here are no excuses for the Soviet Union this eek. The Kremlin leaders, frightened and Perate men, having failed to achieve eir purpose by months of hectoring and 'lying, have...

The recall of. Parliament to discuss the situa- ation in Czechoslovakia is a pathetic echo from a world that died in 1939. But it could still serve a useful purpose if it were...

In the light of the appalling July trade figures, few will be disposed to argue with the further downward revision by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research of...

Russian troops, with support from East Ger- many, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria, invaded Czechoslovakia and occupied the cities Tanks massed at every street corner and fighter...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE, MP Any political party is to some extent the prisoner of its past. The Tory party is tradition- ally associated in the popular...

NATO & CZECHOSLOVAKIA LAURENCE MARTIN Laurence Martin is Professor-elect of War Studies in the University of London Whatever its outcome, the Soviet military intervention in...

THE POPE'S JOURNEY JOSEPH CHAPMAN The Roman Catholic priest who works in the slums of Lima and whose remark in Panorama on Monday that the hope of the world lies in a marriage...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN I am interested and glad to see that the con- troversy over Humanae Vitae has moved from the comparatively narrow though extremely important question of...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS An electronic computer has decided that the Odyssey and the Iliad were both the work of a single poet and not of composite authorship, but critics are...

J. W. M. THOMPSON It is a great pity that our political system is not better equipped to provide an equivalent to the sabbatical year which is one of the prime amenities of the...

PERSONAL COLUMN GILES PLAYFAIR I believe that a solution to the problem of .erious crime must ultimately be sought in treat- ment, not punishment. Have I, without realising ,t,...

THE PRESS DENIS PITTS The teletechnicians went hack to work on Monday after a strike which gained them virtu- ally nothing and lost them some £90,000 in wages. The reason,...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN My first lesson in how to get blotto was learned in a northbound tuts railway carriage, invaded during the very small hours of a war-time morn-...

A MORAL PRIMER SIMON RAVEN Simon Raven here continues his 'substantial primer of moral and social instruction for the adolescent young.' Next week's final extract will discuss...

by Harold Acton 'As long as you go to Professor Nagler you will never need a surgical operation.' More than one of Aubrey Vernon's friends bad assured him of this as an...

TIBOR SZAMUELY Foreign travellers' reports on Russia have an importance all their own, quite apart from the general value of historical sources. Unlike nationals of other...

OLIVER WARNER What a pleasure it is to come upon a bio- graphy which is at once scrupulous, well mannered and concerned with a subject emi- nently worth while. Vice-Admiral...

DAVID PIPER Hogarth : the Complete Engravings Joseph Burke and Colin Caldwell (Thames and Hud- son 105s) Ronald Paulson's edition of Hogarth's Graphic Works was published by...

(Cape 30s) Miller's tale MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Black Spring Henry Miller (Calder and Boyars 8s 6d) Lawrence Durrell: A Study G. S. Fraser (Faber 30s) One of the most...

C. C. WRIGLEY Since the ending of the slave trade, English- men have paid very little attention to West Africa, even during the period when they fonnd it marginally expedient...

WILLIAM SARGANT This book is- highly praised in a fore*ord written by Professor Maurice Carstairs, who Was recently made President of the World Federation of Mental Health,...

KENNETH ALLSOP A Crime of Passion Stanley Loomis (Hodder and Stoughton 35s) Can murder be comical? Probably only to the occasional prankish murderer and most likely never to...

BRYAN ROBERTSON Imagine three very large, plain, grey paintings: the biggest, in the centre, some nine feet square, the two flanking canvases both seven feet by ten. Although...

OPERA CHARLES REID Sadler's Wells Opera extricated itself last week from that prim job, which many called a theatre, in Rosebery Avenue, London EC1 (1,497 seats; maximum...

From the.!Spectator', 22 August 1868 — So popular are the new furlough rules in India that the rush of applications .has alarmed the Government, and the grant of civil leave has...

Good and Gay HILARY SPURLING The Beggar's Opera (Prospect Productions at the Lyceum, Edinburgh) The Relapse (Aldwych) It is a prosperous week which brings The Beggar's Opera...

