Hysterical or sentimental comparisons between Ireland and Vietnam can only be made in ignorance of both countries; and to compare the activity and role of the British army in...

Thursday, October 21: 13 were killed and over 100 injured by a gas explosign in a Glasgow shopping arcade. Senator Kennedy's "unfortunate outburst" on Ulster was condemned by...

The blows suffered by the Indian subcontinent since independence have been stunning, cumulative and overwhelming. Chaos, deprivation, natural disaster, famine and, now,...

The United States has only itself to blame for suffering the appearance of defeat at the United Nations over the admission of China to its due and proper seat in the Security...

Those two splendid English eccentrics Mr Robert Morley and Mr Peregrine Worsthorne dispensed much wisdom last Sunday. Mr Morley was interviewed on television and, whilst...

The people's will? Anthony Lejeune From all the tedium and complexity of the Common Market debate there stands out lust one starkly certain consequence — that our political...

Eric Jacobs It used to be that the television cameras and the industrial reporters were round every second week at 8 St James's Square, where Mr Robert Carr now has his office...

the researchers Bernard Dixon " We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up in teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life...

John Rowan Wilson A fairly frequent criticism levelled against the medical profession is that it takes too little account of psychological factors in the causation of disease....

Michael Wynn Jones What with one thing and another, it was quite a week for Michael Cummings, the Express cartoonist. On Monday he included in his cartoon the figure of...

The nationalism of General de Gaulle Auberon Waugh on Hartley and Golding Reviews by Colin Wilson and Michael Bentley "For I know," said General de Gaulle to President...

The Harness Room L. P. Hartley (Hamish Hamilton £1.80). The Giver Barry Cole (Methuen £2.50). The Scorpion God William Golding (Faber £1.75). Three novels published this week...

Michael Bentley Winston S. Churchill, Volume III 1914-16. Martin Gilbert (Heinemann E4.50) On the atmosphere of war he fed and thrived: this is the starkest of all the common...

Colin Wilson Girl, 20 Kingsley Amis (Cape £1.50) When Kingsley Amis's second novel appeared in 1955, I seem to recall Speculation among the critics about where he could go from...

It is difficult to pick one's way through the assorted literary remains of the last two years without treading softly on Geoffrey Grigson. He is, as several readers of The...

Tony Palmer I've never been entirely convinced that pornography is as bad an influence as certain leaders of the more fashionable moral crusades would have us believe. So...

Kenneth Hurren Fyodor Dostoievsky, who pushed a maniacally prodigal pen when the mood was on him, put a quarter of a million words into his novel, The Idiot. Plagued by debts,...

Hugh Macpherson The revival of Fidelio with which Colin Davis introduced himself as the musical director of the Royal Opera, was a strangely uneven affair. Of course Fidelio is...

Evan Anthony Bear with me — and yet another piece about you-know-who. After all, it isn't every day that a man reaches his ninetieth birthday, and without any great impairment...

Theatre Opening in London: The Ant and the Grasshopper, Keith Darvill's play about Scott Fitzgerald, at the Basement Theatre Club (lunchtimes), November 1; The Novelist, a play...

Not everyone in the higher reaches of the BBC is delighted to see Bernard Braden back in his Saturday spot after his commercial break. Only by the narrowest shade did those in...

Sir: Some of those intent on the rape of the British Constitution have sought justification in Edmund Burke's dictum that a member of parliament owes his constituent's his...

Sir: Your readers might be intrigued by the mysterious falsification of statistics in the British European, referred to in your leading article published on October 16. In July...

Sir: The cartoon on your front cover today (October 23) i s skilfully drawn and very amusing , but its implications are fals e .; When Monnet and Schuman helps , ' to found what...

Sir: With road casualties reachiq monstrously uncivilized heigh' may I make proposals for halting the massacre? Many drivers fail to realize tlia,t speed, undoubtedly a...

Sir: Though Mr Kerr (October --ke did not spot the identity of redoubtable 'Mad Mike' (Brigasi Calvert), he surely has a _P°`,..." made months ago by Mr w°") / throne in the...

From Mrs C. Visser Sir: How long will you and other quite intelligent people perpetuate this ridiculous nonsense of "ostriches burying their heads in the sand? '' They never...

From Mrs Vera Oldham Sir: An article in the Spectator has come to my attention, quoted by the Los Angeles Times about two months ago. A Peter WatsonSmyth, "a retired...

Nicholas Davenport A friend took me up on my remark that history only repeats itself when its lessons have not been learned. I gave the intelligent Group of Ten central bankers...

My much-heralded National Hunt campaign got off to a promising, if unprofitable, start with Into View's hard-fought Newbury victory over Spanish Steps. A stride-for-stride duel...

The Government now seems disinclined to allow the export of Titian's Death of Actaeon and is offering substantial help to the National Gallery in its efforts to raise the cash....

Autumn is a stealthy sort of season, always likely to come upon the scene unnoticed and then abruptly to show its hand in a bold flourish. In this, I suppose, the ageing of the...

The Penguin Book of Wines has just been reissued in an updated second edition, made by Peter Sichel (40p). There are several reasons why convention could inhibit me from writing...