The new Nixon and the old Wilson It was, perhaps, unfortunate that President Nixon should have chosen to stress, in his first words on British soil, the value and existence of...

The Ulster general election has confirmed this journal's worst fears. Captain Q'Neill, encouraged by some imaginative public opinion polls, and buoyed up by an exag- gerated...

Mr Levi EshICol, Prime Minister of Israel, died of a heart - attack at seventy-three. General Yigal Anon, the Deputy Prime Minister, took over for the present. El Fatah, the...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH President Nixon's visit effectively removed at least the television spotlight from Ulster and Mr Soamcs - s dilemma in Paris, but in so far...

THE SOAMES AFFAIR-1 MARC ULLMANN Paris—'Perfide Albion' is alive and well and living in Paris. Such is the French version of Taffaire Soames'; General de Gaulle made some...

THE SOAMES AFFAIR-2 JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE, MP For those of us who believe that an enduring European union can only be built around the affiance of France and Britain the past week...

The following is a summary of the record of Mr Christopher Soames's conversation with General de Gaulle on 4 February which was given by the Foreign Office to the other five...

AMERICA WILLIAM JANEWAY In the five weeks between the Inauguration and his departure for Europe, President Nixon has presided over a remarkable lowering of tern- perature in...

PAKISTAN DICK WILSON Colin Cowdrey got his century at Lahore, but President Ayub Khan has had to retire hurt amid the sudden but unmistakable sense of exultation on the part of...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS To err is human. Yet man seems to be Condemned to intermittent accuracy. Even the non-stop prophet must expect From time to time to find himself correct....

J. W. M. THOMPSON A few marginal notes on the Great Soames Saga : 1. That was an unusually apt quotation from Woodrow Wilson which President Nixon trotted out in London this...

PERSONAL COLUMN KENNETH ALLSOP `Bugger off! !I' Through the sparkling sun the voice bashed like a black thunderclap. He was a field away, a bull-sized figure apparently doing a...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY This has been one of those big news weeks, as you cannot fail to have noticed. For my part I'm unmoved. Soaked in Soames, deluged with de Gaulle,...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON It seems pretty clear now that the Abortion Act of 1967 is heading for the same kind of fate as the Betting and Gaming Act of 1960. Both measures...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN The 'individualist' town councillor, who cheer- fully used all the public amenities provided by his community while still loudly denounc- ing...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD One of the strongest arguments for the main- tenance of public service television is that it is almost inconceivable to think of any one of the ITV...

DENIS BROGAN In the same week in which we lost Kingsley Martin, we lost Lady Asquith. (I was glad to learn that she disliked, very much, being called 'Lady Vi' and, writing in...

RODNEY ACKLAND A lot of people who, like myself, have assumed themselves impervious to the influence of other people's opinion—no matter how widely , pro- pagated, how...

ROBERT BLAKE The Victorian Church in Decline P. T. Marsh (Routledge and Kegan Paul 56s) Archbishop Tait, the most powerful Primate since the seventeenth century, had a career...

NORMAN COLLINS In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents Bernard Heuvelmans translated by Richard Garnett (Rupert Hart-Davis 84s) No more than a small minority of the huroan race has...

BRIAN CROZIER Castro: A Political Biography Herbert L. Matthews (Allen Lane The - Penguin Press 50s) Herbert Matthews, then of the New York Times, virtually discovered Fidel...

Kee 63s each) Private eye ASHLEY BROWN Complete Poems 1913-1935 and 1936-1962 E. E. Cummings (MacGibbon and Kee 63s each) These handsome volumes are a British publisher's...

J. 0. URMSON Prelude to Aesthetics Eva Schaper (Allen and Unwin 40s) Fundamental aesthetic theory is in a far less satisfactory condition than any other field of philosophical...

ELIZABETH WISKEMANN It is difficult to summarise Mr Windsor's closely argued conjectures about the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. He prefers to regard it as 'the outcome...

ROY STRONG The Stanhopes of Chevening Aubrey Newman (Macmillan 70s) 1 visited Chevening shortly after the death of the last Earl. Marvellously situated close ,, to London, it...

STUART HOOD The Grass of Oblivion Valentin Katayev (Mac- millan 45s) There are some cities one has the illusion of knowing without having been there. Odessa is one, with its...

