each week that passes, the horrors of the gigeria-Biafra war become more unbear- Ille; yet each week they prove only the relude to worse to come. In his article on tge 44 of...

`Britain is on the way to an economic miracle' —that, according to the Coud of Downing Street, is now an 'objective' assessment of our present situation. There is no doubt a...

Those who imagined that with the election of an unassailable Gaullist majority the post-de Gaulle era had begun and that the General himself would soon withdraw in favour of the...

President de Gaulle dismissed M Georges Pompidou, Prime Minister of France since 1962 and victor of last month's general election. M Couve de Murville, M Pompidou's successor,...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Unfortunately, I left the House of Commons at two o'clock on the morning after Mr Heath's birthday and so missed the historic scenes three...

NIGERIA NICHOLAS STACEY The Rev Nicholas Stacey is deputy director of Oxfam. The tragedy of the Nigerian civil war escalates daily. The Swiss Red Cross representative in...

twin 'Spectator', 11 July 1868—A good deal of the talk in which some Liberals are indulging to their constituents about the House of Lords is very vague, and some of it is not a...

COMMON MARKET JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE Monday 1 July passed off quietly enough in Brussels. There were no ceremonial hatchet-men chopping down the frontier posts, no cele- bration...

CHINA DICK WILSON Participatory politics are proving as elusive in China as in Europe or America. Mao Tse- tunes cultural revolution is failing to produce the new look in...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Sir Alec Rose asserted that he would sooner break a bottle of champagne with his wife than be interviewed for television. Come, knighted Rose, Tell them as...

RUSSIA TIBOR SZAMUELY Many years ago, at a Soviet Communist party conference, the party secretary of Tula Region, reporting on the splendid cultural progress of his satrapy,...

J. W. M. THOMPSON The case for public participation in town plan- ning decisions has been urged very strongly from many quarters recently, and certainly there is something...

PERSONAL COLUMN BEN DUNCAN Last September, I resigned from my job in an advertising agency. I had spent, off and on, about ten years in the business. I hadn't wanted to go...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON One can't escape the anniversary game. If it isn't the First World War it's the Second World War, if it isn't the October Revolution it's Gilbert and...

Profit and loss STUART MACLURE No one who read brief reports of Mr Enoch Powell's speech on educational expenditure the other day would have guessed what a thurr a iping good...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY Editors are discourteous, arrogant, and igno- rant. That's what the man said, the man in question being, of course, Mr Gavin Astor. The occasion of this...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN Have you read the what's-wrong-with-con- sumerism exposé? You may have met it on the middle spread of your daily paper, or in one of the...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN An event of great symbolic and, possibly, of great practical importance has added to the sufficiently complex political and institutional life of...

SIMON RAVEN In 1682 Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, leader of the ruined Whigs and patron of John Locke, disguised himself as a Presbyterian minister and fled...

Century and Other Essays J. H. Huizinga selected by Pieter Geyl and F. W. N. Hugenholtz translated by Arnold J. Pomerans (Collins 45s; Fontana lOs 6d) J. H. Huizinga and Pieter...

CLEMENT FREUD Within a short generation the long arm of our permissive society has reached out and embraced the publishing trade. Books bound in plain brown paper, containing...

MICHAEL BORRIE The Museum Age Germain Bazin (Desoer/ Literary Services and Production 7 gns) Why is 'museum,' like 'amateur,' becoming a term of deriSion among those who...

AUBERON WAUGH A Life of George Bent George E. Hyde (Uni- versity of Oklahoma Press/Bailey Bros. 57s) The American Heritage Book of Indians (Eyre and Spottiswoode 126s)...

DAVID WILLIAMS Louis XIV John B. Wolf (Gollancz 84s) Standing at the corner of the Boulevard St Michel and the Rue Soufflot, staring up at the Pantheon, a friend once remarked...

RONALD HINGLEY One of the quainter nineteenth-century Rus- sian habits was to sentence condemned revo- lutionaries (of whom Chernyshevsky was the most famous) to 'civil...

RAYNER HEPPENSTALL Maigret's Pickpocket Georges Simenon (Hamish Hamilton 18s) The Old Man Dies Georges Simenon (Hamish • Hamilton 18s) Simenon in Court John Raymond (Hamish...

