n ARTY conferences are significant only if r something goes wrong. Right from the beginning this seemed unlikely to happen with the Tories at Blackpool this week. Even before...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS TS this Tory conference to be different from the ones that have gone before? Not basically. The delegates—sorry, representatives—still...

And did a Countenance Benign Shine forth upon our clouded goals? And was Befoozleum buried here Among these stark Satanic polls? Bring me my fudged reserve of gold. Bring me...

By ANTHONY KING T HIS week's conference at Blackpool finds the Conservatives for the first time in twenty years not only in opposition but looking forward to remaining in...

TOWARDS COALITION? By ROBERT RHODES JAMES ITNIE curious manner in which the melancholy I shades of Ramsay MacDonald have been exhumed for this week's hundredth anniver- sary...

THE LAW By R. A. CLINE It would be a pity if the exercise of this free- dom goes too far, in fact to the point of hampering the judges in their functions. The recent outburst...

W HATEVER the defects of the Brabin report on the murders of the wife and child of Timothy John Evans, its conclusions—and the implications of those conclusions—are clear. The...

From KONRAD AHLERS HAMBURG But their present Chancellor and party leader, Ludwig Erhard, is now living not only on pro- bation; he is under suspended sentence. The consensus...

RATES By DAVID NATHAN It is a lucky-dip business, as the valuation officer cheerfully admitted. 'There may be many cases where central heating has been installed of which the...

THE TIMES By DONALD McLACHLAN W rrH the discretion that it reserves for its own affairs, Fleet Street has dropped the story of The Thnes-Sunday Times marriage just when it was...

TELEVISION By STUART HOOD A FTER a slightly pompous start and what must have been the longest list of acknowledge- ments even seen on television, the BBC's series The Lost...

By HILARY SPURLING W omEN are supposed by men to lack a sense of humour. Certainly, to judge by last Wednesday evening in Cheltenham Town Hall, they are not equal to the...

October 13, 1866 A strangely sorrowful, yet dramatic story, is told of the Empres$ Charlotte of Mexico. It is said, and it seems to be true, that the fatigues and excitements...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS Blackpool, I was told again and again before I went there last week to record a brief satiric sketch for the Late Show which opens on BBC-1 on...

that a recent National Opinion Poll found that over 60 per cent of the population were in favour of the implementation of Part IV of the Prices and Incotnes Act. I am afraii...

SIR,—Of course it does not matter much who killed Kennedy if the assassin were one of those im- probable persons described in your piece `Gravitas, please' (Spectator's...

our error over his medical qualifica- tions, and we deeply regret any distress or incon- venience this may have caused him. Dr Wilson is entered in the Medical Directory with...

7) eludes me. Presumably he would allow army officers to take part in sport, but not to be good at it. Are those unfortunate enough to be selected for the army football or...

n L _J -/ C From : Dr John Rowan Wilson, Drs H. B. Wright and G. Pincherle, Frank Teer, Mark Brady, Charles Chenevix Trench, Robert G. Logan, Hugh Heckstall-Smith, Kenneth...

SIR,—As one who completed a public school edu- cation two years ago, I read with much interest the article by Logie Bruce Lockhart (September 23). Whilst concurring with much of...

all his works by hand. As editor of his literary remains, I sometimes have difficulty in reading his handwriting, especially pieces written during his last years. I am...

financial support given by MRA to her 'clean-up' movements (SPECTATOR, October 7) surprised me very much. MRA, by all accounts, is not short of funds. Why, then, should it not...

insincere, gimcrack fictions? This seems to be the main point of Mr Martin Seymour-Smith's shrewdly argued centenary estimate (September 30). I find it hard to accept his...

piece last week? 1. Laurence Olivier played Brazen in The Recruit- ing Officer, not Plume. 2. Mrs Spurling says that, apart from one-actors, `the NT new plays have all been...

men to teach boys who have never been sent to a proper training establishment.' J. F. Rox- burgh, Stowe's first headmaster, would say Mr Middleton had begged a big question. (I...

