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GIBBON: DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (Methuen 1909-14) edited by J. 13. Bury, demi-octavo edition, illustrated. Mrs. Stagg. Methuen, 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4, Tel. U1-583 9855.

SALLAD COUN MY by Madge Elder and ROMAN WALL by bryher. Davis. 34 Parliament Hill, London, NW3.

'triE ANNOTATED INDEX TO 't'HE CANTOS OF EZRA POUND John Hamilton Edwards and William V. Vasse.

University ot California ' Press (Berkeley end Los Angeles) 195/. Box 593.

SOULS FOR AUCTION (author?) an account of the Turkish Armenian massacres. Box 594.

ESCAPE TO FREEDOM by T. C. F. Prittie, EXPERIENCES OF A PRESEN1-DAY EXORCIST by Canon amend. Peter Jackson, 61 Spring Park Road, Snirley, Croydon, Surrey CRO 5EL.

NUMBERS AND SUCH by A. N. Feldjamen (PrenticeHail 1966). C. D. Lester, 913 Hidean Road, Calgary, Canada.

R. L. STEVENSON a biographical, etc., library and works (not 'Swanston'): small Dutch library ,too. McCulloch, 2 Trinity Grove, Edinburgh 5.

THE RADAR MAN by John Rowland (Lutterworth Press 1963). R. S. L. Scott, 26 Penbanc, Fishguard, Pembs., Dyfed.

-I, SAID THE SPARROW," by Paul West. Box 595. L'INTHIJUUCtION DU IVIALMINibME DANS L'INDUSTRIE FRANCAISE by G. Ballot (1923). L'INDUSTRIAL1SATION DE LA SIDERUFIGIE FRANCAISE. 1814-1964, by Jean Vial (1967): COAL AND STEEL IN WESTERN EUROPE (Pounds ts Parker 195/). K. Dobson Priors, Jackass Lane, Keston BR2 6AN.

PELMAN FRENCH COHRESPONDENCE COURSE. Vol. tura Press, Peterhead, Scotland. A CHILD OF OUR TIME by °don Hovith (Methuen 1938). Phillips, West Winds, 5tonesfield, Oxon.

LABOUR, CONSERVATIVE AND LIBERAL PARTIES ANNUAL CONFERENCE RESOLUTIONS (1948 to present) Box 591 (See also Classified pages under 'Publications') WHAT TO LISTIN FOR IN MUSIC by Aaron Copland. N. H. Gale, 12 North Hinksey Village, Oxford 0X2 ONA. TALMUDIC MISCELLANY by P. I. Hershon (Trnoner 11380). --Box LANDSCAPE DRAWING by t. E. Hutchings (Methuen 1960). David, Geography Department. St. David's College, Llandudno, Gwynedd. Wales. VALIANT CRUSADE (History of the RSPCA) by A. W. Moss (Cassel 1961). Kay, Caley Park Pool, W. Yorks, LS21 1EE.

FOUR CENTURIES OF EUROPEAN JEWELLERY and ENG. LISH VICTORIAN JEWELLERY by Ernie Bradford. Anne Wright, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 43-51 Great TIchtield Street, London Wl. Tel. 01-580 0336, SEX CAREER AND FAMILY by Fogarty Rapoport (Alien Unwin). Susan Raven, 01-837 1234, ext. 7228 (please reverse charges). THE WHITE SPARROW by John Moore. Also THE LION AND THE FOX by Wyndham Lewis. M. Stephens, 17 Eters Road, Railing, Lone 'n W13. THE DIARY OF A FARMER'S WIFE, 1796.1797, Country. wise Books (Temple Press 1964). Hicks, Atlantic Cottage, Saint Agnes, Isles of Scilly. CARVE HER NAME WITH PRIDE by R. J. Minney. George Newnes (1956) or Pan (1958) edition. Box 689, OBITER DICTA by Mr. Justice Darling. R. 1... Court, Pentwyn Cottage, Becton, Hereford. ANY BOOK on prosody, metrics, verse forms, etc. B. Lynch. 67 Lower Leeson Street. Dublin 2.

EARLHAM by Percy Lubbock. H. Goodall, 4 Pinfold Road. Solihull 1391 2PB.

THE PASSING OF THE GREAT RACE by Madison Grant. VICTORIAN CRITICS OF DEMOCRACY by B. J. Lippin. cott. DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY by William Lecky. Box 587.

