the festive air that hangs intermittently over these pages by reporting that the pantomime season, also, got...

Unemployment up shares up Nicholas Davenport IT IS unfortunate that shares on the Stock Exchange should have begun to rise again just when the Minister of Employment was...

I doubt if any tipster could have turned Skinflint's last few coins to gold at Ascot. A total rout of favourites on " Whisky " Saturday quickly silenced the experts and all...

The King Edward VII Hospital for Officers in London have asked me to say that they are not connected with the King Edward VII Hospital at Midhurst who received the magnificent...

Benny Green on the genius of Groucho Ever since the day Julius Marx arrived at the momentous decision that insulting people was better than going to work, and that he might as...

Without entirely approving of the man I heard of who gave his wife a hundred hairnets, I do see that the gift in bulk has charm. The girl in, I think, one of Dorothy Parker's...

Across the valley you can see where they've left deep rides through the Douglas firs: from these, on special Saturdays, comes the almost continuous snap, crackle, pop of a...

' The holly bears a berry. As red as any blood,' as the old carol reminds us, or, if you prefer the slightly more delicate version which has also survived. As red as any rose.'...

Sir: Why should Rhodesia be the only country asked to accept the Five Principles, none of which are observed by her main critics — the Afro-Asian nations and the Communists? I...

From Dr Ian Bellamy Sir: Whatever we may think of Edward Kennedy's statements on Ulster — and we are as much to blame as anyone for the deterioration in accepted standards of...

From Sir miles Clifford Sir: Following absence abroad I have only just caught up with my English papers and ask leave to comment on the article headed 'Notes from the...

Sir: It was a bitter disappointment that the Queen's Speech made no mention of a substantial move towards creating a truly private enterprise economy by a policy of...

Sir: October 28 was a day of great significance in the House of Commons. As in a play, to quote the negotiator-in-chief, MPs made their choice, and the combined efforts of...

represent Mr Heath offering Great Britain on Platter to the European imperialWs from Julius Caesar to Hitler. May I first state that I have several English friends, an English...

From Professor Antony Flew Sir: It would be a pity if interest in Mr R. H. S. — Double — Crossman's bitter attack on his former colleague Mr Jenkins took all attention away from...

Sir: Congratulations on your decision to publish Louis Claiborne's article on 'Race Relations and the Role of Law' (November 13). By a happy coincidence I proposed a motion on...

From Mrs R. A. Stubbs Sir: Please send Lemuel Gulliver's artist out in a boat with a pair of oars (October 30). You won't need to put an explosion of gunpowder behind him —...

Sir: Lord Avebury and Mr Nadir Dinshaw appeal (November 13) for contributions to the Peter Hain Fund on the ground that Mr HaM's activities in the 'Stop the '70 Tour' were a...

cannot be slandered with impunity; he should be careful about traducing lawyers. So far as I know, Mr Francis Bennion, who has shown an admirable sense of public duty in...

Sir: Amidst the dismal news from all over the world there is one cheerful item for thousands of music lovers in the UK. The BBC's Controller of Music is retiring. His...

Sir: Due to what appears to be a typographical mix-up Sir Oswald Mosley's views on the breakdown of the post-war economic system in the West appeared in somewhat garbled form in...

thankfully, retains its easy dominance' (The Spectator's Notebook, November 13). No doubt it does right to be thankful — but this, suspectfully, probably isn't what the Notebook...