little General Election and Mr. Macleod still insisting that the tide was turning, Mr. Macmillan decided to visit Presidents de Gaulle and Kennedy to see how they won their...

TT is now over six months since the Govern- ' ment rejected the recommendations of the University Grants Committee on the grounds that the universities were already receiving...

-rue electoral arithmeticians were the only I people who got much joy out of the by- elections last week. When the party managers themselves had recovered from the immediate...

, %NWT advance in pursuit of a defeated ene lla t 0 — a ttack on all fronts—lose not an inch land. That theory is totally erroneous. It is a ", expression of revolutionary...

From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK p RESIDENT k(ENNEDY has always been particu- larly engaging in those regular moments when he has sent forth signals indicating how percep- tive a...

From our Common Market Correspondent N Exr week, for the first time, an entire three- day Ministerial meeting of the Common Market negotiations is due to take place without the...

By W. A. C . ADZE M AO's offer to stop beating India has pro- voked official reactions of bemused sus- picion, but also talk about 'admirable and generous' Chinese terms which...

By HENRY FAIRLIE 'My dear A. J. B.. 'D—n. D—n. D--n.' TT was with these sharp and characteristic lexpletives that Lady Salisbury consoled Balfour after the huge Conservative...

The London skyline has altered more drastic- ally in the last five years than it did through- out the five decades of Bone's rule in Fleet Street, and the rate of change is...

week, I thought of James Bone. Nowhere in London is there such a magnificent mass of Portland stone, and no one has celebrated this chalky, fossily, magical material more...

s° fast that I don't suppose he could hold back Its borders even if he wanted to. The prestige of that numerous Scots-Italian clan of which he is head has long been...

his defeat, although he had every excuse f°, r , feeling like blue murder, blames the Beaverbr o°k ' press in part for the Tories' loss of South Dorset Ian Gilmour, who was not...

W HAT was the Observer up to on Sunday when it attacked the International Com- mission of Jurists for its scarifying report on police methods in Cuba? Torture, faking of evi-...

By HEDLEY BULL O NE constant theme in arms control nego- tiations since the war has been the insistence by the Western powers that if any agreement is to be reached its...

The chief non-event of Gilmour's campaign was also, he says, the product of the 'serious ' press. At his press conference one day he pointed out that an advertisement inserted...

The notion of chastity as a virtue is taking a h ammering these days. Lay evangelists in the press are pitching into it with eloquent en- th usiasm. On Sunday night we had the...

By JAME S TUCKER F Welsh countids and four county r boroughs have' just 'celebrated the first anni- versary of the opening of their pubs on Sunday. It was a fairly muted...

Malawi and the Doctor T. R. M. Creighton Lay Theology Bernard Bergonzi, John E. Pinnington Diplomatic Errors Pierre Hassner Back India Appeal E. M. Forster and others Male or...

point in Mr. Henry Fairlie's lengthy reply to Lord Boothby's letter. It has the virtue unusual with Mr. Fairlie of being succinct. 'As for the alleged "personal smear" there was...

SIR, — Mr. Waugh's attack on the liturgical movement in the Catholic Church is sad but not surprising. One knows by now that change of any kind makes Mr. Waugh uncomfortable,...

head off simply because his article on the Vatican Council irritated me. For one thing. he said a lot of good sense; for another, he expressed him- self in such a sincere and...

Sin,--May I even at the risk of seriously overburden- ing your correspondence columns correct a few errors which, no doubt in transmission, crept into my article published on...

to 'Leslie Adrian, whose sex has never been disclosed,' no doubt the majority of your readers have now confirmed their suspicion that Leslie Adrian is a woman and not a...

SIR,—It is not generally known that in Northern Ireland today a number of survivors of tb, e o n notorious Japanese 'death railway,' whose h ea l was undermined by their...

SIR,—For all I know, M. Olivier Wormser, who is indeed 'one of the chief representatives in Brussels of Gaullist diplomacy,' may very well have been violently opposed to the...

of the Commonwealth, a countr3, en- gaged in a determined struggle to make a better life for its millions of citizens through freedom and in- dependence, is a challenge to all...

Sia,—Reviewing children's books is—or should be —a rather specialised job. Even the selection of those to be reviewed calls for a wide knowledge of what is and has been written...

and say on occasion what is perhaps the ultimate degrad - ation a man can 'come to. Henry Fairlie reminds Me of the experience as 1 read his prognostications Mad e in advance of...

