rTHE Prime Minister and Mr Kosygin are I talking this week about a world which is very different from what it was just a year or two years ago and which is chang- ing faster all...

A SURE sign of a genius, says Swift somewhere, k that immediately all the dunces enter into a conspiracy against him. Mr Richard Crossman may or may not be a genius, but, in the...

It is reported that the Chinese government is threatening to make all revisionists liable to the death penalty. It will be left to members of the Red Guard to decide who are...

By MALCOLM RUTH E R FOR D TN Vietnam there is a cease-fire for Tet, the 'Buddhist New Year, far more significant perhaps—because it is purely Vietnamese—than the earlier...

DEFENCE By SIMON HEATH COTE W HEREAS in Africa Britain's ship of state runs before the wind of change with all sails set, in Arabia she remains firmly moored to some of the...

KOSYGIN IN LONDON By TIBOR SZAMUELY I is a good thing that Mr Kosygin should be 'visiting this country. Amicable contacts be- tween statesmen are always to be welcomed, and,...

February 9, 1867 The Queen opened Parliament in person on Tuesday. The Royal robes were laid on the Throne, and the Speech was read by the Lord Chancellor; but the Queen wore a...

M R HEATH may not have been overjoyed by the faintly Butlerian language with which Mr St John-Stevas sprang to his defence on Monday. ('The attacks on Mr Heath have gone quite...

TWILIGHT ZONES By JOHN REX I is a curious fact that in a welfare state the 'provision of the most elementary of services, giving people shelter, is so ill-organised. For the...

UNIVERSITIES-- I By MALCOLM BRADBURY I N the general process of rationalisation, stan- dardisation and proletarianisation that has typified the development of post-war...

UNIVERSITIES-2 By JOHN BIEBER How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities. . . . But by degree, stand in authentic place? Take but degree away,...

THE LAW By R. A. CLINE A recent sociological study of our legal system and its lawyers by Professor Abel Smith and Robert Stevens (Lawyers and the Courts, published by...

By DONALD McLACHLAN TN a twenty-page . Times on Monday there were Itwenty-one by-lines, two of them duplicated; in a twenty-four-page Mirror there were nine- teen by-lines, two...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS The press conference in the Regency Rooms of the Charing Cross Hotel was unusually peaceful. The drink-crazed raggedly eccentric journalists of...

111 imcram - PIN% Eira [L, From: G. A. Picot, Mrs Nik Birch Reynardson, Tony Lynes, Elizabeth Wren, Ralph Roney, Edward Samson, Martin Seymour-Smith, Edward A. A rtnstrong,...

in family allowances, commensur- ate with the number of children after the third. By the same token, a rebate might be granted to all elderly childless couples, and the elderly...

SIR,—Mrs Dougal (Letters, February 3) is, con- sciously or not, back with the emotional anti- fluoridationalists, teaching dentists the facts of life —and the aetiology of...

'Mr Heath and his colleagues need to remember first that for the time being the public is simply not interested in any ideas of its own the Opposition may have.' The Tories will...

SIR,—May I be allowed to correct Alan Watkins when he states (February 3) that Dr Balogh was 'first introduced to the mysteries of British politics . . . as speechwriter to Mr...

SIR,—Mr Jones (January 27) is rightly concerned about rumours that family allowances are to be raised from the third child on—but for the wrong reasons. Evidence from a number...

Measure for Measure. If he were to read my book Shakespeare's Imagination (second edition, Nebraska University Press), he would find the answer together with some illumination...

SIR,—Mr Hugh Ross Williamson (Letters, January 27) spent some years ministering—invalidly, he later came to think—sacraments in the Church of Eng- land. He ought now to be...

SIR,—I want to write and tell you more about the California colleges mentioned in 'Spectator's Note- book' (January 13). First of all, all of the twelve schools you mention are...

gave up being a schoolmaster some years ago; replying to Mr Macklin's letter (February 3) recalls old desperate efforts. Neither my oracular arrogance nor his smugness—about his...

SIR,—Why does John Wells's lively article (January 27) on the non-existence of time, rule out freedom of choice? Presumably it is because choice involves consequences, which...

in his views on ecumenism as it affects the Roman Catholic Church; and as one who has lived in a Catholic family for over thirty years I urge those who have Christian unity at...