ARTS HILARY SPURLING Tony Richardson's production of Hamlet opened last week in the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm; and it would be hard to imagine a more magical background for the...

THEATRE MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH The only full-length new play to be presented in the National Theatre's season at the Jean- netta Cochrane was John Spurling's MacRune's Guevara...

Tough luck PENELOPE HOUSTON Sweet Charity (Odeon, Leicester Square, 'A') Candy (Odeon, Kensington, 'X') The Sergeant (Cameo-Poly, 'X') It seems a little hard to criticise a...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Kenneth MacMillan's new Olympiad at Covent Garden has won no medals from the critics; its first performance excited a dawn chorus of indifferent notices...

CUSTOS After a major shake-out- -share prices down 9 per cent in the first two and a half weeks of February—the equity market has found its equilibrium again. There are, after...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT No one is likely to suggest that this column has as much influence on investors as, say, the City column of the Daily Mail with its mass circulation, but the...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Kaiser Steel, an American share which allows a cheap way into Hammersley, the Australian iron-ore producer, has not yet justified the faith of the many...

way one looks at it) Mr Waugh's statement (14 February) that 'a large part of Sir Alec Douglas-Home's political sex-appeal [to Tories] derives from the fact that he was once an...

LETTERS From Alan Smith, Diana Attwood, Prudence Bellak, K. Tite, I. Gowrie, Sir James Butler, Dr I. McD. G. Stewart, Giles Playfair, John V. Bryans, John Milne. J. Iheanacho...

midst of your leading article 'The grand old dukes of the LSE' (14 February) lies a remark which highlights a flaw in reasoning not uncommon among commentators on the current...

Sir: Mr Szamuely's faith in the balance of power (14 February) is impressive. It cer- tainly sounds a simple calculation. 'Any one state was to be prevented from becoming strong...

Sir: I was horrified to read Barbara Maude's article about the impending destruction of Chipping Norton (7 February). We now look back in horror at the Victorians (both as...

Sir: I am profoundly shocked by Dr Rowan Wilson's article on euthanasia (7 February), as much by his attitude as by the frivolity of his arguments. Firstly, he states that...

Sir: I should like to thank you for your support for Biafra, and to encourage you to continue to do so. The press gives full publicity to the sufferings of the Biafrans, but...

Sir: It is always diverting when the expert, venturing for once outside his field, stumbles abruptly into some unsuspected chasm of in- comprehension. Sir Denis Brogan is very...

Sir : A fair exchange : I will re-read Zeno's Life, if Mr McDouall (Letters, 14 February) will first re-read my review of it (31 January). Certainly, there is no evidence that...

Sir: My father, the late Henry Montagu Butler, always attributed the remark 'We are none of us infallible . .' to W. H. Thompson, his former tutor and his predecessor in the...

of Arch- bishop Mathew's Lord Acton and his Times (14 February), quotes John Morley on the puzzle Acton was to his English contem- poraries, who were uncertain how much he...

Sir: I do not wish to sound churlish in criticising Sir Denis Brogan's warm and generous tribute to Kingsley Martin, but I feel I owe it to Kingsley's memory to correct an...

from the debate on whether the Ubani Ibos are really Ibos in favour of his (I think more competent) colleague, Dr Alagoa (Letters, 7 February). I'm grateful to Dr Alagoa for...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS In response to many requests from readers of 'After you, Cecil' (14 February), we publish this week a second excerpt from the most remarkable...

From the 'Spectator,' 27 February 1869 — "In Scot- land," says the Duke of Argyll, in the admirable speech with which he introduced his [Scotch Edu- cation] Bill, "the universal...

Trevor Grove reports: Poems have on occasion been written consisting of a single letter or even a dot. Competitors were invited to write a criti- cal appreciation of one such...

PHILIDOR Black Wl 9 men 9 men G. Andersson and S. Ekstrom (Lunds Dagblad. 1947). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 427 (Shinkman): Q - Q...

COMPETITION Readers of John Wells's 'Afterthought' two weeks ago, 'After you, Cecil,' were doubtless struck by the remarkably picturesque opening sentence of 'Cecil's...

Across 1 Old transport which might be mistaken for a teacher of drama (5-5) 6 What alchemy can expose this mineral (4) 10 Little great around the bird for the destination of...