AT A T Christmas, as the dustmen claim their bribe and the carol-singers swing their polythene Oxfam boxes, we do our best to think of others, especially over- seas, less...

POLIT1C.4L COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS BOTTOMLEY, A. G. Arthur tries hard, and his elocution lessons are going well. BROWN, G. A. Another year of ups and downs. George, if he...

'Poets should not be mocked.'—Maurice Richard- son in the 'Observer.' Poets agree with one accord They simply hate to be ignored. They rack their brains devising ways By...

MITCHELL By GILES PLAYFAIR The vital question arises, though, of whether Mitchell should ever have been sent to Dart- moor, where there is no sort of psychiatric ser- vice...

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN T SHALL follow Fleet Street's example over 'Christmas and take a few days' rest from the troubles of the Guardian and of Lord Thomson's evening...

AMERICA From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK I r is both ironic and di ffi cult to remember that in March of 1964 Attorney-General Robert F. Kennedy announced that the heirs of John...

T m prospect of women priests in the Church of England is enough to shake the apathy even of those one-day-a-year Christians who will be crowding the hospitable Anglican...

MEDICINE TODAY By JOHN ROWAN WILSON (NNE of the more encouraging features of kjpresent-day life is the increasing volume of advice available to consumers. Quite apart from the...

TELEVISION By STUART HOOD The Corporation's greatest victory is that it will have control of the national music pro- gramme, which will carry no advertising. If any...

From RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL NEW YORK Here in New York I am no more intoxicated by the glowing Christmas trees on Park Avenue than I would be by the garish illuminations of...

By AUBERON WAUGH I is not hard to see why most grown-ups detest 'Christmas nowadays. It is expensive and tawdry, a time for self-deception and false senti- ment. It is a...

December 22, 1866 Our New York Correspondent demonstrated last week, to his own complete satisfaction, that the dread of any contact between the white and black races is strong...

By LORD EGREMONT My ancestor was a bookish man. He ought to have been happy in the Tower. But he wasn't. Despite the fact that he wasn't an out-of-doors man, he longed for the...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS R EADERS are invited to study the following paragraphs, and to immerse themselves imaginatively in the given situations before reach- ing their...

Sm,—The tone of Mr Patrick Anderson's review of Virginia Woolf's Essays (November 11) appears to be one of regret at her 'failure in scholarship' and neg- lect of 'familiar...

earth, the SPEC- TATOR is something other than a weekly newspaper. Six weeks or more pass before it arrives. By then, prophecies have been fulfilled or forgotten, gambles lost...

Lewis, MP, S. W. Routledge, W. McL. Thomson. E. GOnensay, Angus Hone, Barbara Aspeling, Henry Adler, Bernard Donoughue and G. W. Jones, Mrs Franya Godby. Sta.—Your leader...

Democratic party (NDP) merely succeeded in garnering the traditional right-wing vote in the recent Land elections, and that its neo-Nazi ten- dencies have been unduly...

Streeten and Mr Hill (December 2) manages to extract 'extensive confiscation' from Dr Balogh's advocacy of 'some sort of universal national service for labour-intensive rural...

Sur,—Messrs Streeten and Hill's latest letter (Decem- ber 16) raises a major issue. Their lighthearted equation of military operations and economic activity is the more...

Sta,—If Mr Callaghan really believes that the average housewife will get used to the new decimal coinage in six weeks, he is like the queen in Through the Looking Glass, who...

SIR,—Mrs Spurling might have considered the rela- tionship between the commercial and the so-called repertory companies the other way round. So far from the commercial theatres...

Snt,—We have been asked by the literary executors Of the late Lord Morrison of Lambeth to write his official biography. We would be extremely grateful if readers of the...

OPERA By CHARLES REID No French book had been printed for the occasion; one has to go to the Choudens score to get some idea of what's going to be sung. In the lobby you can...

Two Middle Brows On Approval. (St Martin's.) — Royal Hunt of the Sun. (Old Vic.) — The Lion and the Jewel. (Royal Court.) O NE thing I had no room to mention last week is the...

ART In Ironside's painting, as well as in the stan- dards embodied in his writing, we do not get much further than the eighteenth century, though a modern awareness gave a...

CINEMA D URING the last few weeks, sighting shots have been fired in what promises to be a long war. On one side stands the film establishment, im- perturbable as ever, drawn up...

By ANTHONY BURGESS I the age of Levi-Strauss and the British 'Humanists, Christmas becomes an increasing embarrassment. Indifference to the feast is im- possible, and so the...

This short, unsentimental account of the author's early years, 1920-29, deserves a wide audience. It is set ha a Norwood still close to the open country for which his...

From Sarajevo to Potsdam. By A. J. P. Taylor. (Thames and Hudson, 35s.) IN his introduction to this, the latest volume in Geoffrey Barraclough's 'Library of European...

WIIAT a nice book, what a lovely book, what a beautiful book, what a BIG book! What kind of a book? Why a PICTURE book—for Christmas, of course, to match the carols, the...

REASSESSMENT By PATRICK ANDERSON w ILKIE COLLINS'S The Moonstone,* the story of the theft of an already stolen diamond from a young girl on whom it has been bestowed with...

Classical Greece. By C. M. Bowra. (Time-Life Books, 36s.) The Emergence of Greek Democracy: The Character of Greek Politics, 800-400 B.C. By W. G. Forrest. (World University...

SIGHTS, in the packaged-tour sense, lie all over the place. Sites, by contrast, imply a nexus, a link with time. In AD 66 the Masada story was graphically reported by Josephus,...

`MAFrick, v.i. Exult riotously (f. Mafeking, relief of which in 1900 was celebrated extravagantly in London, etc.).' 'Extravagantly,' Brian Gardner would agree, is the very...

moma.” n On 7 By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT • much as the old penny will confuse every house- wife in the land—even those in the stock- broker belt. To mint it in bronze (plain edge)—...

By CUSTOS T HE fall in the Treasury bill rate to f6 12s. 6d. per cent and the rise in the American bond market have helped to bring about a recovery in Government bonds. The...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN IF ever a wine was con- trived, that wine is port, and a lot of damage has been done to its reputation over the years as a con- sequence....

By JOHN BULL E -1 EW can look back this Christmas on a success- "- ful Stock Exchange year. If you have kept breast of the prospects for lead and zinc then you might have made...

D. PIM By STRIX Youth, in retrospect, seems to have been full of raptures and discoveries; one forgets how much of it was permeated by boredom. At first escape was possible,...

No. 3 1 4. From ' Bonus Socius' MS. circa 1300 WHITE to play and mate in five moves; the oldest known pr oblem of its kind; , . solution next week. Solution to No. 313...

ACROSS Great Scott, what charm he had! (8) 5. Big Tam gets a move on board (6) 9. 'Ali! let me make this lute -' (Watson) (8) so. Love, sir, is for a divinity (6) 12. Spenser's...

ACROSS.--x Scribes. 5 Moonlit. 9 Authors. so Shingle. ri Pocahontas. 12 Star. 53 Pen. 14 Redgauntlet. x7 Freebooters. 19 Vic. 20 Puck. 22 Disc-jockey. 26 Floruit. 27 Arizona 28...