22, 1694 : A fiery exhalation rising out of the sea spread Itselfe in Montgomeryshire a furlong broad, and many miles in length, burning all straw, hay. thatch and grass, but...

the hatchet? It could always be dug up again —or rather 'resurrected'—at Easter. I dare say Mr Waugh is even now dipping his pen in the vitriol, composing his Easter Sermon....

Sta.—Surely the gest example of an inverted, or perverted, cliché is the one about the exception proving the rule: this it never does except in the sense of putting it to the...

getting worried about the BBC's sound bulletins. You arc not alone in your anxiety. The six o'clock bulletin, which I once regarded as essen- tial listening, is now no more than...

ARCHITECTURE By TERENCE BENDIXSON A AT Brasenose College, 'we tried to treat the jAnew work not as a separate building but as another piece of the existing jumble.' At Gospel...

Ugly Customers Just Good Friends. (Adeline Gentle.)--Volpone. (Garrick.)—Trifles and Tomfooleries. (Mer- maid.)—The Sacred Flame. (Duke of York's.) E Adeline Gend'e Theatre at...

OPERA Mile first night of the Fidelio revival at I Covent Garden left me feeling that the cast hadn't bedded down musically. Surely there was more in Mr Solti's set-up than met...

TELEVISION HAVE not seen Ze ffi relli's production of Much I A do About Nothing on stage at the National Theatre. I cannot, therefore, make comparisons odorous or otherwise with...

No. 321. A. DIJNAUJVAROS: (1st Prize, Hirlap Theme Tourney 1962) mitre to play and mate in two moves solution next week Solution to No. 32, (Bettmann): P - K 6!, threat B - K...

Agitato A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. (Odeon, Marble Arch, 'A' certifi- cate.)—The Deadly Affair. (Columbia, 'X' certificate.) rr HE new Odeon at Marble Arch...

CA 5 By MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH T HE notion that Shakespeare did not write the works unequivocally ascribed to him by his close friends, colleagues and contemporaries c' in no...

A girl was singing in the choir with fervour of all who have known exile and distress, of all the vessels that have left the harbour, of all who have forgotten happiness. Her...

The Wizard of Loneliness. By John Nichols. (Heinemann, 30s.) The Singing Lizard. By John Knowler. (Cape, 21s.) The Pedestal. By George Lanning. (Michael Joseph, 25s.) Love with...

The Letters of Hart Crane 1916-1932. Edited by Brom Weber. (C.U.P., 40s.) 'I MAY go to New York, I may remain here, I may explode, Lord knows.' Thus Hart Crane at the age of...

HISTORICAL paperbacks usually come both as a relief and as an added burden to the profes- sional historian. In the first place, they offer him a secured chance to add to his...

PAPERBACKS THE Galsworthy centenary is being celebrated massively with a BBC 2 dramatisation of The Forsyte Saga. That this may encourage viewers of the adaptation to become...

Uncle Dynamite. (Penguin, 4s. 6d.) Galahad at Blandings. (Penguin, 3s. 6d.) Summer Moon- shine. (Penguin, 4s. 6d.) Heavy Weather. (Penguin, 4s. 6d.) Lord Emsworth and Others....

farcical situation and picturesque speech (mock- c - D lar references to extreme violence, etc.). There Trim 1100Kroff 8 E By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT I r is always good to get away...

ONE of Hardy's short stories tells of a woman, with an illegitimate child, whose lover brings to the village his new, young, pretty wife. One night the woman dreams that the...

By JOHN BULL I AST week I mentioned en passant that one of the few unit trusts set up to specialise in companies working in the advanced technologies had not produced the...

By CUSTOS r ROFIT-TAKING fell upon the gilt-edged market after its recent boom but the longer-dated issues were firm at their lower prices. The new 'tap' stock—EXCHEQUER 61 per...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN T HE opposite of the packaging cult, with which the PR tribe has plagued us for many a year, is the ill litter that weighs 28 lb. a week...

ACROSS Good chap, smelling strongly but quite unper- turbed (6) 4 Darkness of Dickens first job? (8) 9 On your knees I (6) so A note about the baby-sitter (8) 12 Do Orbilius...

ACROSS.-1 Target 4 Bessemer 8 Unprinsed to Pall in 12 Pansy 13 Totalling rd Topes 16 Arrowhead 17 Hue and cry 1 9 Lit up 21 Dominancy 22 Nasal 24 Owlets 25 Adjutant 26 TeSSCruc...