The truth may eventually prove to lie somewhere between these views. But what ought not to be in dispute is that if, as appeared probable in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Mr...

A television programme earlier this week posed the question 'has satire gone too far?' We are bound to - admit, somewhat reluc- tantly, that it probably has. First there was the...

Ever since Mr Callaghan exchanged the cares of the Treasury for those of the Home Office he has displayed an almost arrogant air of relaxation. After the titanic battle for...

The old British ritual of clock-changing came to an almost certain end at midnight on Saturday with the beginning of British Standard Time, de- spite many indignant mutterings....

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGII In a week when a team from the International Monetary Fund is visiting England to make sure that the Government does not mismanage the...

or The dark horse of the sonnets CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Shall I compare thee to an all-night sitting? Thou art more wordy and more obdurate, Those pretty wrongs of liberty...

BRITAIN & EUROPE MARC ULLMANN Paris—General de Gaulle never revises his script, he only revises his actions. This was the lesson of his policies towards Algeria. His whole art...

DEFENCE REVIEW LAURENCE MARTIN For twenty . years British defence policy has suffered from abrupt bouts of stop-go, and the upheavals of the last few months have been the most...

An open letter to Duncan Sandys 'AIN MACLEOD, MP Dear Duncan. It was percipient of you to raise with Roy Jenkins as long ago as 1966 the question of Asian immigrants from...

EDUCATION STUART MACLURE There is little doubt that the circumstantial reports of what the Newsom Committee will have to say about the future of the public schools are...

JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE Every time I visit Bonn I am reminded of the old French proverb that 'nothing lasts like the provisional.' When I spent a couple of weeks at the university...

From the 'Spectator', 22 February 1868—We learn by Atlantic Telegraph that the new State Constitu- tion has been defeated in Alabama, and so ends the hope of a speedy...

PERSONAL COLUMN ANTHONY BURGESS When Dr Johnson called patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel, he undoubtedly had poli- ticians in mind. There has been, in the life of this...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMP TON New York—Mayor John Lindsay of New York seems to be the only one of our poli- ticians whose reputation improves with the years. It is hard to say how...

THE LSE REPORT DONALD WATT Donald Watt has been a member of the sta f f of the LSE for the past fourteen years. A year ago the London School of Economics was in uproar. To...

THE PRESS DONALD McLACHLAN The temptations, perils, embarrassments and disappointments suffered by the newspaper man in search of a good serial can hardly be imagined by the...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN Princeton, NJ—They are cleaning up New York after the nine day sanitation strike and the only intolerable stenches at the moment (in my neighbourhood at...

ROBERT BIRLEY With this second volume Sir Keith Hancock completes his life of Smuts (Smuts: The Fields of Force, 1919-1950, cur 70s), certainly one of the most notable...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Lunar Caustic Malcolm Lowry (Cape hardback 16s paperback 7s 6d) Malcolm Lowry's pursuit of self-destruction through alcohol was so intense and serious as...

PATRICK ANDERSON The second and final volume of Mr Holroyd's biography of Lytton Strachey is much better than the first. Whereas The Unknown Years dealt at almost...

Spanish story HENRY TUBE Inconsolable Memories Edmundo Desnoes (Deutsch 21s) This Sunday Jose Donoso translated by Lor- raine O'Grady Freeman (Bodley Head 25s) Time of...

DAVID WILLIAMS A Cab at the Door V. S. Pritchett (Chatto and Wind us 30s) Reminiscences of Affection Victor Gollancz (Gollancz 30s) Belonging Willa Muir (Hogarth Press 42s)...

SAMMY LOHAN Philby: The Spy who Betrayed a Generation Bruce Page, David Leitch and Phillip Knight- ley (Deutsch 30s) Spy stories bore me to the point of renunciation. Since...

TIBOR SZAMUELY Soviet Studies Series edited by Robert Con- quest- (Bodley Head): :Industrial Workers in the USSR (30s) The Politics of Ideas in the USSR (25s) Soviet...

"(dial Stevenson, A Study in Values Herbert Muller (Hamish Hamilton 35s). Liberal, orator, egghead,' wit—no doubt whose side Mr Muller's angels are on. A mawkish beginning...

