Established 1828 99 Gower Street, London WC1 Telephone: 01-387 3221 Telegrams: Spectator, London Editor: George Gale Associate Editor: Michael Wynn Jones Literary Editor:...

'It is generally recognised that the English have three qualities, humour, tenacity and realism. I think we are still at the stage of humour. I have no doubt that tenacity will...

A Royal Commission on Sin HUGH MA-CPHERSON In fact there are occasions when the British public presents an even more ridiculous spectacle than during its periodical fits of...

The Chancellor's cruel dilemma JOHN BIFFEN, MP What is Mr Heath offering apart from a new style of government? The weeks have now lengthened into months, and the pattern of...

Wednesday 20 January: While the Post Office unions claimed 95 per cent support for its strike, grateful customers in Croydon, Dover and Peterborough showered strike-breaking...

Ladies' men SALLY VINCENT When politicians concern themselves with matters of private (or as they would have it, public) morality, they are unlikely to distinguish themselves...

Debating at the Oxford Union is an ex- tremely cold and hard business, the benches being very solid and the chamber having a sepulchral chill about it. Visiting speakers have to...

A friend writes: 'A relative of mine went to the magnificent headquarters of the Southern Electricity Board in Kidlington near Oxford to get an account cleared and was left...

While admiring the courage and resourceful- ness of a man like Commander Shepherd, who takes off for a walk around the moon this Saturday at the ripe old astronautical age of...

Ever since Nkrumah, to the general relief and good of all, was caught on a hop African leaders have thought twice or thrice about leaving base. Sierra Leone's Siaka Stevens...

Describing the event as 'a carnival' Radio Conakry (Conakry being the capital of the Francophone African state of Guinea) an- nounced that fifty-eight of the ninety-two people...

General Idi Amin is a Moslem of the Nilotic Kakwa tribe, a Kings African Rifles veteran of the Burma campaign, a Sand- hurst chap. He wants no foreign interference and it is...

I cannot say that I learned of the over- throw of Dr Milton Obote of Uganda with any great regret: if a choice is to be made between quiet military men and noisy civil...

Life-blood PATRICK COSGRAVE Richard Titmuss is the most important Socialist in Britain, and the only Englishman who could be regarded as a serious philo- sopher of the Left....

Something of an end-of-term feeling pre- vailed on Friday as delegations began to leave and the conference rushed through its last items. The Zambian declaration, defused by Mr...

Monday passed soberly enough. Economic generalities followed the predictable course of those more anti-British members demand- ing the most from her in the name of partner-...

In effect, agreement to differ had been trans- lated into agreement to defer. Sound and fury were channelled into the traditional British device of the Royal Commission....

The year of the Commonwealth MOLLY MORTIMER Singapore Everyone has gone home from the caucus race conference with prizes and nobody is tactless enough to ask who won;...

Ottawa will be as significant as Singapore and probably as fiery, for the Commonwealth boasts some remarkably outstanding char- acters in its heads of state. Africa has real-...

The right of reply KINGSLEY AMIS An important concomitant, if not a necessary condition, of a free press is the protection of the individual against it. Redress for defa-...

The Spectator, 99 Gower Street, London w.c.1 Please supply the Spectator for one year El two years Li three years El Mom mom moo mom MO MOO 111111111 NAME ADDRESS Cheque...

Terry Eagleton on contemporary criticism Christopher Booker on McLuhan Other reviews by David Hare and John Lucas New novels by Auberon Waugh John Casey: modern literary...

An annual prize of £500 will be awarded by the SPECTATOR to whoever in the opinion of the judges, submits the best piece of original, unpublished, new writing of not less than...

Literary criticism, like the economy, is under- going a quiet but protracted crisis. One symptom of that crisis has been acute over- production: a torrential flood of critical...

Once upon a time there was an obscure Canadian professor of English Literature named Marshall McLuhan. He was a romantic-minded Catholic, much influenced by Chesterton, Leavis...

Ripley Under Ground Patricia Highsmith (Heinemann 35s) The Badger's Daughter Robert Crawford (Constable 25s) Twelve years back The Talented Mr Ripley was made into a very good...

(for Michael Kinsella) Bramble, like barbed wire, Stitches the thicket tight, laces A net of leaves against the Sun: only the birds can pass. Pinned high where the twigs...

There is a moment in William Morris's News From Nowhere when the narrator, who has been projected into a visionary Utopia of ideal democracy, suddenly recalls 'the sordid...

Head to Toe Joe Orton (Blond 35s) In a very good week indeed for novels—we will be raurning to this week's crop through- out the thin days of February and early March—Joe...

Charles Seaton reports: Competitors were asked to submit excerpts from a special marriage ser- vice for hippies, yippies, militant feminists or similar groups. In spite of the...

