forefennt of - the political debate seems, at first sight. an astonishing development, c omparable only to the discovery a few years a go that the coelacanth was alive and well...

Mr Ian Smith has so far emerged triumphant from his first public confrontation with the right wing of the Rhodesian Front. Mr Harper and Lord Graham have left the government,...

Deluges withfive inches of rain reported in a day—brought the rivers of south and east England out in flood, killing three people, closing roads and railways, destroying...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH If a general election were to be held on 8 October, when the Conservative party con- ference opens at Blackpool, the Tories might reasonably...

CANADA LAURENCE MARTIN Professor Martin has just returned from a visit to Ottawa. The sharpness of Mr Trudeau's reaction last week to the activity of French agents in Canada...

DEMOCRACY-1 ANTHONY KING For the past fortnight Mr Enoch Powell has been titillating the Sunday papers and scaring his colleagues with his hobgoblin vision of returning...

DEMOCRACY-2 JAMES ROBERTSON James Robertson was private secretary to the Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Civil Service from 1960 to 1963. He left the Civil Service in...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS 'There is evidence that the new McCarthyism of Gene McCarthy is giving way to the old McCarthyism of Senator Joe McCarthy. Spiro Agnew talks darkly of "a...

J. W. M. THOMPSON When a commercial enterprise is up for sale it is customary to include in the price a certain sum for the 'goodwill' the purchaser is supposed to be...

PERSONAL COLUMN BRIAN CROZIER Could anything be simpler than a cube? As a shape, I mean. No pentagonal oddities about it: six perfect sides, each exactly equal to the others,...

From the 'Spectator', 19 September 1868—A frightful calamity befell Peru and Ecuador be- tween the 13th and 17th of August last. We only know the results as yet by Atlantic...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD In the 1930s the Hitler Youth were taught a song which spoke of the moment Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzt—when Jewish blood spurts from'the...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY Whenever a politician says 'I have been mis- reported' my instinct is to shout 'You're a liar: If he complains that what he says has been taken out of...

EDUCATION STUART MACLURE One of the most depressing things about education is the dullness of the books people write about it. Even more depressing, perhaps, is that the least...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON So . the anaesthetists have at last got into the news. Last week 3,500 of them gathered in Lon- don and they managed to throw off one or two...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN On 29 May this year, the President of the United States signed into law a bill which will force creditors to put in their contracts most of the...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN Reading and reflecting on The Green Hat made me consider my present attitude to the reading of novels. Has the role of that art form changed? Have...

AUTUMN BOOKS — I RONALD IIINGL EY The onslaught mounted by Stalin against the peoples of the USSR reached its peak in the purge year of 1937, and continued up to and beyond...

A. J. AYER Aden-Arabie Paul Nizan with an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre translated by Joan Pink- ham (Monthly Review Press 50s) Anti-Semite and Jew Jean-Paul Sartre trans-...

STUART HOOD There is a dead area in Victorian literature, a hiatus that lies at the heart of even such a great work as Middlemarch. Had we only their fiction to go by we would...

HELEN VLACHOS Journey to a Greek Island Elias Kulukundis (Cassell 36s) Rising like a stepping stone between Crete and Carpathos the island of Kasos, .one of the smallest of the...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Towards Silence Edward Lucie-Smith (our 12s 6d) King Log Geoffrey Hill (Andre Deutsch 21s) Love in the Environs of Voronezh Alan Sillitoe (Macmillan 25s)...

KENNETH ALLSOP In October 1967 Norman Mailer—`America's best novelist? and America's inspiration to the young??????'—took part in an anti-Vietnam march on the Pentagon. The...

Baker (Triton Press 45s) Travesty of truth NED SHERRIN `Though he welcomed his guests wearing a smartly cut red dress, a blonde wig—fashion- ably back combed and...

. SIMON RAVEN This book is neither a biography of Radclyffe Hall, though it includes a• brief biographical chapter, nor yet a critical assessment of her work, 'though there are...

Mud in your eye AUBERON WAUGH This book, reprinted to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the First World War, will probably be familiar to anyone who has ever spent a...

ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME Having thought of the title War Without Weapons in relation to international sport, the urge to write a book must have been irresistible. But a politician...

THOMAS BRAUN The conqueror Augustus was hailed as chief citizen of the restored Roman Republic, now said to 'rule the inhabited world. These were polite fictions. The Republic...

Early Eighteenth Century Douglas Grant (ow. 35s) Royal slave J. H. PLUMB Certainly this story when put into a nutshell is extraordinary. A young Muslim princeling, Job ben...

HILARY SPURLING `One look at an average audience gives us the irresistible urge to assault it,' says Peter Brook in his new book, The EMpty Space— it is a sensation anyone will...

