This year's Commonwealth Conference has demonstrated that, if the ex-colonies have learned nothing else from the former mother country, they have certainly learned the art of...

Three weeks ago Captain Terence O'Neill appeared to be the unchallenged hero of the Six Counties. Yet today his future, and that of the province of Ulster, is once more plunged...

All sixteen steel unions threatened to strike against British Steel Corporation's decision to recognise two white - collar unions. Britain's bank workers, too, planned a strike...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH The Labour party, we are constantly told, is in the most terrible mess. At by-elections, the shortage of local workers is so acute that...

From the 'Spectator', 16 January I869—There is a notion in the world that great statesmen's opinions on politics are something more than opinions, whether they be formed on...

THE COMMONWEALTH JOSEPH CHAPMAN It was, from a British point of view, strictly Mr Callaghan's conference. Every day until Wed- nesday, when Mr Wilson tried as a comeback to...

AMERICA mURRAY KEMPTON New York—`The theme of any Inaugural Address is either sacrifice or hope,' one of Mr Nixon's assistants said last week. 'I expect the theme of this one...

CZECHOSLOVAKIA ELIZABETH WISKEMANN Prague—On arriving in Prague early in January everything seemed surprisingly normal, older people setting about their business briskly,...

Across 1 Samplers of the products of Edgar Allan, poor things (10) 6 Fruit of bad oarsmanship (4) 10 In the mass they're a matter for pride (5) II 'All things bright and —'...

J. W. M. THOMPSON Two conflicting urges in our society—to pre- serve liberty; to do good to people, if neces- sary against their will—are heavily involved in the argument about...

PERSONAL COLUMN MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH In an article whose enthusiasm for literature is infectious, Professor Plumb suggested in these columns last week that good fiction in...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON So the property developers are planning to , have a go at Harley Street. Well, I suppose- it- had to happen. One only has to enter one of the houses...

THE LAW R. A. CLINE The report on the use of cannabis by the 'Hallucinogens' subcommittee (which has in- evitably become personalised as the Wootton Report) is an eloquent...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Oh, well for him who strikes the moon. All knowledge is a certain boon. But have they thought to ask the moon Just what the moon will say? They boast to...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY There was I, only last week, going on about the October Revolution that never was, and bless me if we haven't had another. I found it fascinating to look...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD It was, I am firmly convinced, mere coincidence that Wilder—returning to the screen as Am- bassador for Special Situations and Trade— should have been...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN It , is likely that this particular immigrant arrived here in 1882 and certain that he was still in his teens. Had the classifications of the...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN One of my oldest and most sagacious Cam- bridge friends talked to me briefly a day or two ago in King's Parade about the impact of the failure to...

RODNEY ACKLAND On my thirteenth birthday, in 1922, I was taken to the Scala Theatre and saw my first Griffith film. It was a coup de foudre from which I have never recovered:...

Women's rites HENRY TUBE Bruno's Dream Iris Murdoch (Chatto and Wind us 30s) Catherine Carter Pamela Hansford Johnson (Macmillan 42s) The Woman Destroyed Simone de Beauvoir...

Habeas corpus REGINALD HERRING Past Praying For Sara Woods (Crime Club 30s) Silence Under Threat Belton Cobb (W. H. Allen 21s) Fuzz Ed McBain (Hamish Hamilton 21s) Your Secret...

C. C. WRIGLEY Renascent Africa Nnamdi Azikiwe (Frank Cass 65s) Professor Heussler is the obituarist of the Colonial Service, and it is hard to imagine a more attractive or...

KEITH KYLE Whatever became of James Roosevelt, ma's boy, Erich Mende, the former rot' Vice-Chan- cellor of West Germany, and Sir Eric Wyndham White, Britain's gift to Gsrr? Mr...

KENNETH ALLSOP 'We live by Death's negligence,' a nineteen year old airman entered in his journal in the summer of 1943. The procrastination was soon repaired. One year later...

