' 41 %aft-a, and the brief visit of the Head Z li the Diplomatic Service, Sir Denis Green- to Lagos for talks with General Gowon, each in their way testimony to the mount- ji!...

Egypt's Chief of Staff, General Riad, was killed in an artillery duel with Israel across the Suez Canal. United Nations observers blamed the Egyptians for starting the firing...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE, MP So the select committee on agriculture is dead. And with it, in all probability, the fire of the Crossman reforms is extinguished....

RUSSIA AND CHINA TIBOR SZAMUELY For the past few years the two great communist powers, Russia and China, have been staring at each other across a 7,000-mile frontier with a...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS The chief defect of Cecil King Was being wrong on everything Though one would think that it sufficed To cross swords with a poltergeist, He adds to that...

TRADE UNIONS-2 R. A. CLINE 'The whole thing is deadly serious . . . the whole matter is coloured by the employee- employer relationship.' The gripping precision of thought of...

TRADE UNIONS-1 ANNE KENT The trade union leading the fight against Ford's pay agreement is Mr Hugh Scanlon's AEF. This article describes the AEF'S role in another cur- rent...

FARMING LORD WALSTON The 1969 farm price review is to be presented to Parliament on Wednesday. The Government wants farmers to increase their output; but it wants neither to...

REASSESSMENT ROBERT BLAKE Neville Chamberlain was born on 18 March 1869. In this article the Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, and biographer of two Prime Ministers...

From the 'Spectator, 1.1 March 1869—Mr. Cardwell introduced the Army Estimates on Thursday, in a speech which delighted the Tories and old soldiers, and amounted to this. He has...

Ford's affair is just another in the long series of motor industry disputes. It may even be less damaging than has been made out, for some lost exports will probably be made...

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON In the fourteenth century, at the time of the Black Death, a strange phenomenon was seen in Europe. This was the cult of the Flagellants, who...

EDUCATION STUART MACLURE The liberals have had it all their own way for so long in matters of educational theory that it comes as a refreshing change to read a vigorous...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN Within easy walking distance of home there is a smallish restaurant where I have taken to din- ing nearly every week. Its attractions are en-...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD Having, at the end of the last adventure, sur- vived engulfment in what looked suspiciously like a well-known brand of detergent, Dr Who is off again....

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY I have just learnt Japanese. Well, to be truthful, I have just learnt one word of Japanese. Well, to be even more truthful, I can't really say I've...

TABLE TALK PENIS BROGAN For people of my age, in the 'sere and yellow leaf,' obituaries acquire a morbid fascination. It was with a shock that I noticed the other day the death...

JOHN HOLLOWAY Tennyson is doubtless of more interest than Christopher Ricks; yet it seems right that interest and admiration for the latest volume of the English Annotated...

Nevakivi (Athlone Press 63s) Parlous words ALBERT HOURANI Anyone who has to do with the modern history of the Near East or its tangled present must sometimes hope never to...

Readers first HENRY TUBE Chewsday Dan Greenburg (Seeker and Warburg 25s) • Joseph Winter's Patronage Barry 1 Cole (Methuen 25s) Ifs Time My Friend les Time Vasiliy Aksyo-...

TRAVEL BOOKS PATRICK ANDERSON To Mr James A. Michener, the best-selling American novelist, Spain has been a key ex- perience: 'any man interested in either the mystic or the...

Z marks the spot M. LLEWELIXN SMITH Z is a novel about a political murder in Greece. Towards the end of May 1963 Gregory Lambrakis, a deputy of the extreme left-wing party...

JOAN BENNETT The first volume of Professor Willey's auto- biography, Spots of Time, recalled formative experiences between the year of his birth, 1897, and 1920. He says here...

DENIS BROGAN Contemplating the American literary scene in his old age, James Fenimore Cooper showed a good deal of republican, if not democratic, complacency, and gave the palm...

PENELOPE HOUSTON I can't remember a biographical film that leaves one with less clearly defined feelings about the central character than Karel Reisz's Isadora (Odeon, St...

Young master HILARY SPURLING Joe Orton's last play, What the Butler Saw. reached London last week in an extremely odd production at the Queen's. So odd, indeed, that the play...

ART PAUL GRINKE Art history has never been the same since the discovery of X-rays, and the exhibition of paintings and photographs, laudably produced by the Burlington Magazine...

