Prime Minister is a master of the verbal escreep to mask a tactical retreat. As one reply succeeded another in the House mmons on Tuesday it was evident that d something to...

As this issue of the SPECTATOR goes to press, last-minute negotiations are in progress between the Government and both sides of the industry in an effort to avert the nation-...

Mr Harold Wilson and Mr Ian Smith broke off their 'last chance' talks aboard nms `Fearless' with the Rhodesian dispute still unresolved. NIBMAR—no independence before majority...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH tt was only to be expected that the House of Commons should seem exhausted after the emo- tional tumult of the party conferences. Tories, in...

SPECTATOR POLL At Blackpool last week the SPECTATOR invited those taking part in the Conservative party conference to complete a brief political ques- tionnaire. This was the...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON New York—What becomes more striking than ever about Vice-President Humphrey's case is the dog that does not bark. The new National Negro Committee of...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Mr Barry MacSweeney of Newcastle, aged twenty, of whom it is alleged that he will be proposed as a candidate for the Oxford Pro- fessorship of Poetry, says,...

FRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris—Is the Common Market ever to be any- thing more than a club whose members under- take not to erect customs barriers between each other? This is the...

COMMONWEALTH OFFICE JOSEPH CHAPMAN The British Commonwealth Office died officially this week only to be immediately resurrected in the new merged single British ministry of...

From the 'Spectator, 17 October 1868—Mr. Glad- stone's appeal to the electors of South Lancashire, together with his very remarkable speeches at War- rington on Monday, and at...

STUDENTS IAN MacGREGOR This is the first of two articles by a senior university teacher. The second will appear next week. During the Columbia University upheaval last spring,...

J. W. M. THOMPSON The conventional method of expressing appro- val of a public performer is, when you come to think of it objectively, an absurd and em- barrassing activity....

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON I have been an expatriate now for eighteen years. I suppose, in that time, I have gone through all the personality changes of the ex-...

ULTIMATUM STRIX Dear Head Postmaster, You say (and I do not doubt your word) that you wrote to me a short while ago 'to explain the importance of the Postcode in our schemes...

EDUCATION STUART MACLURE Going to party conferences is something every- one ought to do once. I cannot recommend day trips to Blackpool in October as a form of pleasure travel,...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN Nearly five years ago the Financial Times, in an article on refuse collection, noted that if the success of pilot schemes were anything to go...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY It is well known that the British only copulate on Sunday afternoons, when the children are safely packed off to Sunday school. After this weekend I no...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN 'History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.' Thus Karl Marx, and there are other sophistical or credulous characters who are already...

HENRY TUBE For the last two weeks this journal has been publishing extracts from The Military Philo- sophers (Heinemann 25s), the ninth volume of Anthony Powell's A Dance to...

TIBOR SZAMUELY The African Predicament Stanislav Andreski (Michael Joseph 50s) Professor Stanislav Andreski is a distinguished British academic, head of the Department of...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH The Theory of the Avant Garde Renato Poggioli translated by Gerald Fitzgerald (Harvard UP/ OUP 62s) Renato Poggioli, who was killed in a car crash in 1963,...

1840-1900 John Selby (Arthur Barker 42s) With Henty to Peking HENRY McALEAVY In one of her stories about Lord Peter Wimsey, set in the year 1927, Dorothy Sayers introduces us...

MARTIN JARRETT-KERR Everyone knows that the Society of Jesus was suppressed by the Pope for forty years. Many people know that the most promising work of missionary...

Glow and glimmer PATRICK ANDERSON My Father's• Son Frank O'Connor (Macmillan 42s) A Few Selected Exits Gwyn Thomas (Hutchin- son 30s) The Years of Promise Cecil Roberts...

FRANCES DONALDSON It seems natural to the human race to make little models or effigies in its own likeness. These have sometimes been invested with super- natural powers and...

ROBERT CONQUEST Power in the Kremlin Michel Tatu (Collins 84s) Michel Tatu is uniquely qualified among pre- sent analysts of the Soviet scene. His reports to Le Monde during...

PENELOPE HOUSTON How are things in Glocca Morra? Not at all bad, really, considering the reduced circum- stances of the leprechaun industry, and the low trade-in value of...

