The election manifesto of an incoming government seldom makes very happy reading for its supporters one year later. The harsh pressure of events has a way of getting between...

Robert Carr's inheritance _ PETER PATERSON There is one area of government where tradi- tional Conservative philosophy clashes with traditional Conservative political...

Saying the unsayable GEORGE GALE The whole idea of race is discriminative. If races exist and are believed to exist then it follows that one race is different from another,...

Friends at court JOHN GRAHAM Washington—There is an ethnic oddity about Mr Nixon's court. Back in the summer of 1968, when it started to become clear that he and his...

Soft words from the south MARTIN WALLACE Belfast—The Twelfth has passed, the Twelfth has still to come. After the peaceful Orange celebrations last week, Northern Ireland...

The battle of the books MAURICE TEMPLE SMITH Maurice Temple Smith is a publisher who recently started his own company after having been managing director of Secker and...

GEORGE HUTCHINSON Since he became Prime Minister, Mr Heath has received some 13,000 letters of congratu- lation. There hasn't been a postbag to equal it at No 10 since...

Iain Macleod J. W. M. THOMPSON On Monday evening, a few hours before lain Macleod died, I fell into conversation with a politician about the way the Tory govern- ment was...

Out of print? BILL GRUNDY I am indebted to Mr Jeremy Tunstall. He is the man who taught me my only word of Japanese. It is `Shimbun', which means newspaper, or Express, or...

Looking to the future CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS The other da37, when I was at Taunton to report a match between Somerset and War- wickshire, I noticed on a stroll round the ground...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS The pubt in Northern Ireland were closed on the day of the celebration of the Battle of the Boyne. The day passed without violent incident. It's ould but it...

In praise of Gilbert White CHRISTOPHER BOOKER It was perhaps hard to avoid a twinge of apprehension at the prospect of the cele- brations which were held last weekend at...

The valley of death DENIS BROGAN After the preposterous dad& of the Suez campaign of 1956, a highly intelligent young friend of mine who had been a paratroop officer in World...

ANN WORDSWORTH Myth—scholarly myth too, as Professor Bloom adds—is revealed by time to be gossip grown old. By time, which is a slow process, or better by iconoclastic...

MAX BELOFF The Vital Center Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr (Andre Deutsch 45s) Professor Schlesinger's defence of the liberal middle way in politics was first published twenty years...

ROBERT SKIDELSKY I lie Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey 937-1940 edited by John Harvey (Collins 1s) I remember talking to a senior and distin- guished civil servant soon...

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER The Brothers Grimm Ruth Michaelis-Jena (Routledge 55s) `Me black coffin, and the bearers carrying yellow lemons and rosemary . . Lemons and rosemary are...

Balls and chains Maurice CAPITANCHIli From a Seaside Town Norman Levine (Mac- millan 36s) A Spy in the Family Alec Waugh (W. H. Allen 30s) A Beggar in Jerusalem Elie Wiesel...

JOEL HURSTFIELD Queen Elizabeth and the Revolt of the Netherlands Charles Wilson (Macmillan 50s) Some years ago, in a conversation with Pieter Geyl, the Dutch historian, I told...

D. C. WATT The Middle East in Revolution Humphrey Trevelyan (Macmillan 65s) Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, Lord Trevelyan as he now is, was the British ambassador in Cairo at the...

JEAN FRANCO Selected Poems Pablo Neruda edited by Nathaniel Tarn (Cape 55s) 'To be born in a house made of trees freshly felled from the forest is not the same as being born...

PENELOPE HOUSTON Real movie makers have never been exactly two a penny, or even two a pound, in British studios; and John Boorman, director and writer (with William Stair) of...

Stardom: The Hollywood Phenomenon Alex- ander Walker (Michael Joseph 60s). Mr Walker traces the history of the Hollywood star system from its dawn in the Griffith era to its...

Saint & sinners ROBERT CUSHMAN The Idiot (Old Vic) The Great Waltz (Drury Lane) The Heretic (Duke of York's) Much Ado About Nothing (Regent's Park) A minor character in...

Festive spirits CLEMENT CRISP Festival Ballet, installed at the Coliseum until 25 July, is in fine fettle; its artists are on their best form and extra cause for re- joicing...

Storm clouds GILLIAN WIDDICOMBE The British musical profession faces the big- gest, noisiest row in its history when the Re- port of the Orchestral Resources Enquiry is...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT What was remarkable about the Stock Exchange reaction to the worst economic news since the war—the disruption of our overseas trade—was that after the...

JOHN BULL It is July, and not April, that has been the cruellest month for British industry this year. At the beginning of the month, a survey was published in which a large...

Sir: Much of George Gale's splendid rhetoric on Northern Ireland (11 July) could not, and was not intended to be taken liter- ally. No one, for example, would be sangu- ine...

Sir: As Mr MacCallum Scott (f1 July) lives in an area where the Liberal vote went up from 5,000 to 7,000 one can sympathise with his weariness at being on the periphery of that...

From Francis A. Bown, George Edinger, David Woolf, David Tribe, Harold Rosen- thal, N. J. Ogbuehi, T. C. Skeffington-Lodge, Keith Waterhouse, W. A. If ulaimi, Anthony Cowdy,...

Sir: It is nice to be missed, even by someone like Mr Anthony Walker (Letters, 18 July). (1) The election was mistimed, and lost by Labour in the last four days through the...

Sir: If Bill Grundy (11 July) wants to dance on the Mirror Magazine's grave I wish he would not embrace me in his unseemly fox- trot. The magazine had some fine writers and...

Sir: As an ex-chairman of the music section of the Critics' Circle of Great Britain and as editor of a magazine entirely devoted to opera, I feel constrained to write and...

Sir: In attempting to negate Mr Burgess's assertion that democracy is a big joke in Singapore, Mr Gerald Choo (Letters, 27 June) embarked for most of the time on extolling the...

Sir: How on earth can your reader Dr Donald M. Bowers (Letters, 20 June) hope to get away with the ridiculous conclusion that the anti-apartheid campaign is 'based entirely on...

Sir: A brief comment on Mr Krige's note on Afrikaans in your South African supplement (18 July): firstly, neither South Africa House, nor private firms recruiting for posts in...

Sir: An apparently intelligent letter from Mr Jeremy Burchill (11 July) exemplifies precisely the ingrained attitudes which have destroyed the official Unionist party as a...

No. 614: What you will Competitors are invited to compose (in verse) an entreaty for—or imprecation against— the dockers. Limit sixteen lines. Entries, marked 'Competition...

Across 1 The inconstant cha-lover? (7) 5 Half the company is of doubtful repute (4-3) 9 Making little old ladies' bags? (7) 10 You get the warning to a T in writing at times...

PHILIDOR J. Hartong (1st Prize, The Problenzist, 1927). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 499 (Searley—B3R2K/8/...