q February, the Divorce Reform Bill in- roduced by a Labour private member, Mr ilson, was granted a second reading by a ajority of ninety-six, but then died through ark of...

Herr Rolf Hochhuth's play Soldiers achieved notoriety earlier this year when the board of the National Theatre turned it down against the advice and impassioned remonstrations...

While Mr Wilson denounced 'alehouse gossip' in the City of London, and Mr Heath said there might well be an election in 1969, Lord Robens and Mr Duncan Sandys repeated their...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY PATRICK COSGRAVE 'The difference,' Stanley Baldwin is reputed once to have said, 'between a man of intellect and an intellectual, is the same as the...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON New York—Mr Nixon's experience with government has been largely ceremonial, and his presentation of his cabinet was proof of how useful the humblest...

From the 'Spectrum', 19 December 1868 -Mr. Gladstone is going to utilize the young Peers. Lords Camperdown and Morley, Lords-in-Wait- ing, are to represent departments not...

CHINA DICK WILSON The Communist Chinese request for an am- bassadorial meeting with the United States in Warsaw on 20 February, together with a call from Peking for the...

STUDENTS IAN MacGREGOR Christmas is the time for parlour games, and there is one I commend to everyone with a taste for irony. It involves nothing more than reversing the old...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS This little gnome played the market, This little gnome stayed at home, Rang up in burst of ill-humour To spread a ridiculous rumour That Jenkins was bouncing...

OXFORD LETTER MERCURIUS OXONIENSIS GOOD BROTHER LONDINIENSIS, I hear no more as yet of Mistress Starkie's great duel, and so I go straight to the main matter: the long warre...

J. W. M. THOMPSON One of Mr Heath's recurrent miseries must be having to explain away publicly his own dismal personal showing in the opinion polls. The latest Gallup figures,...

IN MEMORIAM GILES PLAYFAIR I am old enough to recall an occasion when the contents bill of a London evening newspaper simply read, 'SHE'S BACK.' As everybody was presumed to...

PERSONAL COLUMN J. H. PLUMB Last summer the northern seas which wash the Hebrides and the wild coast of Scotland, that stretches east from Cape Wrath, were as blue as the...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD Considered as an exercise in the use of the facilities of a sophisticated modern television studio, Rowan and Martin's Laugh - In is hardly exciting. It...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN He had a box of paints at Christmas,' said the packer's wife, 'well, everywhere was covered, and he was in it as well . . . I didn't think he...

ADVERTISING ROGER PEMBERTON When the banns of marriage were published recently between Allied Breweries and Uni- lever, the Daily Mail's cartoonist Jon showed the man at the...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN I had firmly resolved not to write on Northern Ireland or on Ireland for some weeks to come, or possibly some months, but, much to my surprise, things...

TIBOR SZAMUELY Nearly thirty-five years ago, in one of the best books ever written about the USSR, Winter in Moscow, Malcolm Muggeridge painted a bril- liant portrait of an...

RODNEY ACKLAND Any reader who has once been lost to the world in the stone fields and labyrinths of Gormenghast soon perceives, on finding his way back, that Gormenghast lies...

NICHOLAS MANSERGH The Spy in the Castle David Neligan (Mao- Gibbon and Kee 30s) Ireland's Civil War Calton Younger (Muller 50s) These two books on Ireland's time of troubles...

PATRICK ANDERSON Opium and the Romantic Imagination Alethea Hayter (Faber 50s) - Our ancestors, it appears, fairly lapped up their opium. Derivatives of the baleful• pa paver...

Near originals MAURICE CAPITANCIIIK Shades of Grey Garth St Omer (Faber 25s) Night of Glass Philip Purser (Hodder and Stoughton 21s) 'Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No...

D. C. WATT Josef Lipski was one of the central figures in the diplomatic dance which led to the outbreak of the Second World War. For six years, from 1933 to 1939, he was...

Making a scene GEORGE ROWELL World Theatre:. An Illustrated History Bamber Gascoigne (Ebury Press 70s) A Concise History of the Theatre Phyllis Hart- noll (Thames and Hudson...

PENELOPE HOUSTON Eleven years ago (the year after Suez and Hungary) Lindsay Anderson was writing about England: 'Coming back to Britain is, in many respects, like going back to...

coping with the unrelia- bility, the inscrutable sense of humour and the tiresome vagueness of the adult world will recognise in the imperturbable Grimble a true hero of our own...

