HE discovery that industry expects to 1 cut back its spending on new plant and equipment by half as much again as it did in the previous recession years of 1962 and 1958 is both...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS ARK my words,' said my friend Sherlock Holmes, 'that villain Moriarty is behind all this. You remember the pink chrysanthemum he left at...

No more the Honours List records Hereditary noble lords— Instead in accents stern and lonely Proclaims 'Reserved for Beatles Only.' CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS

BEN BARKA AFFAIR By MARGARET POPE L Asa - week what has come to be known as the Ben Barka affair took on a new lease of life. Not so, unfortunately, the missing man, Ben Barka...

SUEZ RETROSPECT By D. C. WATT /TIEN years ago the British, French and Israeli I governments in political collusion attacked Egypt. Each had different motives and acted on...

CHINA By DICK WILSON initial phase of China's cultural revo- lution is over. The young Red Guards have gone back to the provinces to spread the new word of Maoism. They have...

THE LAW By R. A. CLINE rrHE Court of Appeal decision last week that I barristers cannot be sued for negligence has aroused the understandable if somewhat un- charitable...

I HARDLY feel it was very sensible of the Tories to table a personal motion of censure against the Home Secretary for his 'refusal . .. to set up a specific inquiry . . . on...

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN W HAT an extraordinary switch of interest and indignation there was last Saturday night: from Aberfan to Wormwood Scrubs. Until about eight...

By STUART HOOD rr HE first question is: Were the television I organisations right in providing live cover- age of the Aberfan disaster? The answer is un- equivocally 'Yes.'...

October 27 1866 Mr. Snider, the inventor of the breech-loader, died suddenly on Thursday morning. Early on the same day the War Office had arranged a scheme of remuneration. He...

CHILDREN —1 By ARTHUR BARTON T HE line is, of course, the poverty line, and it is news to many people that such a line exists at all, and a shock when they are told that over...

CHILDREN — 2 By GILES PLAYFAIR EFORE the present Government came to D power, a Labour party working group, under the chairmanship of Lord Longford, issued a report called Crime,...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS Our instruction began in conditions of maxi- mum security behind a high perimeter fence, topped with barbed wire, in a battle camp in North Wales....

By ALAN WATKINS R FADING Dr Butler and Dr King's book on the last election* is a bit like leafing through one's own (or, for that matter, any other politi- cal correspondent's)...

SIR,—The nub of this whole matter of Lord Justice Harman's comments on the evidence of a psychiatrist has become, as far as I can see, completely obscured in a mild 'war'...

your correspondent's poser on C. S. Lewis's indecipherable handwriting (October 14) I venture to ask if the reference could be to Dr- Robert Young's Analytical Concordance to...

11, - E7EN5 ITO HI EIDInn From : Rev Walter Hooper, Cameron Mackay. Peter Knight, 0. 1. Vaughan-Jackson, E. A. F. Fenwick, D. C. Watt, C. R. A. Swynnerton, G. S. Lester, FRCS....

SIR,—Mr Lawson writes, apropos the Hanratty case: `Obviously there can be no question of a man being charged with a single-handed murder, of which another man still stands...

SIR,—Your recent review of books on the subject of the Conquest (October 14) leads one to the inescapable conclusion that this event is now re- garded—as the authors of 1066 And...

conclusions Mr Alan Williams hopes your readers will draw from his letter of October 21. It is irrelevant to quote a statement my father-in-law, Dr Benson Perkins, may have made...

Sia,—Leslie Adrian (October 14) fiercely criticises the Accident Offices Association for the manner in which the 'new deal' has been introduced and alleges that large numbers of...

Sus,—Perhaps you will allow me, as one of the vic- tims of last week's let's-be-cniel-to-resnewers day in Your correspondence columns, to reply to Lord Chandos and Mr O'Brien....

SIR,—Mr Alan Watkins is right in saying (SPECTATOR, October 14) that the Tory party no longer has the automatic support of any interest in this country. Surely this is a good...

SIR,—Mr Nigel Lawson will, I hope, forgive me if I quarrel with at least one sentence in his article `The Umbilical Cord' (October 7). He states, as if it were a desirable...

SIR,—The article in the SPECTATOR of October 21 by Mr Ian Gilmour provokes another view which so far has not attracted much public attention: the ultimate consequence on the...

SIR,—The book trade is greatly concerned by cur- rent reports that university students are apparently finding it necessary to resort to illegal (and expen- sive) methods, such...

SIR,—Experts come and experts go. Spertator expertations, though, Expect to rest in status quo And watch their expectations grow. JOHN B. METCALFE E. MARION METCALFE Madeley,...

