Any new government would wince at the prospect of a national dock strike within a month of assuming office. On the simple practical level, a major clash of this nature catches...

Why not a spoils system? PETER PATERSON Only the most flinty-hearted and vengeful of partisan politicians would fail to be moved by the plight of Mr Anthony Green- wood. One...

Violent men and armchair men GEORGE GALE It was neither the demonstration of reasoned argument nor the evidence of massive moral outrage that brought about the cancellation of...

The battle of the public purse WILLIAM JANEWAY New York — Once upon a time in America, this time of year brought a welcome inter- regnum in national politics. Congress went...

A flair for success AGATHA CHRISTIE Sir Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books and one of the most influential of publishers, died on 7 July aged sixty-seven. My friendship with...

PETER GOLDMAN In one important respect Mr Wilson did the country a bad turn by losing the election. If things had gone the other way, political commentators of the more...

Notes on the end of all flesh CLARENCE BROWN In the small town of South Carolina where I grew up the first world war was a personal disaster for the professor of German at...

bolt out of the blue has struck. The European War, which we predicted so confidently, and as many of our readers thought so rashly, last week. has arrived even mom quickly than...

A spot of art from Sir Lew BILL GRUNDY Every time ATV put a culture programme on the air 1 have a vision. It's of Sir Lew Grade sitting at home watching it. He is smoking one...

The men at the top JOHN ROWAN WILSON The salient fact about Ministers of Health is that most of them, good or bad, are soon. forgotten. Only now and then does a particu- lar...

Tasks for the new broom RHODES BOYSON Dr Rhodes Boyson is headmaster of a London comprehensive school Education may not have been a live issue on the hustings but the...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS 'If anyone is a nine-to-fiver who then goes home to the wife, he is very unlikely to make out a big career.' (Mr. Gerald Dennis, personnel director of the...

Workers by hand and brain DENIS BROGAN The extension of the war of undergraduates, or some undergraduates, against the university and police authorities in Cambridge is in a...

COLIN MacINNES The Inca conquest was sudden, brief, ex- tensive and horrible. By 1530, the Incas ruled seven million Amerindians in an empire stretching 3,000 miles, and...

J. G. FARRELL The I.R.A. Tim Pat Coogan (Pall Mall 45s) In May 1940 a German spy called Herman Goertz parachuted into Ireland from s a Heinkel with the intention of making con-...

HENRY TUBE Mr Sammler's Planet Saul Bellow (Weiden4 feld and Nicolson 35s) It seems no time at all since ambitious North American novelists were trying to capture something...

CHRISTOPHER LLOYD From the Dreachzought to Scapa Flow Volume V: Victory and Aftermath Arthur J. Mardei (our 75s) This is the fifth and final volume of Pro- fessor Marder's...

Martin SEYMOUR-SMITH Belloc: A Biographical Anthology edited by Herbert van Thal and Jane Soames Nicker- son (Allen and Unwin 75s) Belloc. made up the fourth of the famous...

ROBERT RHODES JAMES Lord Ismay Sir Ronald Wingate (Hutchinson 55s) Not so many years ago there was a particu- lar genre of Second World War biography, in which the subject...

ANN WORDSWORTH Letters of Walter Pater edited by Lawrence Evans (ouP 50s) Though Pater warmed to Pascal's letters, 'a conversation by writing with other persons. his own were...

Then and now BARRY COLE Ochikubo Monogatari: The Tale of The Lady Ochikubo anonymous, translated by Wilfrid Whitehouse and Eizo Yanagisawa (Peter Owen 42s) Silence Shusaku...

PAUL GRINKE The thirty-fifth Biennale Internazionale d'Arte at Venice held its vernissage some few weeks ago with the customary disburse- ment of curled-up canapes and...

Sporting types PENELOPE HOUSTON La Treve (Everyman, 'U') They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (Prince Charles, 'AA') - The Out-of-Towners (Plaza, V') And Soon the Darkness (ABC...

Sights and sounds GILLIAN WIDDICOMB1 The overriding problem of the City of Lon- don festival is that it works better on paper than in hall. The reason is easy to trace, for...

Old stagers ROBERT CUSHMAN The Proposal and Arms and the Man (Chichester) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Old Vic) Returning to Chichester for the first time in five...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT It is ironic, too, that Mr Harold Lever, an ex-Financial Secretary of the Treasury, should be urging Mr Macleod to re-expand at once. He has asked the...

JOHN BULL Sir Allen Lane used to be fond of recalling with wry amusement that when he pioneered Penguin paperbacks , before the war, pubs fishers sold him rights to books only...

Sir: Mirror Magazine had one thing in common with Mr Grundy's column: it ap- peared weekly. He suggests (1 1 July) that it might have shared another common link : that neither...

