he American presidential election cant- Igu has so far been a singularly lack- tr e affair. With two principal candidates ea, whatever they do to the electors, leave e...

`Once mandatory sanctions were introduced, once the principle of "no independence before majority rule" was formally adopted, there could be no going back and no more con-...

This week's statement on South African gold sales by the American Secretary of the Treasury, Mr Fowler, on the eve of the Inter- national Monetary Fund meeting in Washing- ton,...

It was a good week for Ha Utu Nu Wu Mu Hwint, the Lord Mayor of London: he acquired the name, a feathered cape and head- dress, and a chieftainship of the Cheemchuevi Indians...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH During last year's Labour party conference at Brighton a small booklet was circulated among the party faithful entitled The Thoughts of...

POLITICIANS QUINTIN HOGG, MP I have always reckoned myself one of Enoch's admirers. To begin with, look how many legends he destroys. They say we have no `char- acters'...

PORTUGAL ELIZABETH CORBETT The expected has happened. Left without a leader, amid the argument and procrastination now going on over the nomination of a successor to Salazar...

BIAFRA : THE NEXT PHASE PETER ENAHORO Pater Enahoro, brother of the Federal Nigerian Information Minister Chief Enahoro, is a fawner editor-in-chief of the Wigerian Daily...

MCC CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS One need not go through all the details of the story again, but it can hardly be pretended that the sicc has managed the d'Oliveira affair with much...

J. W. M. THOMPSON There has been a pleasant lull in all the tub- thumping about space exploration recently, but no doubt the Russian achievement in sending a 1th:tip of...

From the 'Spectator', 26 September 1868—The fruits of the attempt of the Georgian planters to exclude the negroes from the Legislature and to keep them in their old subjection...

PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN For nearly 3,000 years, the character of Odysseus has enjoyed the undiminished respect both of learned men and of the public at large. The tone of...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY Having found myself briefly at the Liberal party assembly last week, and not having been much improved by that circumstance, my im- mediate reaction was...

TELEVISION - STUART HOOD Long before Lord Hill called in McKinsey and Co. to look at the structure and functioning of the BBC, the BBC had its own Organisation and Management...

TABLE TALK DENTS BROGAN I suppose the first great international quarrel in which sport became a serious source of en- mity and not of amity was the fight between Sayers and...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS 'I don't know anything on earth that gives me personally more excitement than waiting for a bird to come over my gun. It's the nearest thing to heaven in...

ROY STRONG Madam, do you ever regret plucking out your eyebrows in 1923 and replacing them with a cosmetic line an inch above where they should be? Does it worry you when your...

CHARLES STUART The Philby Affair Hugh Trevor-Roper (Mac- Gibbon and Kee 25s) The welcome peace of the summer on the Philby front has now been broken by two fur- ther...

J. B. DONNE Africans, black or white, who have lived for many years in Europe, are often unable to accept their exile as permanent, and speak with love, nostalgia and...

SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER Margaret Lane's The Tale of Beatrix Potter was first published in 1946. Now she has the deserved good fortune of being able to make a good book better....

True valour HENRY TUBE And Take the Ape for Counsellor Christina Hobhouse (Macmillan 30s) Do Butlers Burgle Banks? P. G. Wodehouse (Herbert Jenkins 21s) The Inspector of...

AUBERON WAUGH The Judas Boy Simon Raven (Blond 30s) Very few professional writers can have been completely unmoved by Ian Fleming's achieve- ment. A mistake which many of them...

J. 0. URMSON There is no contemporary philosopher who writes with so easy a command of syntax as Professor Ayer. His prose has an austere ele- gance, devoid of rhetoric and...

BRIAN CROZIER Revolutionary Warfare and Communist Strategy Geoffrey Fairbairn (Faber 45s) Strategy: The Indirect Approach B. H. Liddell Hart (Faber 45s) There is a widespread...

COLIN WELCH Negations Herbert Marcuse (Allen Lane 42s) What sort of a man is this portrayed on the dust-jacket—the pied piper who, with dark cheroot in mouth, eye quizzically...

A History of South-East Asia D. G. E. Hall (Macmillan 90s). To the third edition of this already rather weighty volume, Professor Hall has added a good few ounces of valuable...

HILARY SPURLING `What I try to do, you understand, is analyse stylistically the fragment of terror which is the human condition,' says John Morley, poet and hero of Paddy...

Home movies PENELOPE HOUSTON Charlie Bubbles (Odeon, St Martin's Lane, 'X') Interlude (Columbia, 'A') Decline and Fall (Carlton, 'A') There has been a particularly sickly...