March of Souza By NEVILE WALLIS A GREAT painter may be moved by the savagery of contemporary war to protest with the terrible and haunting imagery of a Goya or Picasso. His...

before Christmas we set aside a full column of each issue to lengthy and appealing pleas to our readers to give a year's subscription to the Spectator, at less than half-price,...

Golden Eggs By CLIVE BARNES HERE we are again bumping "L ) against the Sunday Ballet Cl" and its difficulties. This is ,, u serial with the story up to 11°1 , o d r uce so d...

The week that never was By CLIFFORD HANLEY THE BBC's Saturday night satire deserves to be taken seriously, and it must be said at once that it has made a. fine acid beginning....

Empty Voices By BAMBER GASCOIGNE A Cheap Bunch of Nice Flowers. (New Arts.)—The Witch of Edmonton. (Mer- maid.) THE flavour of blarney is a little like garlic. Garlic...

Sex with Everything By ISABEL QUIGLY was Pier Angeli, and its husband was Stewart Gra nger, which was a lot less suggestive and interesting. Sodom and Gomorrah is the latest in...

He Was Defeated By NICHOLAS MANSERGH A T Vereeniging in May, 1902, the Boers debated the issue of peace or war and there 'in the vivid imagery of their country upbringing and...

tio vi sta Books ask us to point out that the descrip- of the two books in their advertisement in last Week's issue were transposed. The price of German H ines and Vines is 30s....

AFTER Mr. Philip Roth's sensational s uccess w ith r Goodbye, Columbus (National Book Award ,„ 1960, Daroff Award, Guggenheim, grant frcl National Institute of Arts and Letters,...

Ancestors and Friends. By John Lehmann. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 30s.) ON the threshold of the Bloomsbury period in his published reminiscences John Lehmann has turned tail—one...

In the Fiery Continent. By Tom Hopkinson. (Gollancz, 30s.) In the Fiery Continent. By Tom Hopkinson. (Gollancz, 30s.) MR. TOM HOPKINSON'S African autobiography In the Fiery...

Pale Fire. By Vladimir Nabokov. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 21s.) IN the American University of Wordsmith lives an eminent and ageing poet, John Shade, who has a bossing wife...

Vogue's Gallery. (Conde Nast, 35s.) Tuns anthology of pictures and pieces from Vogue is, as one would expect, beautifully pro- duced: an olive-and-white cover, heavy paper,...

IN PRAISE OF COMPANY DIRECTORS GATHERING MOMENTUM THE CITY'S THEATRE ... NO GAINS ON THIS TAX OUTLOOK FOR SHIPPING Hedley Shepherd Laurence Corley K. M. O'Shea Derek Forbes I....

By LAURENCE CORLEY IN this country there are banks in profusion. I Some cater for narrow, if influential, sections of the community, others cannot with the best will in the...

By K. M. O'SHEA D URING the seventeenth century, the City of London was a great theatrical centre. Most of the notable playwrights of the day wrote for the City playhouses and...

By DEREK FORBES : vs - r what has been accomplished by the capital gains tax, that masterpiece of fiscal folly perpetrated last April? If the market indices are any guide the...

By J. PROSSER ryire basic problem behind the decline in I the British shipping industry over the past five years or so is one that many other in- dustries are familiar with—a...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT To the simple, honest layman, reading with astonishment and alarm the leaping figures of unemployment-544,451 is the highest November total since 1940—it...

By CUSTOS s . I write, Throgmorton Street is reacting to a temporary setback in Wall Street, but looking back over the recovery since the Cuban crisis there can be no fault to...

Dans le Bazar By KATHARINE WHITEHORN The main thing that stops one buying things (apart from the high price of almost everything) is the fact that one always wants most...

N extract of the report by Sir Ivan A. R. Stedeford, chairman of Tube Investments, appeared on page 839 of our last issue. Share- holders were told that with the exception of...

Gifts from Cosmopolis By LESLIE ADRIAN A VERY bright idea of Woollands in Knights- bridge started me off this year looking for Christmas presents from abroad. On the third...

By JOHN GASELEE T HERE seems little prospect of this country achieving its target of building 400,000 houses per annum for the next twenty years if traditional building methods...