T rTHIS week's rebuff to President Johnson 1 in the American mid-term elections coincides neatly with the final eclipse of Chancellor Erhard in Germany. Rarely have events so...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS It does not require very much lobbying or leg-work to discover Conservatives who now wish that Lord Butler had never left the Com- mons in...

COMMUNISM From DEV MURARKA MOSCOW C HINVS latest nuclear explosion, including her k .. ,successful development of guided missiles with the capacity to carry nuclear warheads,...

US ELECTIONS-2 By D. W. BROGAN Seen from a country devoted to 'parliamen- tary supremacy'—that is, to the transfer of all effective power to the executive—the American system...

David Sachs, the manager of the San Francisco Film Festival, has refused admission to Jayne Mansfield on the grounds that she was not invited.' is 'not welcome,' and 'does not...

US ELECTIONS — 1 From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK A ND so Mr Johnson, among all the other complications of his existence, must now confront a Republican opposition in control of...

By PHILIP GOODHART, MP T SEE that the organisers of a fund-raising con- cert in London this weekend have reluctantly agreed, under pressure from the performers, that the money...

GERMANY From CONRAD AHLERS HAMBURG A RE the old Nazis really coming back? The IA answer is no, even after the success of the right-wing National Democratic party in the...

—Verdict in Doubt TV By STUART HOOD It was clear why the subject had been chosen. It is of extreme interest for two reasons. First of all, there is the question whether...

M R.DAVID FROST did well to turn the search- light of his highly competent television programme on the charity show being held this weekend at the Royal Court Theatre by the...

By RALPH HARRIS Eight months later I am still without a reply, and no wonder. Within weeks, teachers of secon- dary modern as well as grammar schools had blurted out to the...

November 10, 1866 The right is winning fast in America. The elections to Congress for New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Dela- ware, Michigan, and...

By BRIAN READING ‘PrHE Department of Economic Affairs . . . I was set up on the 16th October, 1964, and began work in the same evening. * This quotation, from DEA ' s first...

By DONALD McLACHLAN As things are, women may climb well over halfway up the professional tree and then get stranded on a branch called the women's pages or women's features, or...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS CREDITABLE though the efforts of Whacker Wilson, The Prime Minister of Mirth, and Laughing Ted, Mr Wibbly Wobbly him- self, have undoubtedly been to...

Sm,—Your leading article 'Britain and the UN' (November 4) begs a number of important questions, but I should like to comment in particular on your statement : The General...

X l Dram From: Lord Campbell of Eskan, W. M. G. Brown, F. R. Finston, Nicholas Davenport, Peter Kellner, Arthur Barton, M. A. Cooper, R. T. F. Turrall- Clarke, Rev. Walter...

SIR, —May I thank Tony Lynes for his helpful letter about child poverty and for the extra information he has since sent me. And I would also like to thank the anonymous person...

was surprised and horrified by the article The War for Jenkins' Ear' (November 4). One does not realise the exceedingly bad conditions in which prisoners are kept in our...

by Professor Bauer. As well as being enjoyable read- ing, it is indeed refreshing to see lucidly expressed, a review based on factual appraisal of circumstances as they are....

SIR,—Fantasy-making is the prerogative of the film producer but when the Boulting brothers (Letters, November 4) see themselves—and other producers— as reincarnated Francis...

refreshingly practical on a subject so often limited within the academic argument whether a prison sentence is concerned with retribution or reform. If the sentence in most...

impressive, but so closely reasoned that one wonders if it should not be expandzd into a book of its own. Obviously, Dr Balogh's views are doctrine at the UN, since the majority...

us (Octo- ber 28) that he is a practising barrister and makes the astonishing statement: 'He' (the barrister) 'is an officer of the court, an administrator of justice.' This is...

1%ve been of 'weirs,' 'worms,' wires,"waves' and 'nerves'—a result, no doubt of the windfall of information and sugges- tions I have received in answer to the C. S. Lewis...

SIR,—Owing to absence on the Continent, I have only now seen Mr Nigel Lawson's article 'The Umbilical Cord' (October 7). While I would not dis- agree with the criticism on two...

have the laundry and dry-cleaning industries been subjected to the first price freeze order? The official reason was that, during the period from July 20 up to the date of the...

MUSIC By CHARLES REID ANOTHER two Ring cycles are ended at Covent Garden. There is no sign of break or dwindle in Wagner's sway. Every night people who had been turned away by...

