Whatever else may be said, there can be no doubt that Mr Cecil King has performed a signal service for the Conservative party. His Peremptory demand that Mr Wilson must go, and...

unable to reassert itself resorts to desperate shifts to defend its dignity. There is a sad inevitability about the Government's progression from sanctions to the impounding of...

'Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!' was the watch- word of the left. Mr Cecil King's suggestion that the Government needed a new leader quite over- shadowed the council...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Perhaps the Tory party is trembling at the thought that the Daily Sketch might be tempted to launch a ferocious attack on Mr Heath, but the...

FRANCE JOSEPH CHAPMAN Paris—The weekend of the tenth anniversary of General de Gaulle's return to power pro- duced the biggest demonstration so far against his regime. 'Ten...

INDIA RHONA GHATE Nagpur—Three years ago, when the intra- uterine loop was introduced here on a large scale, it seemed that at last a method of birth control had been found...

TOWN HALL BLUES-1 CHRISTOPHER CHATAWAY Christopher Chataway, leader of the Inner London Education Authority, was formerly a junior minister at the Department of Education and...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS After James Russell Lowell '1 think we'll win—at least we'll call it a vic- tory:—Senator McCarthy. I du believe in freedom's cause Ez far away as Paris....

TOWN HALL BLUES-2 ANTHONY KING Anthony King is Reader in Government in the University of Essex. Like the wreck of some great ship, Labour's power in local government lies...

SCOTLAND JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE, MP Writing last month in these columns I sug- gested that 7 May was going to be a day of trial for the Scottish Nationalists: the day when the...

J. W. M. THOMPSON I was reminded of Eliot's views on penal taxation this week when hearing of the new City of London arts award; this kind of prize for achievement has become...

PERSONAL COLUMN TIBOR SZAMUELY Some months ago I began thinking about Russian children's books. I was set off on this line of thought after reading a review of Mr Robin Bruce...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON Has the National Institute of Medical Re- search really made an important advance in dealing with the problem of rejection in organ transplantation?...

THE LAW R. A. CLINE Slowly but surely the British press has pierced through the Crawford passport incident and grasped that a general principle of universal application lies at...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD During the next two or three years the Bac will pass through a critical phase. It will have to ask Parliament for more money in the shape of an increased...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY Some years ago Mr Malcolm Muggeridge re- marked to me that all through his life he had been a happy guerrilla, sniping away at society from the outside....

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN Harold Nicolson had many strings to his literary bow, but his weekly column in the SPECTATOR was the most continuing example of his pro- fessional...

From the 'Spectator, 16 May 18681-The second reading of Mr. Ewart's Bill introducing the metric system was carried on Wednesday by a vote of 217 to 65, an extraordinarily heavy...

JOHN HOLLOWAY To the detriment of bookish critics, what drama brings into question is in the end not literature at all, but reality. It cannot but create a society and stylise...

JOHN ROWAN WILSON The Double Helix James D. Watson (Weiden- feld and Nicolson 35s) Other people's obsessions may be either very dull or very interesting according to the skill...

Dark laughs MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH War Memorial Martin Russ (Michael Joseph 25s) The Looming Shadow Legson Kayira (Long- mans 21s) The Klansman William Bradford Huie W. H. Allen...

HENRY TUBE The Devil in the Flesh Raymond Radiguet translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith (Calder and Boyars 25s) `Age is nothing. It is Rimbaud's work, not the age at which he...

PETER FLEMING Room 39: Naval Intelligence in Action 1939-45 Donald McLachlan (Weidenfeld and Nicol- son 50s) In a modest preface Mr McLachlan calls attention to the...

WILLIAM SARGANT Judges and psychiatrists have never got on very well together. And the position is often made more difficult by the fact that psy- chiatrists can disagree among...

J. B. DONNE Great Benin : Its Customs, Art and Horrors H. Ling Roth (Routledge 120s) Tribal Masks from Nciprstek Museum, Prague Erich Herold, photographed by Jindrich Marco...

AUBERON WAUGH The Kennet and Avon Canal Kenneth R. Clew (David and Charles 50s) The Kennet and Avon Canal, finished in 1810, stretches from Bristol to Reading, a distance of...

D. C. WATT Mr Marwick has already gone a fair way towards establishing himself as one of the lead- ing British social historians; and he has made the twentieth century...