SIR, —As a pre-war film critic, may I say that I found Mordecai Richler's review of Balthazar in the SPECTATOR (October 21) by far the best-informed and most enlightening of all...

MUSIC By CHARLES REID For the current Ring cycles, a hundred or more players crowd the Covent Garden pit. The same happens on Elektra nights. It is not to be assumed, however,...

ART T HE best shows in London at the moment are divided between the Waddington galleries on each side of Cork Street : pe►e with Bonnard drawings and gouaches not previously...

Convulsions The Storm. (Old Vic.) — Macbeth. (Royal Court). A HD all the flurries of rage, the crosstalk and back answers, and distracting yells for attention, it should not...

-”• Horse and Man. Onibaba. (Cameo Royal, London, 'X' certificate.) — Southwest to Sonora. (Leicester Square Theatre, 'A' certificate.)—A Thousand Clowns. (Academy Two,...

No. 306. BLACK (5 men F. MIC.HEL (1st Prize, Themes 64, 1958) WHITE to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 305 (Hancock) : Q - Q 2, no threat. I . ....

MUUMII [AOC 02 By SIMON RAVEN I F one thing is certain about Ian Fleming, it is that he was not interesting enough, either as a man or as an author, to justify the number of...

the Arc Lights Ask what was normal in green nature and its pain: Will rain undermine our homes and us again? Ask those scrabbling garden-breakers, the mountain sheep Where are...

THE English parsonage has a '-mg tradition of quiet observation and research into things and people. Gilbert White, George Crabbe, Baring- Gould, Percy Dearmer, Canon Rawnsley,...

The Novel and Society. By Diarii Spearman. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 40s.) THE uninstructed continue to regard the selec- tive principle in art as a symptom of the disease of...

SIR WILLIAM HAYTER is one of the most noted ex-diplomatists turned dons. For a time he wrote regularly on foreign affairs for the Observer, contributing a welcome note of...

By RONALD HINGLEY W ait its monumental statuary, bombinating vaults, wide open spaces and-physical bulk, Tolstoy's War and Peace reminds one of what is surely its nearest...

IT'S not easy to form a natural relationship with a famous person; most of us become more than usually conscious of our own absurdity. The virtue of Julian Symons's...

30s.) The Pirates of Trucial Oman. By H. Moyse- Bartlett. (Macdonald, 45s.) To her book, and to the question: 'Why did the Romans fight along their rich Euphrates fron- tier?'...

By NIGEL NICOLSON M AY I be forgiven for calling them Winston and Randolph respectively and respect- fully? The familiarity has long since ceased to be an impertinence and...

An appalling absence of talent, And yet there's no pain When you close the Collected Works You will never open again. Not even funny; but brave. What the wise and foolish said...

Ominous Chords Excluded from the Cemetery. By Peter Marshall. (Hutchinson, 35s.) The Notebooks of Captain Georges. By Jean Renoir. Translated by Norman Denny. (Collins, 25s.)...

Wide Sargasso Sea. By Jean Rhys. (Deutsch, 21s.) THE once beautiful, insane Creole wife of Mr Rochester was first introduced into the pages of English fiction by Charlotte...

By ROBERT RHODES JAMES F EW politicians in modern British history have aroused such intense feelings through- out their career as Joseph Chamberlain did. And although he has...

TINE IECCA@MW A 'THE COVW By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT TN the brave new world which Mr Wilson is 'going to create when the freeze and the restraint are over it is expected that an...

By JOHN BULL To begin with, the impression created by the industry in official quarters when the Prices and Incomes Board looked at it during the summer was not ideal. Laundry...

By CUSTOS MHE Treasury apparently agreed with those I brokers who had thought that the upward pace in the gilt-edged market had been too hot. On Monday they issued a new 'long'...

/2 11 NJ si 27 ■ 19 a 22 20 24 ■ 25 II 2/ iv II -40 ACROSS t. Fall in here if you fall ill (4, 6) 6. Wind up on the organ, perhaps? (4) to. On which to give...

ACROSS.-1 Repast...4 Spraying. to Neology. ti Seraphs. 12 Fair-minded. x3 Polo. 15 Neoldh. 17 Gorscdd. t9 Exhedra. 21 Runs off. 23 Bush..24 Ophicleide. 87 Spindle. z8 Pennine....

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN Now the Cortina, which crept among us far more quietly than 'the most heralded consumer product in history' has notched up its million in...

EKIDPEPIn By STRIX ALMOST all schools, one imagines, have a school One can see, of course, the general idea behind them. If—like for instance Messrs Kniblock and Hee Ltd.—you...