Now that the 40,000-odd Ford workers have at last voted to return to work, after nearly four weeks out on strike, it is time to count the cost—and learn the lessons. There will...

The Anguilla story has unfolded like one of those fashionable political thrillers with overtones of farce. An illegal declaration of independence by a Caribbean island with a...

A force of 315 paratroops and forty British Bobbies landed without resistance on the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla which had had the impudence to secede from the...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGII Brighton—It is a cardinal principle of report- ing by-elections that one should never make a prophecy as to the outcome. On this occasion,...

AMERICA JOHN GRAHAM Washington—Not ten miles from here, near a little Maryland village called Potomac, an extraordinary estate is being planned. Sixty-seven houses will be...

EAST GERMANY JOSEPH CHAPMAN The East Germans have become martyrs to technology. They are now in the top ten of the world's industrialised states and still climbing. For a...

on his leaving the Ford negotiations to attend a conference at York CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Tell me not, Jim, that though you signed, Shop stewards knew, of course, That documents...

CANADA MORAG ALEXANDER Ontario—Not too long ago, Toronto was the place where respectable folk customarily put their liquor bottles in their neighbours' dust- bins. Today,...

PAKISTAN KULDIP NAYAR In Lahore, the second largest city of West Pakistan, senior civil servants and discredited politicians have built a smart locality called Gulbarge (Abode...

J. W. M. THOMPSON Clearly we must brace ourselves for a long period of soul-searching about, and from, the BBC. From all one hears, the place is quivering with incipient...

Uni- versity boat race ended, as usual, in the victory of Oxford, and London was quite melancholy, fearing that Cambridge would give up the contest, or would insist on...

PERSONAL COLUMN NIGEL NICOLSON Twenty-five years ago the huge monastery of Monte Cassino was destroyed by Allied bombers. My brigade was then in the hills about eight miles...

TELEVISION STUART 11009 There is a good deal to be said for the view that some of the very best television takes the form of debate, by which I mean a genuine dialogue in which...

EDUCATION VICTOR CLARK Victor Clark is Chief Education Officer for the East Riding of Yorkshire. Recently the distinguished clerk of the council for one of England's biggest...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON One of the first cases I was called out to see when I did a locum in general practice was a farmer's daughter. Neither the farmer nor his wife could...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY Miss Fiona MacCarthy has an elfin charm, _a tiny voice, a training in design and a page in the Guardian; it must be her page because she has her initials...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN Mr Gladstone made some mistakes in his life and admitted some of them. But the mistake that he most fully admitted and most deeply re- gretted was the...

SPRING BOOKS I SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER 'To make Inke. Four ounces of Gaules Two ounces of green Copperice one ounce and half of Gum Arabick : break the Gaules: the Gum and...

WES MAGEE The limpet dropped anchors. Too late! My bomb kick blew it from the rock and it lay, upturned, a grey brainy blot in my hand. For some reason, yet none reasoned, I...

ROBERT BIRLEY I look back on my own time at a public board- ing school, just before and after 1920, and think what memories come at once to my mind. Les- sons with the senior...

Co 75s cloth, 38s paper) New Rome J. H. PLUMB Wandering through a great city creates a sense of the haphazard nature of time : the change of fashion creates decay; its...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH This scholarly and well printed new edition of the poems of one of the most interesting men, and consistently underrated poets, of the seven- teenth...

ASHLEY BROWN The Wife of His Youth Charles W. Chesnutt (University of Michigan Press; Barrie and Rock- liff : The Cresset Press cloth 32s 6d, paper 17s 6d) This collection of...

MEYER FORTES The Elementary Structures of Kinship Claude Levi-Strauss edited by Rodney Needham (Eyre and Spottiswoode 90s) At last we have it: the long-awaited transla- tion of...

G. D. RAMSAY The Golden Century : Europe 1598-1715 Maurice Ashley (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 63s) To survey a whole epoch of history is a trickier task than it was in our...

CHARLES STUART Captain Swing E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudd (Lawrence and Wishart 70s) Here is a substantial, costly and vigorous work on the agrarian riots of 1830 which the...

CON O'NEILL These are the first two books of a new 'World Realities' series. The series is to 'present politi- cal, economic and social issues as they really are:. Each book...

Locke secure J. 0. URMSON The Political Thought of John Locke John Dunn (cut. 60s) John Locke : Problems and Perspectives edited by J. W. Yolton (cup 55s) 'And thus much...

LUCY SUTHERLAND The Mistress of Girton has produced a very engaging short history of her college on the occasion of its centenary, to which she adds some reflections on...

KENNETII ALLSOP Banana Boy : A Childhood Autobiography Frank Norman (Seeker and Warburg 30s) `A peculiar boy mentally,' stated the report on thirteen year old Frank Norman....