GEORGE HUTCHINSON At four, Henry Robinson Luce, child of American missionaries in China, was com- posing sermons. This infant aptitude was a pointer to what lay ahead. He...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS In the Main J. S. Barker (Pelham Books 35s) There is always a difficulty about cricket books that give a ball-byrball account of a Test series which is...

John Osborne has always been perfectly clear about his attitude to critics: they are irrelevant, sickly parasites, and, as he puts it, the absolute dregs. And he has now reached...

Pocket Guide to English Parish Churches : The North and The South edited and intro- duced by John Betjeman (Collins, two volumes, 30s each). This incomparable guide first ap-...

EDWARD BOYLE Cosi fan tulle, ever since I saw the 1950 Glyndebourne production, has always been my favourite Mozart opera, partly because of the surpassing beauty of the...

CINEMA Mod apocalypse JAMES PRICE Jean-Luc Godard's Weekend, which opened to ICA club members last week, is an activist film, a political as much as an artistic act, and it...

MUSIC-2 MICHAEL NYMAN At a time when anyone making the attempt to comprehend 'new music' is faced with a labyrinth of seemingly mutually exclusive techniques and idioms, the...

ART ROY STRONG The exhibition at Fishmongers Hall is a must for all those of you who pass sleepless nights speculating on the wilder excrescences of the iconography of the...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES Six to four against Barclays-Lloyds-Martins! That was how the Monopolies Commission split; and if it sounds like the latest quotation from William Hill, it...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Imagine a team of brave mountaineers climbing the terrible north face of the Eiger. They are all roped together, a dozen of them, following a leader who is...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT JAMES BOSTOCK James Bostock is chairman of Lotus, the shoe manufacturers. Just as farming depends for its success on an equable climate, so a nation's...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL The formal offer documents which set out the full terms of the Philip Morris bid for half the ordinary shares of Gallaher (in which I have recently become a...

FINANCE-FRANCE EDOUARD EXON `Mr Wilson, as soon as he had been informed of the result of the first round of the French parliamentary elections, addressed to MM Mitterrand, Guy...

CUSTOS News of the $2,000 million standby credit gave British Government stocks their first encourage- ment for a painfully long time. They had been picking up for a few days...

LETTERS From: P.,A. W. M.erriton, Professor Michael Crowder, Chike Anikwue, G. C. S. Hopcutt, Christopher Hollis, F. R. Cumberbirch, K. P. Obank, Lieut-Col L. F. Urwick, Dr...

passion to advance the Federal Nigerian government's claim that their troops are in Biafra to 'liberate' the non-Ibos from what he calls the 'Ibo political and economic...

Sir: I was not unaware of the facts Miss Renault adduces (Letters, 5 July), but her presentation of them only has the effect of misrepre:;:enting my own position. It may clarify...

Sir: Mr Birch in his letter (28 June) is quite wrong to suggest that Mr Horton in his letter of 21 June confirms press-ganging of minorities into the Federal Nigerian army. Mr...

June). Those of us who remember the flourishing days of county cricket will take the view that the decision to allow an increased importation of overseas players is a...

Sir: In comment on Mr Weidberg's courteous letter (5 July), I would say from my experience (oversimplifying to save space) that there are two kinds of professional...

should do their homework, assuming they intend to be taken seriously. Mr Grundy (5 July) could 'find no mention' of Vietnam in the Observer of 30 June. He could hardly have...

Sir: As I happen to live in Australia and my SPECTATOR reaches me by sea mail, I have only recently encountered Ian MacGregor's article in your issue of 24 May, 'The truth about...

Sir: My name has entered into the exchanges on religion between Kenneth Allsop and Quintin Hogg (21 June) and I should like to make clear that I have a foot in both camps. What...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS The condition of Doctor Cannibal Barnyard, the South African surgeon and male model who lost his head during a public relations opera- tion in Cape Town...

COMPETITION Set by E. 0. Parrott: Heart transplants, liver transplants, kidney transplants. Where will it all end? It looks as though there is going to be a big new trade in...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were incited to submit sextract from a newspaper retort, critical review or davertisement rendered articularl} apposite by the occurrence of a...

Across 1 Levelling ont as day fades (7) 5 Water-jumps? (7) 9 'Out flew the web and — wide' (Tennyson) (7) 10 Range-finder of stealthy intent (7) 11 What the dominie does down in...

PHILIDOR Black White 8 men 8 men H. Hermanson (1st Prize, Bulletin Ouvrier des Echecs, 1953). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 394...