p ARTLY because this country has been undergoing one of its periodic bouts of self-delusion, two quite separate issues have been confused this week. One is the Vietnam war, and...

Dear Lord, Oh how we wish that there were peace In Israel, Yemen, Vietnam and Greece And, as you say, it would be nicer still If only everyone would cease to kill And sing with...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS T HE Government, someone said this week, is now trying to determine how many general councillors of the Trades Union Congress can dance on...

AMERICA From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK 'Ms your State Department and not mine.'— President Johnson to Senator Kennedy. tr HE President's interview with Senator Ken- nedy after...

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN I F you are a graduate with fair maths and fair economics, with a normal competence in prose joined to an abnormal curiosity about money, willing...

From CHANCHAL SARKAR NEW DELHI T HIS week's general election in India under- lines the fact that the Congress party, after twenty years of unchallenged rule, has arterial...

A TRACT FOR THE TORIES-- 1 By NIGEL LAWSON "THERE can be little doubt that the most re- 1 markable political phenomenon at the present time is the continuing ascendancy and...

MEDICINE TODAY By JOHN ROWAN WILSON Ah, sweet mystery of life, at last I've found thee! Ah, I know at last the secret of it all! Cto sing, these days, the molecular...

Fria one and only thing to emerge clearly 1 from the Commons debate on the brain drain this week was that even the elementary statistics on the subject are lacking. It is, of...

TELEVISION By STUART HOOD T MERE is a bad old tradition in television that all you require for a sports programme is a personable presenter and some lengths of film. The...

CONSUMER'S GUIDE TO THE PROFESSIONS-8 By MICHAEL MANSER T HERE is no excuse for landing yourself with a dud architect. Unlike the other professions,. whose mistakes, after the...

February 16, 1867 Mr. Walpole has declined to bring in a Cab Act, but a Bill for regulating traffic incidentally abolishes the sixpence for the first mile. If it passes, no...

PLANNING By GUY TOPHAM W HEN the Greater London Council rejected a plan to redevelop ten acres of Chelsea last week they brought a lull to what had become an unusually piquant...

AFTERTHOUGHT IDLY turning on the wire- less just before lunch on Sunday in order to stimu- late the canaries. I found myself listening, with a faint thrill of nostalgia...

en bas reply to Mrs Dougal (February 10), ignores at least one step the authorities might take to reduce the de- leterious effect of sweets on children's teeth—pro- hibit the...

SIR,—John Rowan Wilson (February 3) claims that infectious drug resistance happens with special fre- quency when antibiotics are fed to pigs and cattle. Does he really believe...

understands and therefore misrepresents the NFU's attitude on the Common Market. Our attitude is not one of 'niggling opposition.' In the introduction to our booklet British...

SIR,—After reading Martin Seymour-Smith on 'The Great Shakespeare Hoax' (February 10), I lay down, gently, on my couch and inflicted upon myself a whole hour of ruthless...

SIR,—Your stockbroker contributor, in his article 'How to Choose Your Stockbroker' (January 27), says that there are no female members of any United Kingdom stock exchange. In...

EA2 n.E DIME From: Harry Broadbent, John Peel, MP, James Reedy, Mrs Charles Davy, Jamshed Vakeel, J. C. Maxwell, John R. Walton, Mrs Stephanie West, A. 0. Speirs. Sia,—One...

justice to a famous line of Menander (frg. Ill) when he treats it as an inverted cliché: that the sense of 'those whom the gods love die young' is what it is generally supposed...

SIR,—Alan Watkins (`The Case for Mr Crossman,' February 10) has missed the point. Consolidated Fund Bills are Government business and they are im- portant because unless they...

mis-statement on the part of their opponents, it is a pity that Mr Seymour-Smith, in the course of his analysis of the latest Marlowe non- sense, has one sentence that is not...

RECORDS P IERKE BOLA I I's Wozzeck for CBS label, with the Paris Opera orchestra and chorus and a cast headed by the admired Walter Berry, from Vienna, is the third recording to...

CINEMA By PENELOPE HOUSTON on the edge of full admission to the Losey sup- porters' club. Intellectual control and nervous extremism have been Losey's trade marks: a rare,...

ART. By ROY STRONG Make your way with eyes semi-closed past dreary twentieth-century books, photos and watercolours and open them again near the sign that informatively reads...

By HUGH TREVOR-ROPER 'Via destruction of the European Jews by I . Hitler was not the calculated extermination of human beings, ordered and carried out in cold blood. It could...

The Hard and Bitter Peace. By G. F. Hudson. (Pall Mall Press, 40s.) Berlin '45: The Grey City. By Richard Brett- Smith. (Macmillan, 30s.) IN the present atmosphere of...

Too many forests now— A graveyard Of summer green Or autumn Forested with flames, And new acres planted every year— A graveyard Ev en more in the silence of winter, And...

The Oxford Book of Scottish Verse. Chosen by John MacQueen and Tom Scott. (0.U.P., 45s.) The Frog Prince and other poems. By Stevie Smith. (Longmans, 30s.) Fresh Water, Sea...

PROBABLY no one can appreciate the effect of the 'paperback revolution' better than the person Who is engaged, like myself, in teaching univer- sity students. This applies...

Brown Lord of the Mountain. By Walter Macken. (Macmillan, 25s.) The Sacred Malady. By Anthony Campbell. (Chatto and Windus, 25s.) The Gates of the Forest. By Elie Wiesel....

The Julian Symons Omnibus (Collins, 21s.) is excellent value for a guinea. Three of Mr Symons's best novels, The 31st of February, a psychological advertising-agency crime...

UHE ECOI\ yAir E By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT T ONG ago in the 'thirties I used to be en- couraged by Keynes to attack the financial establishment in the City for its sheer economic...

CAN the quests of religion and science be recon- ciled? Is it possible for a Jesuit priest to combine independence of thought with an iron fidelity to his Order? These were...

By JOHN BULL A - r one point last Monday morning it looked as if Mr Kosygin was going to crown his visit to this country by becoming, of all things, the darling of Throgmorton...

By CUSTOS T HE gilt-edged market soon recovered from the setback caused by the £60 million twin- issue GLC stock by tender-£20 million at 6+ per cent dated 1977 and 140 million...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN A STORM in a feeding bottle has just been .successfully corked up by the Monopolies Commission, with only one or two voices raised in...

By STRIX S HAKEN though it occasionally is by gusts of ineffectual indignation, our parish council is a stolid sort of body which does its best to be constructive. In theory, I...

ACROSS 'A king sate on the rocky brow Which looks o'er sea-born--' (Byron) (7) 5 Like a sore-headed guardsman? (7) 9 Rain's very good for producing wild outcries (7) to...

No. 322 F. Kan.n.Eiti (1907; reprinted in Problemin, January 1967) wiirrE to play and mate in five moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 321 (Dunaujvarosi): Q - Kt 4,...

ACROSS.—! Stolid 4 Black- ing 9 Meekly to Reminder 12 Tangents 13 Tissue 15 Aida i6 Breadfruit 1_9 Mis- cellany 20 Adam 23 Remove 25 Vertical 27 Infernal 28 Strarttell 29...