PENELOPE HOUSTON A few weeks ago, I was writing with some- thing less than enthusiasm about Far from Vietnam. I haven't changed my mind; but nothing could more effectively...

Stars and braces HILARY SPURLING Hay Fever (Duke of York's) Celia Johnson, as Judith Bliss in Hay Fever, is among the high peaks of comedy. The central note of this...

ART BRYAN ROBERTSON If a carefully programmed and precisely re- corded study of the physical structure and properties of everyday objects is permissible for artists intent on...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Dame Marie Rambert, founding mother of British ballet, celebrates her eightieth birthday this week, and in common with audiences and those myriad dancers...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Professor John Jewkes, dedicated anti-planner (The New Ordeal by Planning, Macmillan 42s), has one great advantage over his critics the arch- planners: he...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES An exhibition site on Madison Avenue has, I learn, been offered free of charge to the British National Export Council. The Parke-Bernet Galleries—where...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT EDGAR PALAMOUNTAIN When I first came to the City, a little more than a decade ago, the unit trust business was in something of an eclipse. Few of those one...

ADVERTISING ROGER PEMBERTON Every now and then the truthfulness of adver- tising becomes a public issue. It was after one such flurry that G. K. Chesterton commented : `So we...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL I have to record one hit and one miss this week. Luckily my hit, which is Scrag, the Macclesfield manufacturer of textile machinery, more than makes up for...

16 February) will respond to your invitation to adduce evidence of the Conservative 'whispering campaign' against the Prime Minister but perhaps I might assist him with an...

whispering campaign to make it clear that 'T. C. Skeffington-Lodge' is not among, the pseudonyms under which, for nearly four decades, he has sought to entertain your readers.

CUSTOS The market has continued to move cautiously downwards, the Financial Times index shedding ten points in a week. There has been a little selling from private investors in...

LETTERS From Ronald H. Hensman, L. E. Weidberg, Strix, J. N. Karanja, Robert Conquest, Tibor Szamuely, Alastair Service, A. A. Evans, Ian F. Fletcher, Simon Raven. Sir: It is...

Sir: Your holier-than-thou editorial (16 February) accuses Kenya of discriminating against Asians. This is untrue. The issue is one of citizenship and not race. We have many...

Sir: My disagreement with Mr Raven's 'Personal Column' of 9 February could not be more abso- lute. Furthermore, as a former grammar school pupil, I take particular offence at...

letter (16 February) which 1 really must contest. Mrs Boyle writes: 'Mr Raven . . . comes from the right class, went through all the right educational processes and has always...

Sir: I am sure all our hearts must bleed for Mr Stewert Gore (16 February), a 'mature' student on a weekly grant of £9 of public money at a college of education, at the mercy of...

Sir: Eisenhower is substantially misquoted by your correspondent E. F. G. Haig (Letters, 16 February). He did not write that in the view of his advisers 'possibly 80 per cent of...

Sir: Mr John Ashe's excuses for Soviet actions against Gerald Brooke (Letters, 16 February) should not remain unrefuted. (1) It is completely untrue that 'in the Soviet code,...

Sir: The strange thing about the critics and opponents of the Divorce Reform Bill is that almost all agree (pace Lady Summerskill) that reform is needed. They say it again and...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS All over the world in recent years the price of works of art has been rising alarmingly. Ideal landscapes, grandiose futuristic designs and pop-art...

In his essay on 'Politics and the English Lan- guage' George Orwell laments the indiscipline of prose writing in general and of 'officialese' in particular. That George Orwell...

COMPETITION Competitors are invited to use the following ten words, taken from the opening passages of a well-known work of literature, in the order given, to construct part of...

Across 1 What a base fellow to upset Fifi cat! (7) - 5 Rats on account of bad qualities? (7) 9 Hats, light brown, for machine workers? (7) 10 A duck of a girl! (7) 11 Verger...

PHILIDOR Black White 13 men 13 men Ua Tane (Good Companions, 1920). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. The composer was the Gauguin of the chess world,...