Sir: Your defence (11 July) of the sentences passed on the Cambridge students, at the expense of mercilessness for the individuals concerned, appears to be based on two...

Sir: In her article 'Yes, but who finds the money?' (11 July), Gillian Widdicombe com- ments that the Public Lending Right scheme for authors, though 'all very well in theory',...

From Lord Beaumont of Whitley, Giles Playfair, Michael Holroyd, Dennis W. Hackett, Sir Anthony Wagner, L. Clarke, D. B. Taylor, Antony Walker, Gordon Bowen, James Laver, Alan...

Sir: I read with appreciation-. Mr Oliver Warner's excellent review of Kellow Ches- ney's The Victorian Underworld (11 July). But why, oh why does he say that Dore was 'a...

Sir: Sir Denis Brogan (11 July) concludes that the examples of Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain do not 'suggest that we should go very far in recruiting our political per- sonnel...

Sir: I have looked in vain for the one letter that hasn't appeared yet; couldn't you tickle up Mr Skeffington-Lodge of Brighton to tell us that he was kidding all along'and he...

Sir: Dr J. L. Insley (Letters, 11 July) has stated that apartheid 'gives greater prosperity and peace to all races within the republic than anywhere else in Africa; The point...

Sir: May I offer some comments on Chris- topher Booker's article `Metrication mania' (27 June), in which he alleges that there has been a plot to impose on Britain by stealth a...

Sir: In the interests not merely of your circulation, but also of Mr Gale's own pro- fessional career, may I recommend that you advise him in the kindest but firmest man- ner...

Sir: Henry Tube (27 June) is not quite correct when he states that, apart from the instances he cites, no work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez has appeared in this country before...

The flagrant weed JOHN WELLS Thick mystery still surrounds the escape of the Giant Hogweed from its bed in Kew Gardens. It now seems likely that the easily recognisable...

No. 613: The word game Competitors are invited to use any ten of the twelve following words in any order to construct part of a narrative, essay, speech, advertisement,...

Across 1 You ought to be able to see through this!. ( 8 ) 5 Darling of exclusive Etonians? (6) 9 After Act IV had a meal to increase energy (8) 10 Old-fashioned writer hits...

PHILIDOR Specially contributed by R. W. Searley (Romford, Essex). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 498 (Goethart-4K3/3n1nB1/...

Second-class mail prisilcges authorised by New York, NY Post Office. Published by the Spectator. 99 Gower Street. London, W.C.1. Tel. 01-387 3221. Printed by Merritt & Hatcher...

) Ameri can Corporatio South Africa A factual review of the South African scene is valuable and timely and I feel grateful to the SPECTATOR for undertaking it. South Africa is...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT In the beginning of his reign. although he had always hated the apartheid policy of the Nationalist Afrikaner government at the Cape. Mr Harold Wilson...

`BULLION' In 1967 and 1968 there had been a lot of talk of the international monetary system breaking down. There had always been much dissatisfaction with the gold ex- change...

A. B. DICKMAN There can be little doubt that the balance of payments underwent a profound transfor- mation after 1964. The slowing down of the economy from 1960-1 to 1962-63...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT I do not believe for one moment that Dr Diederichs was guilty of joining with the French in a plot to double the monetary price of gold but he undoubtedly...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Mr Dickman is certainly very optimistic about the future supply of capital from abroad—and he may well be right—but his paper emphasises the speculative...

J. F. C. CRONJE Chairman of the Netherlands Bank of South Africa One of the most puzzling concepts of economic theory is that of liquidity. It is puzzling because it can be...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Every business and academic expert . I consulted was optimistic about the future growth of the South African economy and the availability of capital to...

A BANKER'S REPORT 1969 saw a further increase in UK-South African trade but as our total UK exports rose by 14.0 per cent and sales to the Republic increased by only 9.8 per...

`SYBARIS' There are five wine-growing districts in South Africa and three of them—Con- stantia, Paarl and Stellenbosch—must be seen to be believed : they are so beautiful....

JOHN MATTHEWS Tourism is now South Africa's third biggest industry in terms of foreign ex- change earnings, following gold and wool with around R100m. (£58.25m.) earnings a...

The arts in South. Africa OLGA DAVENPORT The migrating culture-vulture, examin- ing the art collections in public galleries in South Africa, must notice how indebted the...

UYS KRIGE Uys Krige has published thirty-four volumes of- poetry, drama, short stories, criticism and travel in Afrikaans and English as well as translations from French,...

The river used to store up in its mouth, Like betel nut, the red earth plunder of the north, Beyond the desperate sandbank's thunder, the current South from Mozambique blew hot...