INVESTMENT-1 A STOCKBROKER The author , is a partner in a well-known firm of stockbrokers. The rules of the Stock Ex- change require him to remain anonymous. The stock market...

SURVEY CHRISTOPHER FILDES The City finds itself in a crisis of authority. That the crisis could have been avoided, and was largely brought on by panic and misjudg- ment within...

INVESTMENT-2 NICHOLAS DAVENPORT A revolution is taking place in the unit trust movement. The huge life assurance companies have always watched the rapid growth of unit trust...

INVESTMENT— 3 JOHN BULL It is easy now, looking back, to explain why equity prices have risen by40 per cent in the past twelve months but on the way up there have been many...

WALL STREET WILLIAM JANEWAY The New York stock market is again flirting with its highs for the.year. The current move past the 900 mark on the Dow Jones Industrial Average,...

INSURANCE - TOM WILMOT Tom Wilmot is Secretary-General of the British Insurance Association. Despite the congested state of Britain's roads and the rising cost of repairs, and...

BANKING HILTON S. CLARKE Hilton S. Clarke is executive deputy chairman of Charterhouse Japhet and Xhomasson, and a director of the Charterhouse Group. He is a former principal...

LESLIE ADRIAN As soon as I saw the tilt of that head, I knew I could not live happily another day without possessing her. The crowning glory was no cliché but a riot–of...

Sir: Your leading article on denationalisation and after makes some very pertinent points (20 September). However, you state that no industry can be sold into private ownership...

Sir: Though Sir Denis Brogan thinks my letter very funny, he still has to move the targets (Letters, 20 September). (1) No extra marks to a Rutherglen man for knowing Kilsyth...

Sir: Professor Trevor-Roper says that Harold Nicolson's account of his failure to get a peer- age is 'never . . . enlivened by a trace of humour' (6 September). In his next...

Harold Nicolson, telt a sense of 'unalloyed pain.' It seemed to me to be insensitive, unkind and unfair. 1 consider Harold Nicolson to have been both a brilliant writer and an...

LETTERS From Professor Lionel Trilling, Simon Bewlay, Robin McDouall, Margaret Crompton, William Aiton, K. W. Nicholls, Sir Denis Brogan. Angus Buchanan, Grenvi:le Jones and...

siller Tho' she be as black as night The wind'll blaw a laddie till her.' I Hedgerley Close, Cambridge Denis Brogan

R. L. Travers (Letters, 13 financial gain, he refused to make a childless gesting that the sin of Onan lay in practising coitus interruptus as such. As I read the story, woman...

Sir: It is our intention to honour the memory of the late Sydney Silverman by planting a wood in Israel. The late Sydney Silverman was a parliamen- tartan of nation-wide...

Sir: Auberon Waugh (20 September) quite rightly holds Mr George Thomson responsible for the Government's Biafran policy. The doc- trine of ministerial responsibility would...

Sir: You were kind enough to publish my letter about Nigeria in your issue of 5 July and I have followed since then the views not only of the SPECTATOR but of your correspon-...

Sir: Christopher 1-iollis's verses in your issue of 23 August provoke me to reply: Dear Mr Hollis, pity me, For knowing not your tutor, Who might have been a better man,...

Sir: Please allow me to correct an unfortunate typing error in my article last week. Burke should not have been 'observing the antics of • Peel' but, of course, those of Pitt!...

Sir: It is possible that many of your readers do not know either Mr MacBeth's work or Mr MacBeth himself. I should merely like to point out that Mr Seymour-Smith's weird, not to...

Sir: Many latter-day Uncle Toms, as described by George Michael (20 September), could be freed to serve under chosen masters were the shackles of their occupational pension...

Sir: Through the courtesy of your columns we would like to draw your attention to 'Contact,' an organisation set up in Marylebone three years ago by a group of young people to...

Sir : In his article of 20 September, Auberon Waugh uses the expression 'a cat-in-hell's chance.' I should like to know whether this is an English or an American idiom. If the...

PHILIDOR 9 men 8 men W. A. Shinkman (Detroit Free Press, 1885). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. A05 (Havel): Q - B 7, threat 2 R x Kt...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS David Frost, as everyone would agree, is a very nice man. And he must by now have be- come accustomed to the fact that his name in- spires violent...

Across 1 Seizes upon what's of little weight in an afterthought (7) S Viper comes to a stop underfoot (7) 9 Ancient city is out of bounds to a Pope, pre- sumably (5) 10...

a rather complicated task this week, sug- gestive of the worst excesses of postal courses in journalism and the like—namely, given an alter- native pair of unwieldly and...

COMPETITION Competitors are invited to use the following ten words, in the order given, to construct part of the script for either a play, musical, panto- mime or film; up to...