In the shadow o • h Library ks this issue of the SPBCTATOR went to press, he finance ministers of the major nations the world were still closeted together at onn in an attempt...

At first glance it is tempting now to conclude that the only purpose of the 'Fearless' con- frontation was, after all, to dish the Tory party conference. The only clear result...

Pressure on the franc increased as Frenchmen swarmed across the borders to buy German marks, in spite of official denials that Germany would revalue. The Group of Ten finance...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH In a week when Mr Enoch Powell has earned a further public rebuke from his leader, one must plainly return to the Tories. Nothing very ex-...

FRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris, Wednesday-:--General de Gaulle has found it easier to retain the votes of his fellow countrymen than their banknotes. Since the May 'troubles' around...

DEFENCE LAURENCE MARTIN After last week's meeting of NATO defence ministers, Mr Healey told a press conference that the 'rot had been stopped.' Having used precisely the same...

SANCTIONS JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE The economic realities behind the failure of Mr George Thomson's latest mission to Rhodesia did not intrude in any unseemly man- ner into the...

POLITICIANS ANGUS MAUDE, MP Whether or not Mr Enoch Powell intends it —and it must be assumed that he does—he is now in a state of open war with the leaders of the Conservative...

J. W. M. THOMPSON As Graham Greene said in his excellent tele- vision programme on Sunday. the thrill of Russian roulette diminishes with familiarity. When he tried it as a...

PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN Whenever I must drive long distances alone, I have recourse to fantasy. Sometimes this is topical in kind. The other day I amused my- self from...

OXFORD POETRY CHAIR TIBOR SZAMUELY The election of a Professor of Poetry at Oxford is always an occasion of some interest. This time, however, it has become a positively stag-...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY I have no doubt at all that I would be an expert in current affairs if only I could understand what is going on. I don't know why I don't, although it may...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN The annual general meeting of 'registered pro- ducers' under the egg marketing scheme is due to be held in Knightsbridge on 3 December. Given...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD Television finds certain subjects notoriously intractable. One of them is music; another is literature. In the case of music a solution has been found in...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN 1 see that the bold attempt to storm the Bastille, not so much of the Paris lycies as of the French family system which still treasures the bachot,...

From the 'Spectator', 21 November 1868—Mr. Disraeli was returned on Thursday, and made a speech to his constituents, in which he almost ad- mitted a complete defeat. It was an...

JOHN HOLLOWAY At 6.30 a.m. on Monday 9 December, the 360th anniversary of Milton's birth (this 'almost cer- tainly' took place in a second-floor bedroom in Bread Street,...

IAIN MACLEOD, MP Action This Day edited by Sir John Wheeler- Bennett (Macmillan 45s) I wish I could give full praise to this book. It is about Churchill. It is written by six...

Random returns MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH The Ticket That Exploded William Burroughs (Calder and Boyars 42s) Raman's Notebooks Stephen Gilbert (Michael Joseph 25s) New Orleans...

JOHN BARRON A few years ago everyone was writing a Turkey book. Now Crete and Mycenae are all the rage. The coffee-tables -ate groaning, and the bookcases too, for works of...

JOHN HIGGINS On a hot August day in 1940 I was lying at full stretch, stomach down, in a remote Cornish orchard. It was a good afternoon because the post had brought a batch of...

TIBOR SZAMUELY The history of Russia is the history of her tsars, wrote Karamzin, the first great Russian historian. Today, one and a half centuries later, this claim can still...

LORD EGREMONT King Louis Philippe said to Disraeli that he attributed the great success of the British nation to talking about politics after dinner. Of course, he didn't know...

The Strange Story of False Teeth John Wood- forde (Routledge and Kegan Paul 30s). From the gilded snappers of the Etruscans ('Dental craftsmanship of this order was- not to re-...

STEPHEN GARDINER Studies in Art, Architecture and Design Nikolaus Pevsner (Thames and Hudson 2 vols 90s each) - As the architectural background we have known and enjoyed in the...