Sut,-"---Jerry Allen ('In Eastern Seas,' September 23) refers to Berau and Bulungan in Borneo as 'villages. They are not. Berau is the name of an ancient kingdom on the east...

ART By BRYAN ROBERTSON • T HE Rouault exhibition at the Tate, lovingly assembled, presented with scrupulous pre- cision, is one of the big occasions in the art history of...

MUSIC I have known few theatres and, as to opera houses, none at all, where typical Saturday nights are so crowded, homely—and aware. At Figaro there looked to be many families...

Bloodshot The Revenger's Tragedy. (Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.)—The Rivals. (Haymarket.) LIE was a bold man that first swallowed an ri oyster, said Swift....

Good Book Flops The Bible . . . In the Beginning. (Coliseum, 'U' certificate.) I N the beginning, 20th Century-Fox created many motion pictures, some bad, a few enter- taining,...

No. 304 J. M. RICE (rat Prize, Problemisten, 1963) WHITE to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 303 (Hartong): Q-R 7, threat Qx P. i. . . P-Kt 3; 2...

By C. B. COX M ANY children associate a distinct colour with each letter of the alphabet. In my own case the habit persists, and for obvious reasons I still see ' `g' as green...

Major-General Sir Edward Condition of France Spears. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 30s.) GENERAL SPEARS'S memoirs of his experiences in France in two World Wars have long been...

The Norman Conquest. By D. J. A. Matthew. (Batsford, 42s.) The Normans. By Timothy Baker. (Cassell, 42s.) 1066: The Story of a Year. By Denis Butler. (Anthony Blond, 30s.) The...

time the full colour reproduction of the ornithological classic, The Original Water Colour Paintings by John James Audubon for The Birds of America; introduc- tion by Marshall...

Officers and Men The Assassins. By Nicholas Mosley. (Hodder and Stoughton, 25s.) The Mask of Apollo. By Mary Renault. (Long- mans, 25s.) Night Games. By Mai Zetterling....

prestige purposes, to lie on coffee-tables, to be noted with approval and leafed through with gasps. Those—and surely' they will be the majority—who embark on the text will...

A wild horse, without A bridle. I must Fall, I know, and soon, And on stones. Falling, I watch the world break In a thousand prisms About me, and yell To the brute: 'Faster!'...

Purity and Danger. An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. By Mary Douglas. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 25s.) ONCE every few years an anthropologist writes a book which...

By Nelson Algren. (Deutsch, 30s.) Paste Book JUST as every non-writer may be said to have a book in him, so every writer may be said to have a non-book in him. Nelson Algren...

Nicolson, 42s.) Son of Heaven EMPERORS are not the most accessible of people, but nothing daunted, and having dealt success- fully with the imperious character of Haile...

Tr Au BEACH n r 1 By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT AT least one professional investor I know went to the Brighton conference. Naturally I was anxious to find out what he thought of the...

By CUSTOS T HE issue of a new short 'tap' stock—f700 million 61 per cent Exchequer 1971 at 991— put a damper on the 'short' end of the gilt-edged market. The market in the...

By JOHN BULL DI Rrrisii business in South Africa is having to foot part of the bill for economic sanctions against Rhodesia. The clearest example is pro- vided by the new...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN A furious 'proven care' motorist tells me that his agent calmly sent him a reminder this month, with a 40 per cent reduction (the old...

ACROSS T. Warning implying one may be rooked on board? (to) 6. Food is everything to the very young (4) Palindromic standard of attainment (5) it. New for a jazzman (9) tz....

13 Calamint. 15 Weatherboard. r8 Convalescent. 23 Boniface. 24 Aspire. 26 Oriana. 27 Lumbered. 28 Signor. 29 MarginaL DOWN.-r Ruffed. 2 Sptits.'3 Legatee. 4 Tree. 6 Rhubarb. 7...

!ER:OP/WEN By STRIX How is it that this pleasure, innocent in itself, becomes diluted with an odious feeling of moral superiority? Our fellow-beings to whom we feel superior...