o Act of Parliament will make people like ch other or understand each other . . . ut acceptance of this does not mean that overnment can therefore do little to in- uence the...

It is important that the German student riots over the Easter weekend should be kept in perspective. But they cannot be viewed with- out some alarm. The extremist student left...

The Bank Holiday was sunny and, except in High Holborn, pleasant. There the ubiquitous Mr Tariq Ali led demonstrators who protested against the power of Herr Axel Springer over...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Serious discussion of constitutional change in England is bound to be inhibited by the fact that we have no Constitution. Everything is...

UNITED STATES MURRAY KEMPTON New York—Martin Luther King was an am- bassador—a reproach, indeed—from the older America of country churches and of poor people so imbedded in our...

GREECE MICHAEL LLEWELLYN-SMITH Athens—This Sunday, the first anniversary of the Greek coup d'iiat of 21 April, is also Eastern Qfthodox Easter, a coincidence which hg for some...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS If music be the food of love, It's common sense to be a dove, But with this modernistic squawk Who knows a hand-saw from a hawk? If poetry were rhymed and...

CZECHOSLOVAKIA STEPHEN MORRISON Stephen Morrison, editor of the Edinburgh University newspaper Student, has just re- turned from an exchange visit to Prague. A week before he...

THE TORIES GEORGE HUTCHINSON George Hutchinson was the Conservative party's head of publicity from 1961 to 1964. Dear Geoffrey, Though I have already sent you my good wishes...

J. W. M. THOMPSON The wrangle between Washington and Hanoi over the location of their conference is part of the interminable diplomatic game customary in such cases, with each...

PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN When I read, some weeks back, that a Minister of the Crown had just been hounded out of Cambridge by a mob of students, my first thought was that no...

EDUCATION STUART MACLURE It looks very much as if the world of public education—that strange sub-culture which em- braces 300,000 teachers and a network of pro- fessional and...

THE LAW R. A. CLINE `It won't work' is an objection particularly tiresome to liberals, with either a small or a capital `1.' The Archbishop of Canterbury thought it practicable...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY What are leading articles for? If, like a lot of people, you think they are just to keep leader writers employed, you can kindly leave the stage. If you...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD A great deal of the television drama we see on our screens consists of work which can claim to be called 'drama' only because the characters act out...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN Ours is not just McLuhan's age of electric communications, whose content we feel power- less to influence; it is also Adrian's age of electric...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN Princeton—About twenty years ago I found myself at one of those conferences in which Americans delight, devoted to discussing what is wrong and, less...

SHORT STORY EDWARD HOTEL Does my son have a sense of humour? It's a question I'd answered in the negative a long time ago, \ and his mother agreed with me, though she insisted...

BARRY HUMPHRIES It was in an old and sombrous bookshop in the purlieux of the city of Melbourne that 1 bought, for a few cents, my first gothick novel. The One-handed Monk by...

AUBERON WAUGH The Black Art Rollo Ahmed (Jarrolds 32s 6d) Bertrand de Jouvenel, whose hobby it is to pre- dict the future by rational means—avoiding, as much as possible, such...

PATRICK ANDERSON Mr Frank Baker is a romantic, which means that he has a considerable ego, is subject to neurotic confusion and guilt, and casts a visionary light not only...

ROBERT BLAKE This is the first attempt to apply to a past general election the psephological techniques pioneered for modern elections by Mr R. B. McCallum in 1945, followed by...

November 20th, /797, at the departure from Bicetre to Bre.st. From the Memoirs of Eugene- Francois Vidocq, 1828, translated by Rayner Heppenstall. You can have these chains,...

THE KNIGHT OF GLYN The Art of Furniture Ole Wanscher, translated by David Hohnen (Allen and Unwin £6) We are currently blessed with an exhibition, Two Centuries of Danish...

Clerk and dagger PETER PARLEY Only When 1 Larf Len Deighton (Sphere 5s) The Great Spy Race Adam Diment (Michael Joseph 25s) The Nearing Storm Desmond Donnelly (Hutch- inson...

g'isden Cricketers' Almanack /968 edited by Norman Preston (Sporting Handbooks 25s). Under headings such as 'Handled Ball,' 'Ob- structing the Field' and 'Remarkable Analyses,'...

PETER VANSITTART The Quest of Three Abbots Brendan Lehane (John Murray 42s) Saint Patrick R. P. C. Hanson (our 30s) Mr Lehane sub-jitles his book 'Pioneers in Ireland's Golden...

HILARY SPURLING Spring, which brings Sweeney to Mrs Porter, also brings the theatre of the world to the West End: Peter Daubeny's fifth international season opened at the...