HILARY SPURLING `It's only the hairs on a gooseberry That stop it from being a grape,' as the pantomime dame said in Rodney Ack- land's Strange Orchestra. This time last year,...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Looking backwards is a besetting sin with British ballet, reflecting a deep-rooted con- servatism in public taste; at Covent Garden last week the Royal...

MUSIC MICHAEL NYMAN Music is alive and flourishing in considerable opulence in London; there's an unprecedented 'we never close' atmosphere about at the moment, performances...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Oh, ring-a-ring-a-roses, Ring for the dealers' prize And see the bidding closes Before the prices rise. They buy by nods and winking— The dodge the dealer...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT It was ironic that at the moment when the finan- cial scribes were busy celebrating the first anni- versary of devaluation, putting as good or as bad a face...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL In the few weeks which have elapsed since I bought British Petroleum for my second, specu- lative, portfolio the shares have shot up from 103s 6d to 128s, a...

CUSTOS The gilt-edged market has been in complete dis- array this week. Selling has been substantial and prices have plunged to record depths. In chronological order, what has...

LETTERS From Major-General H. T. Alexander, Godlre s . C. Okeke, W. H. Irvine. Lord Monson. Dr Enid Starkie,_ Frank Teer, Samuel Bri' tan, Arthur Shenfield, D. H. Cameron, R. G...

Sir: Hugh Trevor-Roper (Letters, 15 Novem- ber) states: 'Miss Starkie claims that her high- pressure methods once gave us W. H. Auden as Professor of Poetry' (Letters, 8...

to the 'experts' in Whitehall to read, because about two centuries ago, English humanists like William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp were pleading for the...

Sir: In attempting to refute your description of student militants as the 'new fascists,' Mr Nicolas Walter (Letters, 8 November) cites in their favour their alleged approval of...

Sir: I should like to make some observations on Mr Lawson's new theory of by-elections (8 November): 1. Nobody disputes that swing is a crude measurement. It ignores factors...

Sir: It is a pity that John Wells does not find himself in reality at the business end of Colonel Adekunle's 'machine gun' (probably his sub- automatic personal weapon) instead...

of Lords by a senate and making the House of Commons the electoral college responsible for electing senators Will undoubtedly prevent excessive power being vested in the Prime...

Sir : Your two American correspondents (15 November) display a very smart hand at distor- tion in their dire predictions of Mr Nixon's difficulties and failures to come. Murray...

Sir: As you rightly say (15 November), now that the hereditary peerage is to be stripped of all legislative status, the argument for creating life peers collapses. And in the...

the misleading nature of con- ventional swing calculations and suggests a way of allowing for the effects of abstention. But his theory has no bearing whatever upon the result...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS Scotland Yard is believed, writes Bill 'I'm a believer Rees-Mogg, Sensation and Scare Monger Extraordinary to the Palace of White- hall, to be standing...

Sir: Please may I make it clear that the mis- spelling of `Vorkuta' in my last week's review of Solzhenitsyn (and in the context of my own complaints against someone else's...

Sir: In your issue of 15 November, Mr Auberon Waugh told us that Mr Jenkins, like Gilbert's Major-General, 'is teeming with a lot of news about binomial theory [sic].' As a...

COMPETITION The great Pope v Pill contest continues to smoulder fitfully: against this Vesuvian back- drop competitors are invited to compose a papal encyclical on tax evasion,...

Across 1 Honey soft is ripe (6) 4 Disguised as ss 'Argo' in the weed (8) 9 'Unmov'd tho' witlings sneer and — rail' (Johnson) (6) 10 The bane of Mrs Mopp at Jodrell Bank? (4-4)...

PHILIDOR White 6 men 9 men V. Velikoslayski (1st Prize, USSR, 1957). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 413 (Schiffmann): B – Kt 2,...

Trevor Grove reports: Armed with a mere ten words chosen from the opening lines of a well- known play, competitors were asked to con- struct round them part of the script for a...