ART As death is now coming back into fashion again, there is comfort in such outrageous revelry in mortality. The tomb designs open with the last gasp of the memento mori, a...

Avant-Howerd T wo great men, this week, rowing mightily and all but capsizing their shallow coracles: Paul Scofield in Charles Dyer's new comedy at the Aldwych, and Frankie...

given the time of appalling adversity: I think I shall begin a collection of poetry.' No matter how serious our motives on read- ing a diary, an ineradicable and human...

The Demon Camera The Round-Up. (Academy One, 'X' certificate.) —Lilith. (International Film Theatre, 'X' certificate.) T IIE chief barrier to the cinema becoming a viable...

No. 308. A. KRAEMER (Deutsche Schachblatter, 1965) WHITE to play and mate in four moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 307 (Ceriani): Q - K 7 threat Q- Kt 4. I • . . R -...

By PATRICK ANDERSON I N what sense was Virginia Woolf a literary critic? * She was a brilliant experimental novelist, passionately devoted to books, who con- tinued her...

'BY whatever end one takes an incident one is faced by mystery. There are leakages of infor- mation; there are startling alliances and friend- ships; obvious questions are not...

Mum can be forgiven a man who is, at one and the same time, the Grand Old Man and enfant terrible of Scottish literature. And, for many admirers of his poetic achievement, there...

'How as' you? Howya doin'?' Not sc well As you, pint in one hand, fag in the other, A beautiful virgin pulling you to bed, Old cock of the walk. They still talk of your flights—...

The Coat. By Hugo Charteris. (Collins, 21s.) Hero on a Donkey. By Miodrag Bulatovic. (Seeker and Warburg, 35s.) Guilt. By Laszlo Nemeth. (Peter Owen, 35s.) Trawl. By B. S....

CHILDREN'S BOOKS By ELAINE MOSS TN a society where one may find oneself 'penalised for annoying a stamping Machine by using an envelope of the shape it finds indiges- tible,...

fifteen bob, but at thirty- five shillings Raymond Briggs's superb Mother Goose Treasury (Hamish Hamilton) is a bar- gain. It has everything child and adult look for in a...

THOUGH many may still leave school hating history almost as much as they hate poetry, there is less excuse. More imagination is being used on historical books for children about...

WRITING for children is always a hazardous affair; so many extra-literary factors enter into it. There is, first of all, the fear of talking or writing 'down,' of explaining...

IT is hard for writers like K. G. Lethbridge, who writes a kind of fantasy which automatically sounds echoes of Alice and Pooh, and makes us look for the qualities of a classic....

WOULD you, an adult, be reading a book if you weren't watching the box? Not necessarily. But when it comes to children, people often talk as if there were only the two...

THE aggregate of this autumn's picture-books is altogether less impressive than some of its parts —a criticism that has obtained for several years now. This branch of literature...

To read through a collection of contem- porary stories for older children in the over-eleven group is, in some ways, a hearten- ing exercise. If idiom changes, it is only to...

ACROSS.-z Cockle. 4 Strapper. 8 Havering. to Strops. 52 Ranch. 13 Greenwood. 14 So far. 16 Totem-pole. z7 Carinthia. 59 Casks. 21 Philander. 22 Rumba. 24 Puruca. 25 Swearing. 26...

ACROSS z. Plaintive childish cry for fruit? (6) 4. That vein King ! (8) 9. What's a kiss among the boys to our ancestors? (6) to. His harp was carried by an orphan boy (8) 12....

rA. momami aliTED By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT E xAc - rt.v what type of society Mr Wilson is trying to create—authoritarian socialism, corporate state, managerial society—no one...

By JOHN BULL T HE great talking point in stock markets this week has been the closing of what has come to be known as the 'reverse yield gap.' This is another way of saying...

By CUSTOS T HE less confident view of the downward trend of interest rates, to which I have already referred, is still worrying the gilt-edged mar- ket. A Barclays Bank Review...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN Well, the cat seems to like Long Life milk, but the human beings in the family are less enthusias- tic about the boiled taste imparted by...

ER.DPA\PNE By STRIX THE report stage of the Progeny Commission Bill was continued. MR BUNG (Pookering, C.) moved an amendment to reduce the levy on twins by 50 per cent; this...