OPERA JOHN HIGGINS On her first entry in the current Covent Garden revival of Fidelio Anja Silja cuts an almost frail figure. Her shoulders seem weighed down by the fetters she...

MICHAEL NYMAN Thirty-five years after the Italian Futurists pro- posed the art of bruitistno, Pierre Schaeffer in 1948 began his experiments with montages of recorded sounds...

MONEY NICHOLAS DAVENPORT It is always a relief to forget our own troubles over the balance of payments by thinking of the like troubles of countries overseas. Some foolish and...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL There are times when you have to look not at the individual shares in a portfolio but at the balance, at the proportions invested in differ- ing sectors....

Sir,: What a sad mix-up Mr Auberon Waugh (14 February) seems to be with his personal prejudices prickling through the blanket of nonsense he writes. He even argues that if a...

Sir: We were very interested in Mr Nigel Lawson's comments on the left-wing slant on BBC 2 ('Spectator's notebook,' 7 March). This is not a question of hysterical 'reds under...

LETTERS From James L. Barry, Simon Bewlay, T. R. Tweedy, P. S. A. Edwards, Sir Denis Brogan, Pamela Lady Otis/ow, John Rowan Wilson, Professor H. C. McLaren, Harold S....

CUSTOS The French one-day strike was not, in the event, particularly impressive-and so gold prices fell back sharply on Tuesday and with them gold shares. There were losses of...

Sir: Readers of Mr Kenneth Allsop's article (28 February) may find the experiences of one who for many years delighted in the privilege of walking or wandering over private...

Sir: As a national newspaper employee I am particularly grateful to you for prtating a regular weekly article on the press, especially as, since the extinction of our former...

Sir: I can't think why Madeleine Simms (Letters, 7 March) has worked herself up into such a paddy about my article on abortion. It must be obvious that I am not hostile to abor-...

Sir: May I clear up a couple of points made by Sir Denis Brogan in your columns (7 March)? He refers to the noblesse of France and main- tains that `the French nobility was...

with the future gynaecologist little better than a state-hired 'womb scraper.' He writes: 'We must accept that if abortion OD demand can be practised with impunity under the law...

some lapsus, give to the Duc de Broglie his younger brother's Nobel Prize. Denis Brogan 1 Hedgerley Close, Cambridge

Those who can, like Smedley, do, Those who can't, like Arnold, teach; What other nation is there who , Can manage to discourage each? E. M. Behrens 64 Coleman Street, London EC2

Sir: Many people would like to help Biafra . .4 survive. So far they have only been able to do it by contributing to charities such as Oxfam. There is an even more important...

Sir : In the first three paragraphs of Nigel Law- son's 'Spectator's notebook' of 7 March he mentions 'England' in contexts where this is inaccurate. Such solecisms have...

Sir: In 'Spectator's notebook' (28 February) J. W. M. Thompson quotes as a maxim 'never apologise, never explain.' The Kipling version of that (and what he is said to have...

Sir : I am sorry to harp on a vulture, but Luciana Cianci's defence of Freud (Letters, 7 March) will not quite do. Nibbio, specifically, means kite. It may be generically used...

Sir: Either your reviewer Mr Roy Strong, or the author of The Stanhopes of Chevening, Mr Aubrey Newman, is at fault (28 February). Mention is made of 'two step-brothers' of Lady...

Sir: I do not believe I am alone in thinking that never in the field of news has a subject been so much covered for so long for the interest of so few—as the Concorde. When...

AFTERTHOUGHT A. P. HERBERT NICHOLAS NATTER This is Hot News, London. Tonight we cover a question which has baffled Man for hundreds of years, which puzzled Napoleon and...

COMPETITION And these few precepts in thy memory /See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue. . . Polonius's admonitory words to Laertes, tediously familiar though they...

. Trevor Grove reports: 'My father, whose name I forget, was a fat, lazy man in a tweed pork- pie hat with a tobacco-stained moustache.' That was the opening sentence of John...

PHILIDOR A. Boudantzev (Europe Echecs, October 1968). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 429 (Mansfield): Q – B 6, threat Q – Q 5. 1 B X...

Across 1 Printer's measure softly bound to be deprived of content (7) 5 He isn't half holy! Or is he? (4-3) 9 Occupy in a way that might be described as something more than a...