The squatter in No. 10 Downing Street has at last departed. Nothing became his leadership of the nation so ill as the manner of his leaving it. And there is yet one further step...

Since I am writing before the general election actually takes place, I had better get the Predictions . . . out of the way, so that those Who buy the paper after Thursday can...

Sir: Politicians, newspapers and all TV channels seem to be unanimous in asserting that the electoral decision is Indecisive. It seems to me that this assertion is false; that...

Sir: There is one intriguing aspect of the balance of trade figures which is never mentioned and which might, conceivably, make all the difference to the 'deficit' announced...

Sir Mr Ralph Harris's article on 'guilty men' in your issue of February 23 was very much to the point. But why does he include Patrick Hutber amongst his group of journalists...

Sir: Mr Enoch Powell rightly places loyalty to national and Conservative principles before blind loyalty to a leader who has done so much, and is doing more, to undermine...

Sir: John Linklater (February 23) does well to castigate irresponsible venereal disease propagandists and to draw attention to the seriousness of untreated infections. It is...

Sir: As a member of the Scientologi cal growth industry, Mrs Wakley (February 9) naturally wishes to refute all criticisms, yet in view Of the vas t , disparity between...

Sir: Over the last few months the name Peter Thompson has been associated In'Ith s tatements made by the Church Sc ientology and I believe it is 7 4 , 110 min that I am not the...

prospect of a medical course, run by the Open University, and s uggested that Open University 1:lethod lent itself to pre-clinical, or post graduate medical training. • lhe...

Sir: I have been asked by Dr J. Rose, FRS, the Director of the Institution of Environmental Sciences, to organise a conference on mycotoxicosis. I hope that it will take place...

Sir: At sixty-five most persons suffer a sudden, cruel cut, sometimes to a third or a quarter of their old earned income. The tax treatment of their savings in comes is hence of...

Sir: I am writing to you on behalf of Giles Gordon and myself concerning the book we are jointly editing on Jury Service for Wildwood House. We feel sure that among your...

Sir: Miss E. Rhys - Williams believes that the Abortion Act should be restricted to protect women against themselves, as abortion is really very dangerous, though most doctors...

Sir: The article by Dr Thodes Boysen (February 9) on the shortcomings and failures of education in London stresses the need for reform. Three reforms appear to be urgent: first...

Patrick Cosgrave For nearly two years now I have been saying that the Conservative Party could not win an election under the leadership of Mr Heath. What amazes me about the...

M any are the explanations for the Liberal vote in the general election, but my favourite comes from a Tory lady in the North. "It was th e BBC again," she explained. "They'd do...

Barry Rubin The true story behind the current 'energy crisis' is a scandal which might dwarf the Watergate affair. Much of the shortage has been manipulated by energy...

dlen Clement Attlee rationed bread Rat starving Indians might be fed, hour gave general applause °this self-sacrificing cause, ° W how unwelcome their surprise black...

Pariah of the election Michael Ivens When. as director of Aims of Industry, I decided to place four large advertisements in the press attacking the extreme left in the trade...

Rawle Knox LondonderrY "Unionists May Hold Whip Hand," declared Belfast's News Letter, the morning after the count — not balance, mind you, whip hand: Westminster has been...

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice. We look upon the man who gives it as offering an affront to our understanding and treating us like children...

Bill Grundy Change and decay are all around I see, as the gloomy religious gentleman said. In times like these, when the only certainty is uncertainty, the natural thing to do...

Philip Kleinman If advertising agencies are exciting companies to work for — and even those admen who don't particularly care for their trade agree that they are — it is...

John Linklater No wild animal or primitive man living under strictly natural conditions ever becomes obese. In the course of evolution, natural selection of the fittest gave...

Martin Sullivan Many years ago I remember reading an interesting observation on that remarkable trilogy of stories in St Luke's gospel (Chapter XV), the lost sheep, the lost...

Peter Quince Although the winter has been exceptionally mild (we have seen scarcely a particle of snow) it has also been unusually windy. At one time, at the beginning of the...

Pamela Vandyke Price One should be a fraction prudent before lashing around with the nasty cracks (a verb that the sap among those likely to assault our comfort at any inst...

a Fischer of truth Ernst Fischer is known in this country for his books on aesthetics and his two anthologies, Marx in his Own Words and Lenin in his Own Words. In Austria, his...

Peter Ackroyd The Eyes Of The Interred Miguel Angel. Asturias translated by Gregory Rabassa (Jonathan Cape E5.00.) A big book brings out the worst in the best of us. And there...

A.L. Rowse Collisions, Essays and Reviews. David Cal l° (Quartet Books £1.50) What strikes one first about this collection of reprinted articles is the contemporary olie he .:...

Geoffrey Elton The Rump Parliament 1648-1653 Blair Worden (Cambridge University Press £8.40) The wave of precise historical scholarship, devoted to an exhaustive use of the...

Llew Gardner The Rise and Fall of the League of Natiora George Scott (Hutchinson £4.80) The United Nations ideal, for all the rhetoric , Design Council flags and trendy...

Duncan Fallowell Monsieur Butterfly — The Story of Puccini Stanley Jackson (W. H. Allen £3.50) Puccini was lucky. He made it just before opera changed from being the most...

Benny Green The only books I am talking about this week are the other kind, the books which are never published, whose contents change from night to night, and which after a...

Bookend The sudden news last week that Penguin are to discontinue their schools publishing programme made one of the year's sadder bits of reading. It also bore some contrast...

Nicholas Davenport Having put my electoral affairs in order by giving a proxy vote to nly son to exercise — and having departed for the tourist dollar area, where the pound...

I may throw the pounds around in print, but privately my gambling stakes and wins, are pathetically small. It was, therefore, most satisfying that the only non-voting inhabitant...

The three-day week has been generally thought to be leading to an excessive squeeze on the liquidity of the smaller manufacturing company. On further reflection this does not...

Will Waspe The absence of a Theatre column from The Spectator this week will not surprise readers, for there was nothing much doing in the London theatre last week. Canny...

Christopher Hudson A film which has had more than one press showing in London during the last month is Big Lance ('X' general release). Lance is a six-foot black policeman in a...

Roger Thomas On the north Pembrokeshire coast there is an old whitewashed cot t age, barely visible amid luxuriant hedgerows and the tall grass of a hill which sweeps down to...

who looks after my bit of fishing in Carmarthenshire and has curious theories about the T °wY. I'd forded the river one evening somewhat precariously: the water came within an...