The Bible Story Philip Turner illustrated by Brian Wildsmith (our 35s). A kind of Lamb's tales from the Bible, in which Mr Turner's admirably clear and orderly text is accom-...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP The pre-Christmas choreographic rush has found us shopping for new ballets from Ram- bert and Festival, watching dancing in St Paul's Cathedral and looking...

Bronze cast HILARY SPURLING Soldiers (New Theatre) Rolf Hochhuth's Soldiers belongs to that for- midable German tradition of playwriting which depends for its effect less on...

ART BRYAN ROBERTSON If anyone wants to know what the generation gap is all about in terms of work, vision, the thing made, conceptual ideograms as opposed to perceptual...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL As a shareholder in National and Grindlays Bank, 1 find the link with the First National City Bank (of New York) which the board is proposing reasonably...

MONEY NICHOLAS DAVENPORT A stock market feeds on rumour. Particularly rumours of takeover bids, however improbable. A week or so ago there was the rumour of the giant Shell...

LETTERS From Dr D. C. Watt, L. A. Holford-Strevens, Tibor Szamuely, Peregrine Worsthorne, F. Iheanacho Okole, John Ormowe, Una Keith Cameron, P. S. Falla. B J. Angrave. A. S....

Sir: Surely those who supported Yevgeni Yew- tushenko (alias Eugenius Eutychianus, alias Yesmebi Yesithinkso, alias Party Hack) as a brave rebel, and those who denounced him as...

CUSTOS The equity market is now moving into its usual pre-Christmas doldrums, though with the Financial Times ordinary share Index at 494.3 compared with 404.0 twelve months...

in his article published in your issue of 6 December? It was students from Sussex, not Essex, University who referred Mr Skeffington-Lodge to the Director of Public...

a strange, Walter Mitty-ish urge to play out fantasy roles for which he is uniquely unequipped. He is, for instance, in- ordinately proud that I have not 'controverted' any of...

Sir: Surely Professor Brogan's almost prover- bial slips of detail (at any rate in informal con- texts) are part of the charm of his learned and always entertaining articles. He...

wrote (Letters, 13 December), that 1 re- gard Kingsley Amis's assault on Yevtushenko as 'inept' and much of the tone of the attacks as 'unfortunate.' But I would not like-it to...

Sir: If J. E. Martin (Letters, 13 December) de- sires ocular evidence of the Falkland Islanders' desire to remain British, I will willingly send him three medals I earned as an...

Sir: Mr Auberon Waugh's article on genocide 16 December) makes compelling reading and you should be congratulated for publishing it. But the correspondence provoked by Mr Angus...

Sir: Although having been much involved in cricket over the past thirty years I have not, until now, really understood what this d'Oliveira business has been all about and have...

Sir: In present circumstances, no scheme, however artfully contrived, would tempt me to put my savings into government paper cur- rency, unless I were made to do so by statute....

Sir: My sympathies, like most other people's, were instinctively with General Ojukwu's original declaration of the independent state of Biafra, in spite of the deep regret I...

Sir: 'If the moderates fail to act now history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people,...

Sir: How refreshing it was to read Mr Thomp- son's remarks in 'Spectator's notebook' (6 December) on the inherent dangers of regional super-councils. Mr Thompson is one of an...

Sir: The state of the nation is. as you say (13 December), depressing and ,your diagnosis is confirmed by the majority of letters to The Tunes this past week on the 'Vesuvius'...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS For all those fi poor down-trodden mums, writes ghastly Madge Scrubba, who still haven't had the time to dash out and buy the little bits and lxibs that...

Sir: I have been commissioned by the surviv- ing grandchildren to write a study of the life and work of General Sir James Callender. I should be most grateful if any of your...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were in- vited to submit entries, after the manner of works of descriptive ornithology, on noteworthy species and sub - species of homo sapiens...

COMPETITION In order to select the champion of champions for 1968, previous prize-winners (and only previous prize - winners) are invited either to compose a New Year's...

Across 1 'And then the lover. sighing like ' (. ts You Like It) (7) 5 Having been once simple to elucidate (8) 9 Lads get Centigrade for heat (5) 10 Delights with theatrical...

PHILIDOR Dr J. Schumer (Westminster Gazette, 1914). (a) As diagrammed, White mates in one move. (b) Remove W Kt on Kt 8, White to play and mate in two moves. (c) Also remove W...