Indeed, so outlandish did the Pope's long- awaited decision seem, so repugnant to reason and humanity alike, that the sPECTAIOR felt it right to invite a leading Member of the...

As this issue of the SPECTATOR went to press the fate of Czechoslovakia was still being de- cided behind the closed doors of the village cinema of Cierna on the Tisa. The...

Pope Paul VI in an encyclical, Humane vitae, forbade every form of contraception and called upon secular authorities to make it illegal. His ruling, openly criticised by many...

AFRICAN COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Of the many journalists who have visited Biafra and attempted to give some picture of what British foreign policy is achieving there, I think I...

CZECHOSLOVAKIA-1 TOM STACEY Prague — It seems you can't beat the Czechs for sang-froid. A week ago they were looking at the Russians with a strained tolerance, then it...

CZECHOSLOVAKIA-2 TIBOR SZAMUELY Will they, won't they? As I write it is still un- certain whether the Russian leaders will take the momentous decision to intervene militarily...

THE POPE AND THE PILL 4. WILLIAM GORDON WHEELER William Gordon Wheeler is the Catholic Bishop of Leeds. Roma locuta est: causa finita est. The August- inian phrase seems...

AFTER HIXON HUMPHREY PALMER and REGINALD STUART Humphrey Palmer is Lecturer in Philosophy at University College, Cardiff, and Reginald Stuart is an express engine driver. The...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS It is announced that the Rev Leonard Birch, Vicar of Bredon, wishes to sell the spire of his church to America. 'We in the Church of England are overburdened...

STRIX When King Henry VIII met King Francois I in 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold the administrative problems must have been con- siderable; nor can they have been much...

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON I have just come back from a visit to Greece. 1 have been going there for some years, on and off, and it didn't occur to me to change my...

A MORAL PRIMER SIMON RAVEN This is the first of fire weekly extracts from what Simon Raven describes as 'a substantial primer of moral and social instruction for the adolescent...

Session is at last over, and Mr. Disraeli either thinks, or thinks it well to say, that it has been a singularly successful one, on which the country is to be con- gratulated....

THE LAW R. A. CLINE The advice given by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to the Queen in the Rhodesian appeal—such is the formal description of the constitutional...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY Like many another Mancunian I have read the Guardian for years. I have been enthusiastic about many of its writers, from Cardus, Bone and Boardman, to...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN The death on 16 July of Norman Robertson removes one of the most original diplomats of modern times; and also removes from this world one of my closest...

BOOKS EDWARD BOYLE Mr Enoch Powell's The House of Lords in the Middle Ages (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 8 guineas), written with the research assistance of Mr Keith Wallis, is a...

Venerable views MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Prostitution William Acton (MacGibbon and Kee 75s) Ideas about the nature and quality of Vic- torianism have changed twice during this...

J. ENOCH POWELL Medieval Parliaments Antonio Marongiu translated and adapted by S. J. Woolf (Eyre and Spottiswoode 70s) The Parlement of Paris J. H. Shennan (Eyre and...

Caught short JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE The end of the fourth French Republic was entirely predictable and widely predicted. The combination of insolvency and a bloody and...

(Hodder and Stoughton 45s) Cautionary tale C. NORTHCOTE PARKINSON This is the third volume in a series entitled `The Crossroads of World History,' and the author lays stress,...

Exgreatheight CHRISTOPHER FILDES Ashton-under-Lyne is the Mecca of tripe- eaters, but you mustn't say so in the columns of the Guardian: the style-book specifically forbids...

NEW THRILLERS Globe plotting PETER PARLEY Foreign Exchange Jimmy Sangster (Triton 21s) Skin for Skin Douglas Rutherford (Collins 18s) The Burden of Proof James Barlow (Hamish...

CHARLES REID Portrait of Elgar Michael Kennedy (ouP 50s) A Future for English Music and Other Lec- tures Edward Elgar edited by Percy M. Young (Dennis Dobson 80s) Richard...

Mac Harold Pinter (Pendragon Press 30s). Brief but powerful tribute to Anew McMaster, last of the great actor-managers, an Othello who never left out the fit and who silenced...

Conor Cruise O'Brien (Allen and Unwin 45s). Mr Gerassi went to North Vietnam in 1966, for the International War Crimes Tribunal set up by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation,...

Year by year Pevsner's astonishing survey grows: here is the thirty-fifth volume, providing, like its pre- decessors, voluminous detail fitted into a fine sweeping view of...

impression of Mr Allsop's racy account of Chicago in its hoodlum heyday —starring such infamous hoods as Capone, Johnny Torrio, Dion O'Banion, the Gennas plus full supporting...

man, and he could be a sharp man. He cared about caring, often angrily.' In this necrophilous book, Miss Laing records his famous generosity, his im- petuousness, occasions of...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Two ballet schools have been showing off their pupils during the past few weeks: the Royal Ballet at their annual matinee at Covent Gar- den. then in the...