OPERA EDWARD BOYLE I never saw the original production of Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage in 1955. But I came away from last week's first night at Covent Garden feeling that...

Slight brigade PENELOPE HOUSTON In the Town of S (New Cinema Club, 24 April, 22 May, 19 June) 'There are many malpractices which prevent, or discourage, the public in England...

Putting the clock back BRYAN ROBERTSON The opening show at the Institute of Contem- porary Arts';' - new premises in Nash House is called 'The Obsessive Image 1960-68,' but...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Every year, as the wise Lord Goodman re- marked in his devastating article on The decay of liberty' in last week's SPECTATOR, we are subjected to a budget...

COMMODITIES JOHN CAVILL London commodity markets have now sim- mered back to normal: that normality being the state where prices are influenced by war (or rather hopes of...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT ANTHONY BURNEY Anthony Burney is an eminent City accountant and director of companies. He was a member of the Geddes committee which reported on the...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Keynes defending Darwin? Not a situation in which you would expect to find John Bull. But I refer to the battle for Cambridge Instrument, which has just...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES Returning from Ireland refreshed in every sense—oh, that admirable stout, with so strong a head that I could play noughts and crosses on the top—I find that...

As the stock market moves higher and highbt, breaking records - daily, the view begins to spread that it must- go higher still. Those who cannot see why prices have gone as far...

From the chair of Schweppes Mr R. Han- Ong Philipps repeats his last year's forecast; that the company will get the full share of the trade available. In 1967 sales reached £80...

Sir : One can accept a good deal of what Mr Lever says in his article 'Government and busi- ness' (5 April) without sharing his political views. I for one would certainly agree...

LETTERS From Lord Hunt, Enid Lake►nan, R. H. Grier- son, T. C. Skeffington-Lodge, Richard B. Hoff- man, Patrick Brogan, Michael Kennedy, Maurice Smelt, Howard Sergeant, F. R....

Sir : Why does Nigel Lawson think there would be no danger from the NPD if Germany had our electoral system ('Spectator's notebook,' 5 April)? I was in Germany when the Nazis...

From the 'Spectator', 18 April 1868—The Jewish Chronicle, a sound authority on such a point, clears up a doubt which has long hung over Mr. Dis- raeli's relation to Judaism....

Sir: Mr Mark Killingsworth's admission (29 March) that few students seek much voice in university financial operations • leads one to wonder how realistic the arguments for...

Sir : Mr J. W. M. Thompson has got it wrong ('Spectator's notebook,' 12 April). Mr Quintin Hogg did not write that slogan. I did. And the exact words were: 'Life's better with...

Sir: Bill Grundy, reviewing the press in your issue dated 12 April, says that he would not take the Daily Telegraph as his only newspaper because of 'its habit of politically...

Sir: Mr J. W. M. Thompson is quite right (`Spectator's notebook,' 12 April). There is far too much ignorant punditry on American matters. It seems to me, however, that he...

Sir : It was predictably bound to happen! One had not yet, however, quite brought oneself to associate the SPECTATOR with such shallow thinking (5 April). President Johnson is...

AFTERTHOUGHT PATRICK HUTBER There is a fairly general belief that the inter- pretation of life advanced by the Freudian school is so outrageously at variance with what common...

Sir: As a considerable time has elapsed since the publication of the last issue of Universities' Poetry, and it is even longer since the last UP conference was held, many people...

Sir: May I be allowed to comment on some of the points raised in your review (29 March) of my book The Last Ditch. In February 1966 I wrote to the reviewer, Colonel Peter...

Sir: Mr Badams (Letters, 5 April) lacks a sense of fairness and a sense of accuracy. To state that Close bats like a five year old is to plumb the very depths of absurdity....

Sir: To say that one's natural feeling is 'minus A: but that the force of certain books etc is such as to compel one to a statement of `plus A' is, of course, a powerful way of...

COMPETITION From the front page of The People, 31 March : AMAZING TRAFFIC IN BABIES EXPOSED — A disturbing traffic in unwanted babies be- tween England and Eire has been...

PHILIDOR Black White 10 men 14 men L Schor and J. R. Isleukomm (1st prize, Good Companions, 1922). White to play and mate in two moves; Solution next week. Solution to No....

Trevor Grove reports: Following George Brown's account of how Sir Eric Roll came to be appointed head of the DEA, competitors were invited to imagine that they also were...

Across 1 'Other — are quite dreadful. The only pos- sible society is oneself' (Wilde) (6) 4 He is led to a penny and so protected (8) 10 Stalked and checked (7) 11 Beginners...