Czech points PENELOPE HOUSTON Closely Observed Trains (Curzon, 'X') Mahanagar (Paris Pullman, 'U') It would be interesting to know how much the scrupulous, dry and entirely...

HILARY SPURLING The Rome Stabile Theatre puts me in mind, like all other visiting Italian companies to date, of a few cold words of Elinor Glyn to a small boy in trouble: 'It...

ART PAUL GRINKE Most people would think it almost 'hubristic to attempt to create a cabinet of drawings on the lines of the great eighteenth century European collections, but...

BRYAN ROBERTSON Graham Sutherland is still a painter haunted by darkness, decay, and the bizarre verging on the horrific; a visionary, in the sense of Blake or Radon. His...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES 'There are conventions' (said the Shadott Chancellor) 'that govern the publication of the reserves. Can the Chancellor assure the House that there has been...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Exactly what is a financial crisis? And What is a king-size financial crisis? Briefly defined a financial crisis is simply a critical shortage of cash. And a...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL I do not see this market staying down for long, so I gave one cheer last week when prices tumbled by an almost unprecedented 61 per cent in five trading...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT LOUIS GINSBURG Louis Ginsburg is Investment Manager of the Legal and General Assurance Society. In common with the purposes of all other in- vestors, it is...

CUSTOS In spite of its thirty-point fall last week, the stock market has not lost its nerve. A day's hesitation, on Monday, was followed by a good rise which recovered half the...

ART MARKET FLORENCE PLACE `Your reaction to the sale?' the narrator in- quired, as colour-television cameras panned in on the unnaturally pink face of Mr Peter Wilson, chairman...

Across 1 Brilliant swimmer? (8) 5 Alf all twisted round in ribbon (6) 9 A capital Englishman (8) 10 Beribboned pole-cat? (6) 12 Tasteful musical ornament? (6) 13 Fancy piece!...

Sir: The custom whereby the Prime Minister 'asks the Sovereign to dissolve Parliament when his Government has lost the confidence of the electorate completely (as opposed to a...

Sir: Helen Vlachos's spiritzd little article (3 May) refers to Greek press reports and what was reported to have been said not by the whole delegation of five who visited Greece...

. . . It has always distressed me to see Angus Maude's name amongst the 'Noes' on homosexual law reform. I think a grave injustice has been done to homosexuals over the years...

Sir: Dr Peter Smith (3 May) makes the definite assertion: 'The sonic boom will invade us.' It is an assumption for which I know of no technical support as regards the Concorde,...

LETTERS From: Christopher Casserley, John Lowe, R. T. Luxton, John Barton-Armstrong, Antony Buck, MP, and David Webster, MP, B. J. lurren,' Peter McMenemie, Nicolas and Ruth...

the present party set-up. The principles of the party have become so blurred in a fog of PEST and Bow Group reports as to seem non- existent. Too many members of the Shadow...

iron out anoma- lies affecting the age of majority, it might also take another look at the age of consent. It has always struck me as an odd reflection on the national...

Sir: I have read the article by Anthony Burney in your issue dated 19 April, and I would agree, as I am sure most of us would who are con- cerned with maintaining the...

Risinghill as a `scrappily written polemic' and as being `ludicrously one-sided' ('Spectator's notebook,' 3 May), without realising what a scrappily written polemic and how...

Sir: I am writing a history of the Royal Col- lege of Music which is to be published during 1970 by Messrs Cassell and Company Limited. May L through you, ask any of your...

Sir: During more than thirty years as a librarian I have frequently wondered how some books have come to be written, let alone pub- lished. Michael Calvert's letter about his...

Sir: The dog-fight in your columns about the precise degree to which the BMA is willing for doctors to take social factors into account in abortion, is beginning to take on the...

to Auberon Waugh (Edward in the lions' den,' 3 May) that the British National party merged eighteen months ago with the League of Empire Loyalists, Greater Britain Movement, and...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS The Commonwealth Relations Office is notori- ously stingy in making its confidential docu- ments available to the press. This is a pity, as the texture...

COMPETITION Competitors are invited to compose an eight- line poem or stanza of a poem on any one of the subjects given below, using four of the fol- lowing five pairs of words...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were in- vited to write the opening paragraphs of an article hymning either see-through trousers for men or full plate armour for women in the...

PIIILIDOR Black White 8 men 12 men G. Guidelli (3rd Prize, Riv. Scacc. ltaliana, 1918). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 386 (Funk):...