84s) Odd Ball OLIVER WARNER Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Malta and Italy Donald Sultana (Blackwell 84s) Coleridge in Italy, as in Germany earlier, seems right enough—but...

HENRY TUBE The Pantechnicon Lionel 1\1 kkin (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 25s) Detecting influences in a new writer's work is a tempting pastime, if somewhat reminiscent of Hamlet's...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Cheerfulness rarely seems to break in on the Modern Dance scene, though I must confess to much irreverent enjoyment gleaned from the more solemn...

CHRISTOPHER BOOKER One of the most prominent characteristics of our age is its worship of the image of vitality. 1 say 'image,' because the essence of this cult is its homage...

Glad news HILARY SPURLING Have You Any Dirty Washing, Mother Dear? (Hampstead Theatre Club) Just a Show (Fortune) Early Morning (Royal Court) Prominent among the great bores...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Judging from readers' letters, many people are worried about their insurance shares at the moment : they have noted the heavy losses sustained in the...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT We are going through a monetary period in the City when every damn thing goes wrong. Last week the building societies raised their mortgage rates to 81 per...

CU y'1 There was a nasty little break in equity prices on Monday. The Financial Times ordinary share index fell 11.8 points to 458.4, altogether a 12 per cent drop since the...

at the rudeness he Sir: I sympathise with Mr Alisop's indigna- tion (28 February) at the rudeness he encountered on his country walk, but I feel that somebody should put the...

Sir: We appreciate Mr Angus Maude's thought- ful comments (7 March) upon our full-page anti-Concorde advertisement. Mr Maude has fairly damned the Concorde with faint defence,...

Sir: Following on from Nigel Lawson's astute observations on One Pair of Eyes ('Spectator's notebook,' 7 March) and Mr Bewlay's letter (14 March), I would like to add some...

LETTERS From Arthur N. Waldron, Richard Wiggs, Charles Shippam, Susan Ranson, Julie Gooding, Gilbert Longden, MP, Madeleine Simms. Adrian Fitzgerald, Mrs M. E. Murray, Gordon...

Sir: Kenneth Alisop's experience in walking the Hertfordshire countryside with his family seems particularly unfortunate—not only per- sonally but no doubt to many readers who...

Sir: Stuart Maclure's article (14 March) does less than justice to the 'Black Paper' on edu- cation. The facts that many secondary school heads are anxious about the...

no means of knowing statis- tically the increase in abortions for 1968 over previous years. We must merely accept that the Abortion Act precipitated the increase in legal...

highly questionable line of argument. Self-improvement can come only from self- criticism, and Dr Rowan Wilson is very wrong to interpret the objective self-assessment which It...

Sir: I have only today seen the SPECTATOR of 7 February. I want to thank you for publishing so unbiased an article as Dr John Rowan Wil- son's on The freedom to die.' He deals...

Sir: John Rowan Wilson writes (14 March), begging the question: 'The fallacious argu- ment is constantly advanced that affluent nations have some kind of moral debt towards the...

Sir: I am sorry to have offended Dr John Rowan Wilson (Letters, 14 March) by my 'gross lapse of taste' in pointing out (Letters, 7 March) that no one who is sympathetic to...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS From the sea, writes our correspondent at the Department of Strange Affairs, M Crawlin Legume, the island of Angleterre looks harmless enough: a huddle...

history rather than to Mr A. J. P. Taylor (Let- ters, 14 March) for a ruling on the use of 'British.' This is no mere Roman relic but quite simply the only legal designation for...

opinion on the use of the word 'England' referred to in your comment on Mr Bennett's letter (14 March). Admittedly for long 'England,' being the name of the largest country, was...

to his dominions in 1603. It is as simple as that. J. S. MacArthur Huntspill Rectory, Highbridge, Somerset.

Sir: A. J. P. Taylor's views on the subject of 'Britain,' which you quote in the Letters column (14 March), are, I suspect, eccentric. For the Romans, in the first and second...

to take their nationality for granted. Occasionally they may be annoyed. A short time ago, in a television educational discussion largely devoted to immigrant chil- dren in the...

PHILIDOR Black White P. Monreal and J. P. Boyer (second prize. Ring Tourney 1967). White to play and mate in tau moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 430 (Boudantzev):...

COMPETITION Our Spring Books lead this week—Sylvia Townsend Warner on The Verneys of Claydon — gets off to a fine period start with a recipe for ink : `To make Inke. Four...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were in- vited to use ten words, taken from the opening lines of a well-known play, to construct part of the script for either a play, musical,...

Across 1 L.T.E.'s latest plum, but fast, nevertheless (8, 4) 9 Brown study for a garden. perhaps? (9) 10 Arnold Wesker's radical work (5) 11 Alan in French discovers temper (6)...