'Who now governs Britain' asked Mr Duncan Sandys in Monday's debate on Mr Roy Jenkins's Letter of Intent: 'the international bankers or the TUC?' A good question—to which the...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Ladywood, Bir minghum – 'Put the Doctor in the House' is the Tories' slogan in the Ladywood by-election, where polling is on Thursday of this...

FOREIGN FOCUS CRABRO One would love to know for which of the two French presidential candidates the de Gaulles' housekeeper was instructed to cast their votes. The answer is by...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Oh, praise the Lord and pass the bottle And greet good news with open throttle, For what was ever known more right Than Betjeman should be made a Knight?...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON New York — And now it seems quite likely that the Democrats will elect John Lindsay Mayor in November and that the Repub- licans will thenceforth boast...

THE LAW R. A. CLINE What havoc a recent decision of the House of Lords has played with the Industrial Training Act and what a trail of problems it will have created for Mrs...

GREECE C. M. ‘VOODHOUSE MOM) , Woodhouse, a junior minister in the last Conservative government, commanded the Allied Military Mission to the Greek guerrillas in...

GERMANY MALCOLM RUTHERFORD Bonn—To the comparative newcomer, al- most the nicest discovery about Bonn is that it turns out to be so dreadfully. in., efficient. Contrary to...

CIVIL SERVICE DAVID HOWELL, MP Lord Fulton should be pleased. His report, published a year ago this week, is alive, well and turning out to be marvellously fecund. A new...

J. W. M. THOMPSON Even before it opened one could have predicted two things about Mr Kenneth Tynan's pornographic entertainment in New York. One was that it would make a great...

From the 'Spectator,' 26 lune, 1869—The Earl of Albemarle made an ineffectual attempt on Thursday to remove a stigma affixed by law to all persons resident in the country who do...

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON -The immigration officer at Ndola stared glumly at my entry form. How long did I want to stay in Zambia? A week. How much money did I have...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD At the press-show, Dick Cawston's film on the royal family was introduced by a spokesman from the BBC-ITV consortium that produced it as 'the finest film...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY Some years ago, a melancholy fellow in Denmark announced that there's nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so. He could have been reading this last...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN By what is a mere coincidence my old friend Malcolm Muggeridge has been writ- ing about the new edition of Bartlett while I have just finished reading...

HENRY TUBE In Nathalie Sarraute's The Planetaritan (1959) a young cultural aspirant is visited in his Paris flat by the reigning Queen of the cultural scene, who is accompanied...

J. ENOCH POWELL, MP Twenty-one Popular Economic Fallacies E J. Mishan (Allen Lane The Penguin Press 35s) I am perhaps the worst person to review Dr Mishan's book; for of . the...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Henry Miller called his death as an ordin- ary mortal (employment manager working for Western Union), and his resurrection as a writer, his 'rosy...

MAURICE CAPITANCHIK In 1925, a novel called The Death Ship, subtitled 'The Story of an American Sailor', by' an unknown author, B. Traven, of Tam- pico, Mexico, appeared in...

DENNIS J. DUNCANSON The Master of Caius is a biochemist. Years ago, working alongside colleagues from China, he marvelled at their qualities, while what they told him about the...

Travellers' tales BARRY COLE The Other Side of the Mountain Michel Bernanos translated by Elaine P. Halperin (Gollancz 21s) The Philosopher's Stone Colin Wilson (Arthur Barker...

J. W. M. THOMPSON For anyone who hasn't read Emily Eden (and that must mean almost everyone) this volume will be a happy surprise. It would not be quite right to call her a...

BRYAN ROBERTSON As Ben Nicholson's ancestry is well known, and he has referred to it in print with affection, it is permissible to touch on a background from which his own...

Good company HILARY SPURLING Troilus and Cressida (Aldwych) Highly Confidential (Cambridge) Sometime Never (Fortune) Just over ten months ago, John Barton's production of...

MUSIC MICHAEL NYMAN 'If I play Tchaikovsky I play his melodies and skip his spiritual struggles. Naturally I condense. I have to know just how many notes my audience will stand...

House parties ROBERT CUSHMAN La Femme Infidele (Continentale, 'A') Secret Ceremony (Curzon, 'X') The Illustrated Man (Warner, 'X') Don't be misled by the title or (though this...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT There are so many academics now in the government service that one of them might surely have been spared to write the annual report of the Industrial...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL There has been an important improvement in the tone of the gilt-edged market in the past few days. Business began to pick up a week ago, gathered pace on...

LETTERS From Sir Thomas Scrivenor, Mrs Yvonne C. R. Brock, Malcolm Rees, Pavel Tomalik, Richard West, Geoffrey May, F. A. Bown, Mrs R. Hopkyn, Peter Stein, John Buchan-...

Sir: The exaggerations of Peter J. Smith's article (14 June) on the 'computer menace' can perhaps be explained by his time in California, but such pieces are doing little to...

Sir: May I as a Czech student studying here be permitted by such a broad-minded capit- alist journal as you are, to express my dis- gust, and that of many Czechs, at the per-...

his own undergraduate verbosity is rather charming. Unfortunately, the ability to wax eloquent seems to have been divor- ced from the ability to exercise a little reason and...

Sir: I should like to extend my congratula- tions to Mr P. J. Wilde (Letters, 30 May) following his unprecedented success in offer- ing, in Mr Jackson's view (Letters, 7 June),...

Sir: In his attack on the colour supple- ments (14 June) Bill Grundy singles out an article on Ethiopia in the Sunday Times Magazine with pictures by John Bulmer and text by...

Sir: Could it possibly be that the reason Mr Nixon echoes Mr Johnson on Vietnam (Murray Kempton 14 June) is that they are both right? Peter Stein Lowden Court, 24 Ladliroke...

Sir: The SPECTATOR is quite wrong (14 June) in thinking that one needs a visa for Spain. Even if it were so, do you really think that a El() fine would stop the 21 million...

Sir: I am undertaking research for a pro- posed biography of Sir Warren Fisher (Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and Head of the Civil Service 1919-1939). 1 would be grateful...

Sir: Trevor Grove was perhaps better in- spired than he realised in setting as your Competition No. 553 the 'brief life' of a demoted saint, since John Aubrey would have fully...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS SATURDAY: Plashing through the mud- puddled, buttercup-golden grass at the bottom of our little garden near Reading in the middle of a hot afternoon, I...

PHILIDOR W. Pauly (Deutsche Schachzeirung, 1904). White to play and mate in three moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 444 (Macleod): Kt - Q 31, no threat. 1 K - Q 4; 2...

Sir Laurence Olivier's former press secretary, recently stunned the reading world with her amazing non-revelations in her book Cry God for Larry. Competitors were invited to...

COMPETITION Gretna Green, traditionally the goal of tear- away elopers in a hurry to get wed, may shortly be losing its chief claim to notoriety, following a recommendation...

Across 1 Fence against blacklegs? (6) 4, 30 Seat of Trollope's duke (8, 6) 10 Setback for parson approaching the Irish Gaelic (7) 11 Tube gives one a minor fit of the blues! (7)...