PAUL GRINKE There is no need for the moment to go out in the midday sun to capture the distinctive flavour of the Englishman abroad, as the Vic- toria and Albert Museum has...

THEATRE Gosh darn it HILARY SPURLING There was once a Bright Young Thing who could not bear bright plays because, as she said, 'I have enough brightness in my life already,...

MUSIC EDWARD BOYLE A thoroughly creditable Covent Garden season ended on a high note with four performances of Billy Budd, magnificently conducted by Solti, who not only...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Getting away from Throgmorton Street cer- tainly improves one's sense of the fundamentals. How transient it all seems from a distance! Each day the brokers...

FINANCE USA WILLIAM JANEWAY As Wall Street's heralded summer rally shifts gears into what looks like the healthy correc- tion that was foreshadowed in this column, America's...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES The £141 million gap between promise and performance in the aEt results is a disgrace to British business. Either the forecast figure —a £10 million...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT MARTIN JACOMB Martin Jaconzb is a director of Kleinwort, Benson. The rights and wrongs of the Gallaher affair I leave others to debate. What does concern...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL I think that share tipsters should let their clients—or readers—know pretty often how well or badly they are doing. The table below sums up my...

CUSTOS The market fell far enough back from its record level of 19 July for the Financial Times index to drop by 5 per cent in a week. Whether this is a healthy correction,...

Sir: It is nice to know that John Braine has seen the light, but his cheap gibe about 'ever- changing fashions in psychiatry' does little credit to his name (19 July). Fashion...

Sir: It would be highly conducive to clarity of thought and to amity in argument if corre- spondents, as well as the author of the original article (Simon Raven, 14 June),...

LETTERS From: E. Allen, Antony Jay, Mrs Dorothy Clegg, P. D. Godfrey Bird, Yvonne Baginsky, Maurice G. K. Pierson, A. J. C. Kerr, Douglas Brown, Princess Yuri Galitzine,...

university dramatic tour through Germany to Prague, 1 was struck by the glaring blindspot pervading British news and editorial coverage of Czechoslovakia as to the signifi-...

Sir: It is clear that the Royal Commission on the Public Schools was set up on a misconcep- tion. The true cause of the social division of this country is not the public school...

Sir: You say in your leading article of 26 July on Czechoslovakia that 'there is time enough for us to express our abomination for Russian behaviour if he does not [succeed in...

Sir: Some years ago an acquaintance retailed to me an incident that occurred while he was driving home from a dinner party. As I recall, he fell asleep and the car hit a tree....

Sir: There is something wrong with Mr Bruce- Gardyne's political arithmetic (26 July). The average Scottish constituency has 50,000 electors, of whom about 40,000 vote....

Sir: Norman St John-Stevas, in his routine essay on the monarchy (SPECTATOR, 26 July), ignores what could well prove one day to be its most vital function. If the House of...

Sir: I am surprised that Mr Seymour-Smith had time to step into Max Gate (19 July), as his sneer at the Thomas Hardy Festival is so riddled with inaccuracies his nearest viewing...

Sir: Frances Donaldson's review of the two reprinted Michael Arlen books contains a surprising sentence. `The spread of education may not have done much for world peace but it...

Sir: Can any reader inform us if any of the cruise ships referred to in your issue of the 26 July, have any accommodation for non- smokers? When the `Great Eastern' sailed with...

Sir: Having observed the efforts of presumably well-intentioned people in this country to belittle the achievement of Dr Barnard and his associates, I am not altogether...

Sir: Mr Thos. Magner (Letters, 26 July) deplores your printing 'the two' obscene words in Clement Freud's review of James Baldwin's latest novel. He is coy about identifying...

Sir: We are engaged in writing and compiling a book to be called One Hundred and Fifty Years of Singapore to be issued next year to mark the occasion of the 150th anniversary of...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS Italy—The Brenner Pass is not normally thought of as a tourist resort. The surrounding mountains, it is true, provide breathtaking climbs for the...

COMPETITION Competitors are invited to use the ten following words, taken from the opening passages of a well-known work of literature, in the order given, to construct part of...

in- vited to compose an octet, using the given rhymes, on one of the following subjects : floods in the west; a busman on productivity; song of a hippy peasant. There was no...

PIIILIDOR Black 5 uL li A. Anderssen (Aufgaben, 1842). White to play and mate in four moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 397 (ten Cate); Q - K 7, threat R x P. 1 . ....

Across 1 Brainy type? What a joke, says Francois (6) 4 Tree of the theatre? (8) 9 Tight, but not on bottled beer presumably (6) 10 Try a bit of exercise with this when the...