In the eyes of the Foreign Office, it is all cut and dried. Two successive govern- ments, one Conservative and one Labour, have committed themselves to the cause of European...

Disputatious dominies JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE, MP It seems to be one of the unwritten con- ventions of the House of Commons that a special deference should be shown towards the...

The road to Bucharest TIBOR SZAMUELY President Nixon's visit to Rumania this weekend represents one of the most fruit- ful initiati% es of post-war American foreign policy. He...

The last Senator Kennedy MURRAY KEMPTON New York—Mr Stokely Carmichael once said: '1 can't laugh any more. l've been to too many funerals.' If it is true that this is the end...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Oh, spare a penny for the Sun. The Moon these days has all the fun And entertains its guests from earth For what that may be worth The Moon is better than...

Behind the Brooke Affair DONALD McLACHLAN Our spycatchers, it is said, are angry at the surrender of the Krogers in return for the delivery—one cannot call it the release—of...

New Sarum AIME MELLORS WIGG Founded three years previously, this journal first established itself on the British political scene with its vigorous campaign in 1831 in support...

J. W. M. THOMPSON There is a touch of sheer comedy about the appearance of the Skeffington Committee's report on 'public participation in planning' on the very heels of the...

A reply to Roy Jenkins PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE Liberals like Roy Jenkins believe that nothing should be imposed except liberal- i s m; that no beliefs are sacred except their...

is. at last, a university in Great Britain where women may study medicine and take degrees entitling them to practise. The University of Edinburgh has the credit of taking the...

Q. and A. GEORGE SCOTT During a recent Talkback programme, Robert McKenzie was defending the tele- vision interview against the criticisms of John Whale and Charles Curran...

The cruel sea BILL GRUNDY If I ever hear anybody, ever again, say that July is the silly season, the time of year when nothing happens, I will strike them dead, so help me....

Doubletalk JOHN ROWAN WILSON I suppose it had to come. Ever since I read in the works of one of our left-wing health economists that really the employers ought to pay the...

Crime by chance R. A. CLINE There was a time when an English businessman could say with some degree of confidence: 'If I act in good faith and do what is reasonable and...

In vino veritas LESLIE ADRIAN Snobbery has long driven a wedge betvs een those professing to understand wine and those simply wishing to drink it. However, it is not the mark...

The party's over? DENIS BROGAN 1 had better begin by saying that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, I have never exchanged a word or a line with Senator Edward Kennedy....

BERNARD LEWIS There is a well-known story, dating back to the early days of the Arab-Israel conflict, about an American representative at the United Nations who found himself...

PATRICK ANDERSON A Place In Time Georges Spunt (Michael Joseph 35s) A reviewer's greatest delight is to find a good book by an author unknown to him- self and apparently...

ELIZABETH WISKEMANN Antonio Gramsci and the Origins of Italian Communism John Cammett (Stanford/OUP 28s) Freedom has no Frontier Joyce Lussu (Michael Joseph, 35s) Antonio...

JOHN ROWAN WILSON Lawrence and Oppenheimer Nuel Pharr Davis (Cape 42s) Tongues of Conscience: War and the Scient- ist.? Dilemma R. W. Reid (Constable 50s) The life of Robert...

AUBERON WAUGH The Biafra Story Frederick Forsyth (Pen- guin 6s) There are not many things about the Biafran war to make anyone particularly proud of being English, but even the...

Squibs & pastels HENRY TUBE Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts Donald Barthelme (Cape 25s) House of the Sleeping Beauties Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward G. Seiden-...

JOHN HIGGINS Reflections on a Sinking Ship Gore Vidal (Heinemann 63s) In one of the essays in his new collection, Reflections on a Sinking Ship, Gore Vidal comments that the...

JOHN JULIUS NORWICH The Etruscans and the Survival of Etruria Christopher Hampton (Gollancz 42s) 'Why', runs one of the questions in a 1066 and All That examination paper,...

J. ENOCH POWELL Curzon in India, Volume I: Achievement David Dilks (Rupert Hart-Davis 60s) The Indian Empire might seem to be forgotten even by that fast diminishing number who...

