The Government is now running into very serious trouble indeed. It is a year since the Industrial Relations Act came into force, and last year saw more days lost through...

The Budget is a government's annual statement of ability to fulfil its promises and of intent to avoid them. The present Government came into office with a specific set of...

I have been greatly interested in following the various more or less neurotic kerfuffles of the British press in their discussion of the consequences of Ian Smith's closure of...

The Government's forked tongue Patrick COsgrave It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Prime . Minister is in control of the Government so absolutely that the...

Votes are not solutions Rawle Knox The other Friday I was standing outside Bishop Gate, in the old walls of Londonderry City, waiting for a bomb to go off, or rather, hoping...

What chance moderation? Constantine FitzGibbon In the closing stages of the second world war a friend of mine was sent to Greece as member of a politico-military mission taxed...

How French are the communists? Martin Short " So this is our choice: either the Gaullists with their hands in the till or the Communists and a gun in our back." The cynical...

Left, right and extreme centre George Gale The Labour Government of Harold Wilson produced legislation dealing with prices and incomes and set up a statutory Prices and...

The wind from the heath, brother, Is blowing bitter cold. We don't like its look, brother, Or what it may unfold. The weather forecast's rotten, No horror is forgotten, As we...

PUZZLE SENDS HIS congratulations to Jeremy Thorpe and his bride to be. And, as an engagement bouquet, he adds this story showing the Liberal leader in a customary, but to the...

Paul Goodman" was a prophet fully licensed and acclaimed in America. And now, shortly after his death, his works are being launched here. At home, he succeeded over several...

Auberon Waugh Billy Rags Ted Lewis (Michael Joseph £2.00) Stories of escape from prison touch a chord in anyone who has been to a boarding school or served in the armed forces....

John Kenyon Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832 John Cannon (Cambridge £5.70) There is more than one view to be taken of the movement for parliamentary reform which culminated in...

Isabel Quigly D'Annunzio Philippe Jullian. Translated by Stephen Hardman (Pall Mall 0.86) i; The Latin habit of naming streets after real people always seems an appalling...

Simon Hornblower The Presocratics Edward Hussey (Duckworth £2.75) This is a magisterial book, and a wholly admirable achievement. Mr. Hussey provides, in 168 pages, a lucid and...

Douglas Dunn A Poetry Chronicle Ian Hamilton (Faber E2.95) Founding father of the 'Greek Street cenacle,' Ian Hamilton has been editing The Review and contributing to The...

Bookbuyer Copyright seems to be everybody's problem these days. A recent edition of the Evening Standard carried, quite by chance, two phrases which could be said to orginate...

I can't say I was expecting much of the National Theatre's production of Moliere's The Misanthrope beyond some determinedly respectful hands-across-the-Channel tribute,...

Black or white. Christopher Hudson Sounder(' U' Rialto) tells a simple story with grace and economy. The setting is Louisiana; the time, 1933. A black sharecropper nad his...

Barrel's bottom Clive ,Gammon The Operation, BBC l's offering on Monday night in its pretentiously labelled 'Play for Today' series, was as insulting a piece of meretricious...

I am sad, though not necessarily surprised, to learn that Franco Zeffirelli will not now be producing Carmen for the Royal Opera this summer. What with his film work and his...

Mellon watercolour Evan Anthony To own one Turner watercolour could be considered good fortune, to own a dozen, one would have to have a fortune. Mr and Mrs Paul Mellon do,...

Hero worship Rodney Milnes Shostakovich's fifteenth symphony is already being referred to as his ' Enigma,' and the musical quotations dotted throughout the score have given...

Benny Green in reading Ronald Pearsall's admirably lucid and concise Victorian Popular Music, it occurred to me that whatever their shortcomings the Victorians did at least...

Good guide PamelaVandykePrice Even before Lent has begun, this is a season when gastronomy is either under attack or preposterously aggressive. One colleague flits from high...

Douglas Curtis There are some mothers, and fathers too, who don't have to worry about the outcome of the tax credits/family allowance squabble. They are the ones without a...

Joan Woollcombe Now that I am seventy, I am entitled to feel borne on a rising tide of power — there are 8 million of us of retirement age and over; by 1980 there will be 10 or...

Useless experiments Bernard Dixon A scientist at the University of Oregon recently decided to investigate grooming behaviour In mice. He wanted to find out to what degree the...

Nicholas Davenport The idea is around that the ordered growth of the economy is getting out of balance once again. The all-party Expenditure Committee in its fifth report...

Walter Salomon is one of the most distinguished minds in the City, and a forthright defender over many years of the kind of libertarian economic views which I myself espouse; as...

Hopes for Burgess John Bull Homfray came in for an even better improvement in profits than I had forecast last week but even so I was dismayed by the apparent apathetic market...

In the Scillies Nephew Wilde My plans were well advanced for a short skiiing holiday at the beginning of last week. However, in the event, I saved myself from the perils of...

From the Rev Tony Crowe Sir: Your timely article 'Peace in jeopardy' highlights the dangers of another war in the Middle East, in which Israel will once again emerge as victor....

between your editorial and the article by Joel Cohen in your issue of February 24. Mr Cohen's article discusses the problems of how the innocent may be protected by attacks from...

airliner and of a raid 150 miles into Lebanese territory to write about a film may seem trivial. However, it is part of the same situation. Accompanying Robert Bolt's film Lady...

From Mrs Helen Hodgson Sir: We should be very grateful if you could allow us through your correspondence columns to invite any of your readers who have recently been in contact...

Sir: With reference to Bernard Dixon's article (February 17), which recounts the fatuous presumptions that man can outwit Nature, by trying to replace the damaged organs of the...

Sir: I have read the correspondence which has followed Mrs Brock's initial letter of criticism and I now feel I should make known my own experience in running a Stately Home...

Sir: I should like to say a few words about Patrick Cosgrave's impressions of his Tyrolean trip (January 6). I have been in Austria several times a year for at least a decade...

Sir: Canadians are indeed curious — why a referendum on whether or not the population of Northern Ireland wish to remain with the British? The results will show two things. One...

Sir: 1 am reluctant to raise again the subject of sloppy English, about which you were good enough to print a letter of mine (February 10). However, it is only fair to your...

Sir, When a British Rhodesian, fishing on the Rhodesian side of the Zambesi River, is killed by bullets fired from the Zambian side, and when those bullets are found to be of...

Pendil's runaway win in the 'Yellow Pages' three-miler was in itself worth the jaunt to Kempton last weekend, and I was amused by the reactions of my elders and doubtless...

Sir; There is nothing like an uraan motorway being planned to pass your door for concentrating the mind on transport policy. As a Conservative Parliamentary candidate in the...

Sir: Bookend in your issue of February 24 says that we offered Richard Webb a directorship after he rather casually mentioned an offer of a job from Collins. I'd like to correct...

Sir: Has Bookbuyer got it wrong yet again? I am sure that the only difficulty. Collins are having in finding a replacement for their former publicity manager is of deciding...

Sir: I regret that Skinflint does not look at the back numbers to refresh his memory — particularly September 23 and December 30. When he bet me El that the index would sink to...

Sir: Michael Brett-Crowther describes as " teutonism, ponderous nouns tying up thought," the creation of words like " biosphere " and " technosphere." The Teutons, or Germans as...