Madame de Pompadour Nancy Mitford (Hamish Hamilton 70s). As a companion volume to The Sun King, Miss Mitford has revised her original biography of Louis XV's most cherished...

THEATRE Rum do HILARY SPURLING 'Something old and something new, Something borrowed and something blue.' Lines which offer, one would suppose, a rough guide to the National...

ART BRYAN ROBERTSON My colleague Paul Grinke's insights into Balthus leave me still eager to amplify the peculiar quality of his imagination, such is its allure for writers....

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Apart from wondering it our best friends haven't told us, it is difficult to understand why foreign ballet companies no longer come to call. London has...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT A month ago I was writing• about the gold game—the final round, I thought, in the world championship stakes. But it is still going on. - No victory was won...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES - Sometimes I get to worry about Mr Anthony . Crosland : is he schizophrenic? (Only, of course, schizophrenic in the nicest way). There was this business of...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL British Petroleum has become a gambling stock —and not a bad one at that. Waves of Ameri- can buying have held the price steady against the general fall in...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT HENRY CLARK Henry Clark is MP for North Antrim, and a director of Eric White and Partners and of Trident industries. Jeremiah got little joy from his...

ADVERTISING ROGER PEMBERTON What is the fastest-growing category of adver- tising in Britain today? No question about it —unit trusts. Last year total advertising expen- diture...

LETTERS From Robert Skidelsky, Jossleyn Hennessy, Ben Whitaker, MP, Sylvia Haymon, Harold Evans, Theo Doganis, David Morse, Dr N. I. Ogbuehi, Ewart Milne, Oji Umozurike, Dr K....

Sir: R. A. Cline (11 October) made our flesh creep with the implications of the Court of Appeal refusal to uphold the Maurice Fraser injunction against the Sunday Times....

brilliant writer of fiction, and the more I read of his Political Commentary the more this impression is confirmed. In the SPECTATOR of 4 October he gives his account of a...

party conferences, of whatever complexion, are intended to serve. If conflicting , views are presented, the party concerned is condemned as divided, and there- fore...

CUSTOS The market's nerve has again been tested, and has again held. Last Friday the slow decline in the Financial Times index suddenly gathered pace : the index dropped ten...

Sir: May we get the record straight on two points arising out of the Conservative party conference at Blackpool? 1. All commentators whoml have read dis- miss Enoch Powell's...

Sir: Both party conferences at Blackpool this year were marked by an uneasy awareness that the era of consensus politics is drawing to a close. For Labour and Conservative alike...

Sir: Your reader Mr Angus Buchanan (Letters, 27 September) needs to be told that personal abuse is no substitute for civilised and logical argument. In his first letter to the...

Sir: May I use your columns to congratulate Mrs Helen Vlachos on her medal of honour, awarded to her last week by the Foreign Press Association in Amsterdam 'for her fight for...

fundamental principles of British democracy. Those who are privileged to govern the country in the meantime must be constantly reminded of their obligation to respect the wishes...

Sir: I have not read M. ‘ r Reid's book, but know that he was a genuine admirer of Sir Malcolm Sargent and am sure, therefore, that it is fair as far as it goes. Unfortunately,...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS DOCUMENTS RELATING TO PROPOSALS IN CONNECTION WITH TENTATIVE NEGOTIATIONS CONCERNING A POS- SIBLE SETTLEMENT OF THE RHODE- SIAN CRISIS 1968. Her...

in carrying on 'mere word-war' about Biafra. In my reply of 11 October I placed 'mere' in quotes, implying that perhaps the pen had more weight than Mr Buchanan allowed. Your...

Sir: Dr Royston Lambert has asked me to point out that the grant received by him from the Department of Education and Science is, in fact, £60,270, and not £80,000, as stated by...

Sir: After the eye-witness reports in the national press of police brutality to civil rights marchers in Londonderry on 5 October, and the scenes witnessed by the nation on...

PHILIDOR Black White 7 men 6 men G. Guidel i (Good Companions, 1915). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 408 (Tuxen): Q - Q 2!, threat Kt...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were invited to construct a piece of intelligible prose around ten given words, chosen, as it happens, from H. G. Wells's The Shape of Things...

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...

Across 1 The time it takes to seek out provisions (6) 4 Root for that chap Francis (8) 9 The Roman people get in to reform the duster (6) 10 Corruption afoot at the nursery?...