HILARY SPURLING Congreve's The Double Dealer is set, in William Gaskill's production, designed by John Gunter at the Royal Court, in an elegantly panelled gallery, framed by...

Come dancing PENELOPE HOUSTON The Dance of Death (Academy Three. 'A') Cinderella—ltalian Style (Odeon, Leicester Square, 'U') The Best House in London (Warner, 'X') Screen...

St Paul's doom STEPHEN GARDINER Somehow or other, in a rather mysterious way perhaps, the new 600ft National Pro- vincial Bank, to be built in Bishopsgate by R. Seifert and...

MICHAEL NYMAN After a week of the Proms I am inclined to regard the axing of our dear old friend the Great Albert Hall Echo with utter dis- may. The concert-goers' Loch Ness...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT A curious Private Member's Bill, which has had its first reading but is not likely to reach the statute book, is designed to amend the company law 'so that...

JOHN BULL Down go equities, now 30 per cent below the peak reached six months ago. Down also go some well known companies, first major casualties of the fiercest credit squeeze...

Sir: Having now done with terminal reports et hoc genus omne for a season. may I com- ment, belatedly, on the replies (12 July) to my letter on Welsh mutations? Mr Hand's...

Sir: It is very easy indeed to answer Mr E. S. James (Letters, 12 July) when he asks if apologists for 'One Nigeria' can say why the l.agos regime refuses to agree to a...

Sir: I think that the Rev J. Stanton Jeans (Letters, 19 July) may have misread me; I am entirely against the 'Series 2' Com- munion, and for his squares. More power to his...

Sir: In Quintin Hogg's article on race rela- tions (19 July) there occurs what is to me, at any rate, a rather remarkable sentence: '1 feared the irrational in human nature even...

From Sam Wiggs, A. E. Dyson, H. T. Cook, Roger Franklin, lobo Davies, L. E. Weld- berg, David Olajide, John Russell and Suzi Gahlik, Kennedy Wells, Roy Walker, Simon Garrett, J....

Sir: Surely John Graham (26 July) shows a peculiar naivety in his article on America's Apollo 11 flight. In his opinion the expense is justified by what he believes to be the...

Sir: Please tell Mercurius Oxoniensis that to write, as he did in his Oxford letter (26 July), that the late Dean of Christ Church was 'born in Prince Edward Island, Nova...

Sir: Just before the BBC commits itself to an attempt to burn down the national Maltings, will you be so good as to allow us to inform your readers where the mush- rooming...

Sir: Thoughts on sitting too long in a first class railway carriage on the Southern Region. There is only one omission In the shape of things to come: We need a Royal...

Sir: I wish publicly to warn would-be pur- chasers of a volume of poems, The Dancers Inherit The Party, issued under my name by Fulcrum Press, that it consists largely of poems...

Sir: Mr Howard Robertson (Letters, 5 July) writes of John Rowan Wilson's article, `. . . how can he just dismiss them [Britain's former colonial subjects] as dirty and unwashed...

Sir: The fifty thousand people who listened on 9 July to The Arts This Week on the Third Programme were presented by Mr Bryan Robertson with a most enthusiastic account of the...

Sir: I was amused at Malcolm Rutherford's repetition of the old FO joke about J. H. Thomas (28 June). It reminded me of the splendid joke cracked by Beachcomber about Thomas...

Sir: As an experienced medical type, keenly concerned about dental caries in children, and also as a citizen concerned about individual liberty, I have carefully read the...

Himmler at home J, WELLS and J. FORTUNE The Governor's Residence, Belsen Con- centration Camp, June, 1943. An imposing doorway, surmounted by a bronze eagle and a swastika,...

No. 564 : Language barrier A recent police warning to surfers in Devon and Cornviall that a malibu board thief was at large was phrased in the following terms: 'Grip this. Some...

Across 1 The wind in the willows? (7) 5 Got up like Hereward (7) 9 Look, the golden state is near at hand (5) 10 It's a bad line to take with a horseman (6, 3) 11 Latin...

PHILIDOR H. Angel (from the problem match Swi zerland Israel). White to play and mate in two =AL. , solution next week. Solution to no. 450 (Coombe-Tennant):Q - B threat 2 Q...