T HE seamen's strike is now, happily, at an end. The full cost to the economy has yet to be counted. But meanwhile, what lessons emerge? The Prime Minister, we may be sure, will...

Sun Lin Yew Hock, the Malaysian High Commis- sioner in Gambia, disappeared recently and was found accepting the hospitality of an unknown good Samaritan, who gave him up on...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS IT is possible to frame a rough-and-ready but 'serviceable political law to the effect that summer is the great time for plots and rumours...

DE GAULLE From DEV MURARKA MOSCOW F ROM the beginning to the end, President de Gaulle's visit has been a triumph of public relations. His every appearance has been drowned in...

AMERICA From MURRAY KEMPTON Just 143 of these wanderers were still afoot en the road between Benton and Canton when one found them iu the morning. At their front walked Martin...

lune 30, 1866 Members of Parliament are as bad as actors, they cannot bear to be hissed. It has been a prac- lice during the past week for a crowd to collect in Palace Yard,...

COMMUNISTS By MAURICE GENT Fr HE Prime Minister may prove to be a good I recruiting officer for the Communist party of Great Britain. Thanks to his speeches in the House of...

TRADE UNIONS By R. A. CLINE T HE accusation of thirteen wasted years of Tory government is, in one respect at least, abundantly justified. In 1951, and again in 1955, and again...

By SAMUEL BRITTAN many Englishmen are never happy until they have converted a technical or political question into a moral one—by which they mean finding someone to blame, even...

SUPPOSE President Johnson has his political I reasons for deciding to extend the bombing in Vietnam at this moment. It cannot surely have been that he calculated that the...

CHURCHILL THE HISTORIAN-2 By J. H. PLUMB THE two most difficult books of Churchill's I for anyone to assess are the two vast series on the two World Wars. Can they compare,...

THE PRESS By DAVID FROST But can you' make a judgment like that? Or does the statement contradict itself? Is the raking-up of the scandal the pictures instantly recalled such a...

MEDICINE TODA Y By JOHN ROWAN WILSON One must face the fact that, in their present stage of development, many of these machines convey only temporary benefit. Individuals who...

L. _1 L. COQ L cr From: Charles Fenby, Stephen Reiss, Dr D. L. Simms, Mrs Diane Munday, Father Herbert McCabe, Rev Peter Baelz, B. Fitzgerald, Mrs M. Eagling, Mrs Maaleh...

SIR, —In your issue of June 17 you claim that I attributed to Britten the decision to refuse press tickets to your reviewer, Charles Reid. In our con- versation, I never once...

AFTERTHOUGHT; By JOHN WELLS I HAVE always been rather embarrassed as to what I should put in my passport under the heading of 'occupation.' I was particu- larly perplexed on...

SIR,—Professor McLaren makes two assumptions in his letter (June 24): (1) that women request abor tions for trivial reasons; (2) that the consequences of compelling them to have...

that it is the paramount duty of a democratic society to change the nature of the independent schools' entry. Instead of their being the preserve of children whose parents can...

I am not persuaded that he sees clearly. The fact that Marx was an atheist and an enemy of all religion should not blind us to the equally important fact that religion is itself...

SIR,—According to Mr Colm Brogan (June 24), I am one of three Dominican Cathalic Marxists: may I help to clarify things a little? Of course Marx was an atheist and of course it...

labour theory of value. The last of the Schoolmen was Karl Marx.' (K. H. Tawney: Religion and the Rise of Capitalion.) B. FITZGERALD 23 Godfrey Street. London. SW3

SIR,—In the original article by Dr Wilson he asserted that 'young men nowadays are not prepared to settle for a chaste kiss at bedtime.' with the implication that the girl must...

SIR,--I have read with interest Dr J. H. Plumb's article on Churchill as a historian. In it Dr Plumb makes the, to me, extraordinary statement that Churchill was a man of very...

SIR.—Your correspondent, Mr Cyril Ray, record- mends BUA as a superior alternative to BEA when , flying to Edinburgh (Letters, June 10). You do go in a rather splendid jet, and...

S1R,—Brian Crozier's purported 'review' (SPECTATOR, June 17) of Dennis Austin's book Britain and South Africa brings little credit either to himself or to your journal. To...

class-consciousness, and it is always approached as a peculiarly British problem. Other nations are class-conscious and other countries have independent schools. I believe the...

ARCHITECTURE By TERENCE BENDIXSON H ARDLY had Arnold Wesker's play about building a City Beautiful burst upon the world, than a Cabinet sub-committee was con- sidering the...

CINEMA Duel at Diablo. (London Pavilion, 'A' certificate.) It has everything: heroism and hubris, physical excitement, outsize landscapes, lonely itinerant heroes (the only...

the season of Wednesday Plays produced for BBC-1 by Peter Luke has come to a climax—which seems an appropriate expression to use of a play with such strong Lawrentian echoes....

ART lasuaTING is becoming far too interesting, r nowadays,' said Richard Smith just before he left for the Venice Biennale, and the current Whitechapel exhibition of The New...

Harbor, the war in the Pacific had been foreseen by many different prophets. Among them was Franklin Roosevelt, who, in a conference in Washington during the early days of the...

IN a short preface to this new collection of essays, Professor Heller explains his own pecu- liarity as a literary critic in terms of Sir Isaiah Berlin's distinction—derived...

A Short Walk on the Campus. By Jonathan Aitken and Michael Beloff. (Seeker and Warburg, 2I s.) To confront a middle-aged don (myself) with scripts—and at the height of the...

Widening Horizons in English Verse. By John Holloway. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 16s.) ICELAND, Arabia, India, Japan, those faraway places with their mysterious appeal, have all...

1908-1966 JOHN DAVENPORT. who died on June 27 in Worthing Hospital, was one of the most re- markable and talented men of his generation. His appreciation of literature was...

Philosophical Essays. By Bertrand Russell. (Allen and Unwin, 30s.) THE first of these books consists in eighteen state- ments by prominent people, from Professor Ayer to Mr John...

In the Absence of Mrs Petersen. By Nigel Balchin. (Collins, 21s.) No, John, No. By Cressida Lindsay, (Blond, 25s.) Way Out. By Louis Charbonneau. (Barrie and Rockliff, 18s.)...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT rrife speed of international monetary reform I is not that of the tortoise—with the lightning sterling hare running round in circles—but that of the...

The Bait, by Lionel Black (Cassell, 18s.). This is superb thriller entertainment. Its exciting plot unfolds at the steady but inexorable speed of a fizzing time-fuse, with the...

By JOHN BULL w mt the Board of Trade on the sidelines, clearing bank:. as trustees and Lady Gaitskell and Sir Gerald Nabarro among the advisers, unit trusts look as safe as...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN Reith Commission? Not Royal, dear reader, but one of those increasingly common private commissions started up by political parties and...

By CUSTOS Gilt-Edged The news that several discount houses have been forced to borrow in a large way from the Bank of England at Bank rate caused a fright in the gilt-edged...

fak o. By LORD EGREMONT IN the course of a recent debate in the House of Lords about a motion 41 / . which I had moved, Lady / kr . Asquith of Yarnbury re- ' ferred with...

ACROSS 1. See, it's the office (6) 4. They hold the line, and take it lying down (8) BD. Energetic Blimp, perhaps! (7) II. How to be a shining example (7) 12. Contents of The...

No. 289. BLACK .."7 WC!! J. HARING (rst Prize, Europe Echecs, 1 wiirrE to963) play-and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 288 (Promislo) : Kt- B 4 !, no...