26 MARCH 1965, Page 3

Portrait of the Week— NOT PERHAPS AN ORPINGTON, but for

the Liberals something just as cheering. The party gained Roxburgh and Selkirk with a majority of over 4,000, while the Labour and Independent Scottish Nationalist candidates lost their deposits. For the Tories the slight compensation of holding Saffron Walden in the wake of Lord Butler, but for the Government nothing.

MR. BREZHNEV AND OTHER KREMLIN leaders took part in the strangest telephone conversation of all time, talking with an astronaut—still orbiting the world in his spaceship—just after he had stepped out of his craft for a twenty-minute walk in space. Lieut.-Colonel Leonov travelled 3,000 miles during his amble, and though the craft landed nearly 1,000 miles off target, neither ho nor his pilot, Colonel Belyaev, was the worse for wear. Meanwhile America launched and retrieved its Gemini III, its first attempt at two- man flight. England found her hero this week as well—Andy Hancock, of Northampton, feted for running eighty yards to score England's equalising try in the rugby match against Scotland.

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BUT BRITISH POLITICAL LIFE was very much up in the clouds. Angry at their latest price review, the farmers turned Poujadist—Mr. Fred Peart, Minister of Agriculture, was presented with chickens wherever he went, one farmer gave away 15,000 chickens, and Sussex farmers began practising for blockades to wreck Easter Bank Holiday traffic. Mr. Wilson called for a UK-Irish Summit (any Summit is better than none) but the Irish did not seem interested, and Mr. George Wigg revealed that he had £1 at 100-1 on Mr. Sandys becoming the next Tory leader.

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GAS: the most emotive word in warfare, and news that the US had sanctioned its use in Vietnam caused more anguish in London than in America. By chance the Foreign Secretary was in Washington, just after his singularly unsuccess- ful talks with his Russian opposite number, Mr. Gromyko: but British words carried little weight with the US administration. Defence Secretary Mr. McNamara replied that Britain had used gas in Cyprus. Meanwhile the spring visit of Mr. Kosygin looked more doubtful. In Alabama, 10,000 civil rights followers began a fifty-mile march to the state capital, Montgomery, and Mr. Robert Kennedy joined an expedition that began climbing the US's highest unclimbed peak, Mt. Kennedy, in the Yukon.

MR. CROSSMAN, Minister of Housing, published his Rent ,Bill, which will impose greater security of tenure; a new trial was ordered in the case of the Kray twins; and the Duke of Windsor was allowed to stroll in Buckingham Palace gardens.

IN THIS ISSUE

Articles by P. I. Honey, Sarah Gainham, Leo Baron, Christopher Booker, Alan Watkins, Murray Kempton, Olga Frank-

lin, Giles Playfair, lain Macleod ; . 381

Spectator's Notebook Quoodie .. 384 Letters • .. 389 Arts and Amusements - Anthony Burgess, Ncvilc Wallis, Clive Barnes, Isabel Quigly 391 Spring Books Reviews by Robert Rhodes James, John Davenport, Anthony Burgess, John Betjeman, Arthur Waley, Patrick Anderson, David Knowles, Hugh Seton- Watson, David Rees. Michael Hamburger, Peter Vansittart, Nevile Wallis, and poems by Vernon Watkins, Carolyn Kizer.

Robert Shaw 395 The Economy and the City Nicholas Davenport. Custos 413 Endpapers Leslie Adrian, Mary Holland,

Alan Brien .. • • .. 415 Chess Philidor • • • • 417 Crossword • • . • .. .. 417