ESCAPE TO FREEDOM by T. C. F. Prittie, Peter Jackson, ,61 Spring Park Road, Shirley, Croydon. Surrey, CRO 5EL. SEX AND CHARACTER by Otto Weininger (Heinemann 1906), THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL and THE RETURN OF DON QUIXOTE by G. K. Chesterton and THE MONK by Matthew Lewis (a novel of 1795). M. J. Kenworthy Esti, 53 Highcroft Crescent, Glenwood Estate, Bognor Regis, Sussex. WAR IN THE AIR, Vol II by H. A. Jones (OUP), J. Turton Jones, The Lodge Cottage, Denton, Ffarleston. Norfolk.

ENGLISH HISTORY NOTEBOOK by M. A. Rolleston, Barton, The Old Coach House, Rye, Sussex. JEFFERYES HAMETT O'NEALE, Tapp: LIVERPOOL P01. TERY, Knowles Boney: THE BURGOMASTER OF FURMES (hard back), Simenon. In good condition. Box 576, THE LODGER and any other novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes. Please send postcard stating price to Dowager Lady Iddlesleigh, Pynes, Exeter.

SHEET MUSIC, Jim Groce, Carole King, Duncan MacLean, and the like. Box 580.

ELSIE OXENHAM AND E. M. BRENT-DYER books wanted. Box 581.

IN THE MIDST OF LIFE by Ambrose Bierce. Box 582. MORNING & NOON by Dean Acheson, Write No. 1, J. Stuart Tower, Maidavale, W.9.

VOLUME If OF 1st EDITION OF JOHN CLARE'S THE VILLAGE MINSTREL and other poems. Box 584. ONLY MY SISTER by Rev. G. G. Wynn (RSPCK 1886). Write: Surrey, 14 Church Lane, Southampton. SUSAN HILL: Pre-Penguin works, good prices for early editions in good condition or scarce works in fair condition. Box 585.

MIND AT THE END OF ITS TETHER by Wells; IN DARKEST ENGLAND by General Booth; ANY BOOKS by Grant Allen; CHRISTOPHER LOGUE'S version of Iliad. Reed, 60 Victoria Road, Northampton MN1 SEQ.

someone else's.

So far from assuaging curiosity on the first of these points, the blurb only titillates it further:

Jack Beeching's numerous books, biography, popular history, fiction and translation, are usually pseudonymous, but he has signed The Chinese Opium Wars, judging it worthy of taking its place with the books of verse, scholarly texts and novels which bear his name.

That is asking for it; and somebody who has just finished a book on the same subject (though, as it turns out, the overlap is marginal) is indecently well-placed to hand it out, while places, dates and such are securely lodged in memory.

But this book turns out to be thorough — within the limits the author has set himself. Only one error is serious enough to be nailed. The naval battle in the Canton estuary on 3 November, 1839, the first set-piece battle of the wars, was undertaken by Captain Elliot Beeching claims after he had received a. secret dispatch from Palmerston on October 20 telling him a British expeditionary force was being sent to China; "so while he was waiting, he could afford to be provocative". Palmerston's dispatch was sent on 18 October; and in those days the voyage to China took not two days, nor two months, but nearer six months. I would not dispute that Palmerston bore the main responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities; but the battle of Chuenpi was fought on Elliot's initiative.

Otherwise, this book is an admirably straightforward account of the wars, the more valuable in that the only earlier attempt to survey both of them together was not a success. True, Beeching is careful to point out that his is not the academic history, which is still awaited (it is odd how historians have shirked so promising a subject). His research has been confined to the known printed sources; the standards he set himself, he explains, "corre sponding to those of the responsible journalist". But he has done his homework beyond the call of what most journalists would consider their duty; and he has selected and presented it with a facility that would elude most academic historians.

It is only where he leaves the wars themselves that his grip on the subject loosens, because his research has not extended quite far enough. The introductory chapter is superficial and the section on the interlude between the wars, concentrating as it does on the Taiping rebellion, misses most of the fascinating story of the build-up of the opium traffic in that period. More serious is his lack of appreciation of the outside forces at work; in particular, the reasons for the massive increase in opium production in India in the twenty years preceding the outbreak of the war. To say that the East India Company washed its hands of the traffic, and thereby "of course lost any possible chance of controlling it", is to miss the point. For diplomatic reasons, the Company had to pretend to wash its hands of the traffic; but in practice it maintained as tight a control as it could of the whole process, from the. provision of suitable poppy seed to the point of sale.

Brian Inglis has most recently written The Forbidden Game, a social history of drugs. He is a former editor of The Spectator