PATRICK ANDERSON There was more to life than the production of coal, the expansion of the cotton trade, the growth of population and the chauvinistic self- satisfaction of...

Metternich's Europe : Selected Documents edited by Mark Walker (Macmillan 84s). This volume in the Documentary History of Western Civilisation has often a very contemporary...

MICHAEL NYMAN 1: is a very cheering fact that at the present time there are a number of independent musical groups or organisations whose concerts, apart frqm providing music...

PENELOPE HOUSTON After only a couple of films, the landscape of Miklos Jancso is already one of the most un- mistakable in cinema. The bare and intermin- able grasslands of...

ART BRYAN ROBERTSON Leslie Waddington is making a thoroughly distinguished contribution to the New Year by showing a large collection of recent drawings by Elisabeth Frink....

WES MAGEE One, with a mohican scalp, blew mad things on a sax. Another, acne red, piledrove a piano while the audience jumped in with drums, newspaper rolls, transistors, cans....

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT This takeover boom is exciting too many people for its own good. Before long some busy- body in Whitehall will say that it has got to be stopped. Last year...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Shareholders in Associated British Picture Corporation (mac cinemas, half-share in Thames Television, film production, film pro- cessing and some property),...

CUSTOS Mr Harry Hyams, who has quietly made £30 to £40 million out of property development since the middle 1950s, has at last stepped into the limelight. He has proposed a...

LETTERS From Harrison E. Salisbury, Peter Townsend, Denis Archdeacon, Charles Green, David W. Parting Ion, F. iheanacho Okole, Cornelius O'Leary, Louis de Firma, J. M....

the debate on Nigeria and Biafra was to claim in your columns that the Biafran leadership would never honour any cease-fire arrangements and accordingly called on Mr Wilson to...

Sir: If, for the phrases 'coloured people,' or 'coloured races,' in his first six points, Simon Raven substitutes 'modern buildings.' trade unions,' railway trains,'...

January) provoked a good deal of thought, I am sure, as does most of his work. This, I suppose, is because he writes from a fresh point of view largely unencumbered by any...

Sir: Lord Lugard may be dead, but the poli- tical defaults of his concept of colonial develop- ment cannot, be swept aside, even by so eminent an authority as Dame Margery...

Sir: The reply (Letters, 3 January) of Mr Chichester-Clark, MP, to Sir Denis Brogan is more than a little disingenuous. Let us look at the facts Mr Chichester-Clark adduces in...

Sir: Mr Quintin Hogg is on very doubtful ground when he states, by implication, that when people no longer believe in religion it may continue to be true (Letters, 3 January)....

Sir: May I question R. A. Cline's conclusion (3 January) that 'whether trials are fairer . . . • is what law reform is about?' The truism that trials in the mother country of...

Sir : Many people will agree with Stephen Gardiner (10 January) in his plea for new and humanitarian aspects in architecture and plan- ning. I live in a house which is about one...

AFTERTHOUGHT VICTOR CLARK Victor Clark is Chief Education Officer for the East Riding of Yorkshire. When I go away on holiday the pedagogue within me is not idle. Thoughts...

concerning the intentions of the Law Commission which so dismayed him according to your issue of 3 January; they were quite without foundation. As a reading of our annual...

Sir: I sympathise with Nigel Lawson ('Spec- tator's notebook,' 3 January) over his experi- ence with 'space hoppers.' My children, like his, were given two of those toys for...

to compose an intelligible piece of prose around ten given words, taken from the opening pass- ages of a well-known work of literature; an exercise which this week not only...

COMPETITION Set by I. M. Crooks: The National Society of Non-Smokers recently asked the BBC to show characters in plays refusing cigarettes. Com- petitors are invited to help...

PHILIDOR White 10 men 7 men A. J. Fink (Good Companions, 1920). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 421 (Narayanan and Krishna- murthy):...