Khaki blues PENELOPE HOUSTON In the last few weeks, the latest wave of American war movies has occupied the West End : John Wayne yelling 'Bulldog' over his walkie-talkie...

MUS IC MICHAEL NYMAN With a typical and not unhealthy keenness bordering on the indiscriminate, the Promen- aders responded as enthusiastically to the three new (more or less)...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Looking back without anger we must admit that the Treasury made an egregious mistake in putting Bank rate up to 8 per cent when we devalued the pound in...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL The second-quarter profit figures announced by Unilever (in which I hold one hundred shares in my first portfolio) disappointed , the market, though really...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES There is, as Mr Noel Coward put it, always something fishy about the French; and their furtive devaluation of the franc is one of their coolest and fishiest...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT WATCHDOG The f144- million shortfall on AEI's profit fore- cast, which its auditors provisionally endorsed, raises the question: what should a company ex-...

at work. Instead of crediting the poor reception given to Mr Tam Dalyell's thorough-going attempts to blacken the name , of the Argylls to the essential mean-spiritedness of...

LETTERS From: Patrick Wall, MP, 14 dawn Aiton, T. Doganis, Frank Dunne, C. G. F. Munton, Lady de Zulueta, Timothy Beardson, J. M. Ita, M. J. H. Liversidge, C. G. C. Young, E....

CUSTOS Wars and rumours of wars are no new thing to markets. The news from Czechoslovakia brought the familiar reactions. Bullion prices —gold especially—rose; so did commodity...

Sir: In a very interesting article (16 August) Mrs Helen Vlachos refers to the political pros- pects of Mr Karamanlis • and writes: 'His [Karamanlis's] future is linked with the...

should stoop to such a banal and puerile attempt at satire in 'Adultery for adults' (9 August), I am not surprised that the defenders of our Pope's position have had to abandon...

Sir : In his defence of the Papal encyclical 'On the regulation of birth' (2 August) the Roman Catholic Bishop of Leeds rather ingenuously argues that the redistribution of...

Sir : Mr Peter Walker (16 August) commits the common error of claiming to support Conser- vatism in Britain whilst opposing it abroad. He sneers at the higher morality...

Sir: Absent from one's native shores for nearly seven years now, one's early impression gained from the London papers—without positing any essential nexus between one's...

Sir : I was intrigued to learn from Mr Nicholas Davenport's article (16 August) that it is now possible to grade films that the public will go to the cinema for into three handy...

Sir: In your issue of 16 August, Mr J. W. M. Thompson voices for me all the frustration people like me feel at the 'modernisation' of the Book of Common Prayer. No doubt, Mr...

Sir : It is interesting to note that your corre- spondent Mr Waugh has been persuaded that the inhabitants of Udi are 'minorities people' (2 August). This remark shows just how...

Sir: We Catholics await another humorous article from Mr Peregrine Worsthorne, not this time about a hypothetical controversy in the Church (in which the liberals are fair game...

written (9 August) far the best article on the difficult subject of Humanae Vitae and got right to the heart of the matter. Congratulations! Marie-Louise de Zulueta Combe Row,...

Sir: Am I right in thinning the British press ignored the anniversary of VJ Day last week? A day when millions regained their life and freedom? Surely this anniversary deserves...

Sir: Who is John Wells? (page 243 of your 16 August issue). I am agog to know how he learned what the dons who taught us said about Sir David Hunt and myself. At least he has...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS Mon cher Theophile—Figure to yourself if it pleases you our ecstasy to be spending at last our holidays in this England we have yearned for since our...

Sir: I liked Strix's comments in 'Spectator's Notebook' (2 August) on fagging at Eton. When I was a fag there my fagmaster was up to a beak who set, as an extra work, the com-...

PHILIDOR Black White 7 Men 8 men E. Holladay (American Chess Bulletin, 1956). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 400 (Langstaff): R - Kt...

Charles Seaton reports: Competitors were invited to invent a new game expressly designed to reverse the present trend in international sport and promote amity rather than...

Across 1 Destroyers of shipping in more ways than one (8) S This can't be the password! (6) 9 Orangemen? (8) 10 Something of an inspirer entertains (6) 12 Potent stuff in the...

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 following five pairs of words as...