The activities and the pronouncements of the Secretary of State for Industry know, it seems, no bound and no limitation. Active as a zealot in the campaign against our...

Sir: It is being suggested that it is unthinkable we should abrogate the Treaty of Rome, 1957. The OEEC, formed in 1948 and extended later to include Western Germany, failed in...

EEC Commissioner. Does he know something we don't know, or, disfranchised by residence abroad, is he casting a substitute vote: with his feet? A. B. Knight 48 Great North...

Sir: Having been one of the first and foremost to applaud Mr (as he then was) Barber for floating the pound, you can hardly complain now (April 26) that, in the absence of...

Sir: It would be interesting to know what Dr Rowse's — or any other Shakespearian's — reply would be to these questions, arising from my article and his reply which appeared on...

Sir: A fortnight ago you were good enough to publish a letter of mine in which I requested justification for public patronage of certain fields of the arts, coinpelled upon us...

Sir: Bucks County Libraries have had their estimate for the purchase of new books and binding cut from £303,050 to £76,645. As a result, the libraries will be buying no fiction,...

Sir: If your Peregrine is proposing to go on taking such senior journalists as Mr Mark Arnold-Forster to task for very infrequent and very slightly inelegant phrases ("I would...

but his new column has something vaguely offensive about it, rather like reading Jennifer's diary. His bicycle rings a bell! I did once see Lord Hailsham cycling down St James's...

Sir: If the Sun was being delivered to Daily Mirror readers during the Mirror strike (Bill Grundy, last week) it certainly wasn't because of the "extra inducement" offered to...

Tory policy and state intervention Patrick Cosgrave Mr Michael Heseltine replied to the Prime Minister last week, on the subject of the Government's nationalisation of British...

No newspaper is renowned for its managerial —as distinct from its journalistic—ability and the latest tale of the Daily Express is an example of this. Its editorial machine...

Norman St John-Stevas, who edited the collected works of Walter Bagehot, has offered to compile the correspondence of Hugh Leggatt, the St James's Street art dealer who is...

Monday, April 21 There has been published this day a pamphlet, entitled Treatise concerninig the Lowering of Scholarly Standards in our Colleges, the consequent Relapse of our...

Hugh Jenkins's Arts Ministry seems to . be uncommonly interested in the 'true' identity of Will Waspe. My Colfeague, art critic Evan Anthony, cordially invited to a small...

There has been so much talk of the author's paperback royalty split over the past few months that you would think the book trade knew it backwards. Bookbuyer promises not to...

No alternative? Roy Sherwood As the time tor the proposed Common Market referendum draws nearer many Britons will be asking themselves just what acceptable alternatives for...

The two Harolds Humphry Berkeley Too many people imagine that, because the device of a referendum is being employed to ascertain the wishes of the British people on the Common...

Oil and inflation Thomas Land The old fashioned dogma that centrally planned economies are invulnerable to crises of business confidence seems to be given more credence in the...

George Gale on a conservative philosopher Few men are so uncontradictory as Michael Oakeshott: what he says and does and is are all of a piece; and that considerable number of...

The big frieze Basil Taylor The Parthenon Frieze Martin Robertson and Alison Frantz (Phaidon 0.50) "My heart beat. If I had seen nothing else I had beheld sufficient to keep...

John Steer Venetian Art from BOlini to Titian Johannes Wilde (Clarendon Press 0.95) Johannes Wilde was an art-historian, born in Hungary, Viennese by training, who came to...

Cecil Gould Dress in Italian Painting 1460-1500 Elizabeth Birbari (John Murray £6.00) During the second half of the fifteenth century there were more good painters in Italy who...

Alastair Gordon Surrealist Drawings Frantisek Smejkal (Octopus Books £4.95) Man Ray Roland Penrose *(Thames and Hudson £5.50) Surrealism endures, and will continue to endure,...

Bohemia, WI Benny Green As every artistic community is a contradiction in terms, and as there is something philistine to the verge of slapstick in the English temperament, it...

Fads Peter Ackroyd See The Old Lady Decently B. S. Johnson (Hutchinson £3.25) Snipe's SpinsterJeff Nuttall (Calder and Boyars £2.95) I know that it's very fashionable to read...

Medicine Bell, book and stethoscope John Linklater Doctors are taught to explain unwelcome, unacceptable and anti-social behaviour in terms of medical illness. The general...

Defining freedom Bill Grundy Mr Ken Morgan, the General Secretary of the National Union of Journalists, is a mild-looking man, with a thin face, an exhaustedlooking moustache,...

Millions on the move Philip Kleinman Advertising people are a talkative lot, greatly given to bar-room gossip and rumour-mongering. They also tend to be people of good...

Micocoulier, scops owls and others Denis Wood In France, May 1 is a holiday, and early in the morning, before the families start to go out in their cars, parts of Paris in the...

In God's name Martin Sullivan The Old Testament is a deep spiritual quarry. Scholars have helped us to work it and to fathom it, but the unskilled surveyor can pick up many a...

Theatre A conversation with Peeves Kenneth Rum Jeeves, book and lyrics by Alan,_ Ayckbourn, music by Andrew Lloyd Webber (Her Majesty's) No Man's Land by Harold Pinter;...

Soap and Watergate Kenneth Robinson Shampoo Director: Hal Ashby Stars: Warren Beatty, Goldie Hawn, Julie Christie, Lee Grant, Jack Warden 'X' Odeon, Haymarket (110 minutes)....

Monster -rat Rodney Milnes I have nurtured a fervent and hitherto secret passion for Montserrat Caballe ever since she (a) poured champagne all over her magnificent, er,...

The art market The auction season Stanley Clark The 1974-75 season at Sotheby's began in an atmosphere of uncertainty as to what effect inflation would have on the art market...

Critical reflections Evan Anthony Did you buy this week's Spectator because of the promise on the cover — 'Fine Arts issue' — or in spite of it? Does the term inspire a tingle...

ECONOMICS AND THE CITY Planning agreement for the City? Nicholas Davenport It is proper to remind my colleague Skinflint that he was sceptical of the strength of this year's...

The trouble-makers Bernard Hollowood I hear that many companies are being assailed by left-wing trouble-makers who buy one or two shares which entitle them to attend AGMs...

The interesting thing is that the dog only growled in the night. The published bits of Sir Don Ryder's report left out four chapters entirely, and cut out bits of another three....