No. 1466 DAEDALUS No prize is offered this week. The solution will appear in next week's issue. Across 1 The man at the wheel joins the club (6) 4 The scarlet woman's such a...

8 Hobnails 10 Grania 12 Wales 13 Gradients 14 Speed 16 Threefold 17 Headfirst 19 Pedal 21 Whitehall 22 Magog 24 Alarms 25 Astragal 26 Steinbok 27 Steely. Down: 1 Mohawks 2 Label...

No 641: Flagrant weed Set by Timothy Snow: 'For thy sake, Tobacco, 1/Would do anything but die wrote Charles Lamb in `A Farewell to Tobacco'. Competitors are invited to oiler...

Personal problem KENNETH HURREN It was embarrassing to be told by a col- league that he couldn't have guessed from my review that I'd hated the current Hamlet. But like the...

All in fun Patrick SKENE CATLING Class, dialect, beer, knickers, family way, false teeth, toilet, bomb. Ho-ho, ha-ha, tee- hee. Belly laughs, appreciative chuckles, naughty...

Love stories CHRISTOPHER HUDSON A Severed Head (x, Curzon) is fast, catty and highly entertaining. A vintner (Ian Holm) of impeccable background and tailor- ing has a brother...

by week in a special binding case, with stift dark blue covers and gilt-lettered spine, designed to hold twenty-six issues. The binder is obtainable price £1 post free, from the...

TONY PALMER Last January, Peter Sellers was due to rehearse and perform a two-handed play at London's Roundhouse. It was to have marked his return to the London stage from...

Sir: May I add a few remarks to Professor Hugh Seton-Watson's ar- ticle 'Red Exploiters' (9 January), every word of which is true? His analysis of our predicament vis-a-vis the...

Sir: I observed that you have replaced the title 'Books' and instead have started to use the title 'The Spectator Review of Books', also in the process elim- inating the small...

Sir: As the author of the recently published Men Behind Boys' Fic- tion (Hutchinson) in which I wrote a lengthy piece on the D. C. Thomson papers, I would perhaps like to...

Sir: I was very surprised to read your leading article (9 January) recommending the banning of cig- arette smoking and putting it into the same category as opium smok- ing by...

Sir: I bring to the notice of your reviewer Anthony Kenny (9 Jan- uary) that machines do not speak. They are sometimes designed to generate a programme of sounds in imitation of...

Sir: Many thanks for your splen- did leading article 'Commonwealth Moralisings' (16 January). The so- called Commonwealth is a dead duck, an irredeemably ridiculous farce and...

Sir: Mr Rosie (2 January) is, of course, quite right when he says that Mountbatten was sympathetic to Asian nationalism. Some people thought he was too sympathetic. But let that...

Sir: Surely the advantages of the Postal workers' strike cannot go unnoticed by the critics of such affairs. I myself have not received gas, electricity or water rate bills to...

Sir: Mr Tibor Szamuely should be congratulated on his excellent article and penetrating analysis of the Soviet Union's foreign policy. He warns the West not to be complacent. We...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT In 1918 when the workers were excited by the Russian revolution and the trade union leaders were in an activist, if not revolu- tionary, mood, the Labour...

An unbeaten formula for losing friends: set yourself up as S tipster, notch up a few winners, gain all-out support in the wrong week and the whole edifice will come crash- ing...

Unthinking enthusiasm for the common market seems to be confined to the frus- trated. Men like Sir Tufton Beamish, Mr Duncan Sandys aided by Lord Harlech, and Lord Gladwyn work...

Against whatever service the Lord Beaver- brook gave as Minister of Aircraft Produc- tion must be set his abominable naughtiness in cutting down lovely eighteenth- and nine-...

turing commonly known as the 3m Co, the American copying equipment to micro- film to scotch-tape firm has produced world sales of £702.5m against £671.7m and net profits up by...

Economically the effect of Britain joining will be damaging. From 1950 there has been commendable growth in the Market but there is no clear evidence that its formation has in...

This present lull in the procession of the seasons used to be called 'the dead time'. We know, of course, that this pressing sense that life has departed from the countryside is...

The sheer vehemence with which people of a certain sensibility, and often of a certain vin- tage, oppose what the planners are doing to London, leads me to believe that this is...

'This has led to talk of rescue operations— the interests of Gussie's chief Sir Isaac Wolf- son have been mentioned—and much worse.' —Daily Express, 19 January, on the cash...

I was once invited to shoot mallard in com- pany with three Frenchmen at two o'clock in the afternoon. This was in Co. Cork. I asked the man who was arranging the sport why this...

England CAMBRIDGESHIRE Garden House Hotel*" CAMBRIDGE Cambridge 55491 Royal Cambridge Hotel**** CAMBRIDGE Cambridge 51631 CORNWALL Meudon Hotel*" NEAR FALMOUTH Mawnan Smith 541...