JOEL HURSTFIELD Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton G. P. V. Akrigg (Hamish Hamilton 50s) History has always been considered a branch of the entertainment industry. The...

CINEMA Out of the mist PENELOPE HOUSTON As Long As You're Healthy (Cameo-Poly, 'U') Girl on a Motorcycle (Warner, 'X') How much, but how erratically, the cinema respects its...

BRYAN ROBERTSON There is something very touching, through obvi- ous vulnerability, in the idea of artists from several different countries forming themselves into a group...

MUSIC CHARLES REID For the opening nights (Das Rheingold and Die Walkiire) of Covent Garden's first Ring cycle this year, hopefuls were showing their money (five-pound notes...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Clarkson (Engineers) has performed very well since I bought 500 of the shares at lOs 1 fd last March. The results for the first half of the current year...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Since the Basle agreement the announcement of the monthly trade figures no longer makes the Stock Exchange anxious about another devalua- tion of sterling....

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT JOHN GARRETT John Garrett is a manager with Associated Industrial Consultants and specialises in large- scale organisation and planning studies in industry...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES Thinking back to the 'white heat of the techno- logical revolution,' to the Labour party as it was when it came back to power, what sort of nian would you...

MERGERS GEORGE MICHAEL According to the men who make the takeover bids or who arrange things so that they come out on top after an amicable merger, their repercussions are all...

LETTERS From: Nigel Nicolson G. C. Brander, Mrs Kenneth Lumley, L 4 Holford-Strevens, Miss A. C. Hannay, Onyenauzi W. Wadibia, Unzera Ezekpo, G. Reichardt David I. Peet, Sir...

CUSTOS The equity market has reached that happy frame of mind where all news is good news. The July trade figures, published a month ago, were dismal: ergo, the...

Sir: In your leading article in the issue of 13 September you suggest that Russia might be banned from the Olympic Games, as a mark of disapproval of her aggression against...

Sir: In the past few days the British press, radio and television have made much of Dame Margery Perham's visit to Nigeria and her appeal to the Ibos to surrender. This has been...

the books containing letters and diary extracts of Sir Harold Nicolson, and feel that Professor Trevor-Roper in his criticism of the last volume (6 September) shows a lack of...

Sir: The comparison that you make between the Czechoslovak leaders and Marshal Pdtain is most unfair to the former. Pertain was no friend to the open society : his politics were...

in your issue of 13 September: 'Thinking of him at Sissinghurst, in a memor- able garden he helped his wife Vita Sackville- West to design, should one not say about him with ....

government succumbed to your policy of hostility towards Nigeria, they would have deserved world condemnation as the Russians.' Is he now disassociating himself from his...

Sir: Letters to public journals are doubtley, admirable vehicles for conducting public debates on topics of interest, but perhaps someone would explain what this has to do with...

Sir: Bless you, Bill Grundy. People do pay attention to you (13 September), sensible people anyhow, including those unaffected by the pre- sent mania for upgrading garbage from...

Sir : I am planning a history of the Home . Guard, and I would be very grateful if any of your readers who have personal reminiscences of a serious, humorous, or any other...

Sir : Mr R. L. Travers, then writing from the Army and Navy Club, rebuked me for not im- posing discipline on university students. I pointed out that I had no duties or...

Sir: After reading Martin Seymour-Smith's re- view of the translations of Christian Morgen- stern's Gallows Songs by W. D. Snodgrass and Lore Segal (6 September), I should like...

Sir: I agree with Sir Denis Brogan that there are no rhymes to Docherty in the English lan- guage (13 September), but I respectfully suggest that had he used his native Scots...

Sir: As Sir Donald Wolfit's literary executor, I have been commissioned by Martin Seeker and Warburg Ltd to write the `official' life of Sir Donald. I hope not only to treat the...

Sir: The Operation was a bundle of fun. Con- gratulations to John Wells on yet another in- genious spoof. Not even Harold Acton could have written so ineptly. Stephen Davies,...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS . . Things really have been moving for me since I started Scientology. . . . Since then I have made several big changes in my environ- ment, I find I...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were in- vited to compose a piece of prose around ten given words, amongst them such implausible demoticisms as 'bang-up' and 'slug-begotten,'...

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...

PHILIDOR Black White 9 men 5 men M. Havel (3rd Prize, British Chess Federation, 1956). White to play and mate in three moves; solution next week. - Solution to no. 404...

Across 1 Knocked downhill (6) 4 Autumnal scapegoats (4, 4) 9 Oh rest becomes the rest (6) 10 Study session (4-4) 12 Society saint (8) 13 Imperative to make a marginal move (6)...