O N the eve of his departure for this week's International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington. Mr Callaghan de- scribed France's attitude towards the world's money problems as...

A Liberal pamphlet, Effective Politics, calls for a more militant attack. 'Naming the faceless ones, pin- ning down responsibility, helps to bring issues into focus.' Let's...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS TN a recent speech Mr Enoch Powell, who has 'been at the top of his form lately, compared the present state of affairs to that prevailing...

CHINA - From DEV MURARKA MOSCOW rri HE Soviet Union is just as alarmed and dis- 1 mayed by the `Great Cultural Revolution' in China as everybody else. But the Russian alarm...

YUGOSLAVIA By TIBOR. SZAMUELY Both this year's literary trials—in Moscow and Zadar—had many other features in com- mon: the undisguised prejudice of the judge, the abuse...

UNITED NATIONS From MURRAY KEMPTON UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. W ASHINGTON put the best face it could on the opening of the General Assembly—Vice- President Humphrey radiating our...

By ENOCH POWELL, MP iF VEN if the recent visit of ministers to Rhodesia proves abortive, as is feared, it does at least afford the nation a pause. as it were, for reflection....

September 29, 1866 An absurd story is going the round of the papers about a constitution to be granted to his subjects by the Pacha of Egypt. It is to be on the French plan,...

BEFORE THE CONFERENCE By DESMOND DONNELLY, MP 'I should like to ask my right honourable and honourable friends where they are going? [ttoN. MEMBERS: Where are you going?]...

rriwo questions have been raised by the I Government's decision to appoint Lord Mel- chett to the chairmanship of the proposed National Steel Corporation—effectively the head of...

By NIGEL NICOLSON O N December 22, 1938, Harold Nicolson re- corded in his diary : 'Lunch at the Reform with Wilson Harris. I agree to do a weekly article for him.' This was...

after you have read it each week, you may like to know that a comprehensive index to it is published twice a year. The index costs 7s. 6d. each issue, and that for the six...

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN tures, and yet to achieve a unique effect by direct quotation. I find that people are puzzled about the limits within which editors decide. Some...

LIBERALS By GEORGE K1LOH 'TN a radical party there are no sacred cows,' 1Mr Jeremy Thorpe remarked prophetically before this year's Liberal Assembly. Delegates returning from...

By JOHN WELLS MR ANTHONY CHENEVIX- TRENCH, the tiny but ebullient headmaster of Eton, appears to have caused a mild rumpus among Old Etonian ele- ments in the afternoon...

TELEVISION By STUART HOOD T HE BBC is notoriously addicted to com- memoration. There are the internal anniver- saries—Twenty-Five Years of Woman's Hour or A Century of Twenty...

SIR,—Have we been fair to our 'kith and kin' in Rhodesia? Consider the following claims which are made by them: Firstly, that they were promised independence be- fore the...

L. -J J - u - From: R. J. 0. Meyer, P. J. Middleton, Sir Joshua Hassan, QC, H. D. Sills, Angus Maude, MP, Tibor Szatmtely, Victor S. Frank, Israel Shahak, Franya Godhy, P. H....

SIR,—I do not think that Mr Ludovic Kennedy (in your issue of August 26) should he prepared to admit quite so readily that 'we do not seem to have much of a de jure case' in...

to me, because I have taught in a wide spectrum of schools from a preparatory boarding school to a state primary in Scotland and a boarding establishment for army apprentices....

Sta,—It is a pleasure to try to help Mr J. R. Scott in his 'confused and uncertain state of mind,' and for- tunately the specific question he asks me (Letters, September 23) is...

see that Messrs Wood and Henry, however strongly they disapprove of my choice of words (September 23), could find no factual faults in my quotations or my résumé of From the...

your contributor, Mr Szamuely, has mis- interpreted the new Soviet novel on a Soviet farmer's tribulations under the kolkhoz system. They point out that the action of the novel...

the sub- sequent letter by T. A. Sandrock, chairman of the Crime Reporters' Association, seem to us to miss one important point. Each of the Metropolitan Police Divisional...

sin, he hates the sinner—only God can separate the two. Mordecai Richter's views are indisputable; anything else is self-delusion, especi- ally when one is personally involved....

by Mr Richter's article, 'Universe of Hatred.' As one who had some experience of Nazi rule—including almost two years of Bergen-Belsen—I can, safely say that Mr Richter's...

Sta,—Your contributor, Donald McLachlan, in his article 'The Office Boys,' credited me with having built up the information department at Economic Affairs. He flatters me indeed...

Sta,—In 'Baron Stonybroke' by Simon Raven (August 26): 'Now. of all men living the one who must know most about Boswell's journals is Professor Frederick A. Pottle of the...

SIR, — No doubt many of your readers will have shared my pleasure in Mr Ludovic Kennedy's account of his nostalgia on revisiting his childhood haunts in 'Edinburgh Notebook'...

RA D 10 By HENRY TUBE Pro take the temperature of a newspaper one I need only read its letters. Sharply and with uncompromising truthfulness they reflect the pre- vailing...

WAXWORKS F . % NE does not expect Madame• Tussaud's to jproduce a new art form—and yet here she is with The Battle of Trafalgar . . . as it hap- pened. It is a new, hybrid,...

Bile and Spleen Jorrocks. (New.) — Three Men for Colvertotz. (Royal Court). — Volpone. (Oxford Playhouse.) O NE liver, two kidneys, three good reasons for drinking Spa water,...

Odd Man Out The Group. (London Pavilion, 'X' certificate.) O rro PREMINCER recently sued Columbia Films because, he claimed, the insertion of as many as fifteen commercials...

,1 I ("S I C S HOS TAKOVITCH was sixty last Sunday, as good an age for a problem child as any. On the night before the birthday, his String Quartet No. 7 (1960) and slenderer...

LiU D) D) By ANTHONY BURGESS G USTA \ E FLAUBERT was the protomartyr of fiction but, the world being what it is, there have been plenty of people ready to regard his...

Being young and handsome once, we had the run Of Summer's broad estate; and fast and free We spent our time hobnobbing with the sun, And on Love's fashionable gadgetry. Then...

Under the Hill. By Aubrey Beardsley. Completed by John Glassco. (Olympia Press, Its. 6d.) IN the library at my college was a copy, yellow with age and sweat, of a privately...

Montagu. Volume 2, 1721-51. By Robert THIS volume, like the first, is edited with firm, unobtrusive scholarship by Robert Halsband. He has added two important series of letters...

The Complete Prose Tales of Pushkin. Trans- lated by Gillon R. Aitken. (Barrie and Rockliff, 42s.) THIS new version presents Pushkin's entire prose fiction, excluding certain...

By HUGH SETON-WATSON D URING nearly ten years as the leader— though not quite the absolute ruler—of the Soviet Union, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev became a familiar figure to...

By M. L. ROSENTHAL Though Lowell does acknowledge his indebted- ness in a one-sentence preliminary note, it is perfectly true that, by borrowing Hawthorne ' s and Melville's...

YOUNG John Reith wanted to make a mark on the world. He particularly wanted to wear spurs; to walk up the aisle of his father's church in Glasgow, wearing them. In Wearing Spurs...

By MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH H G. WELLS is now, on the centenary of his birth, a persistently underrated, neglected and, above all, misunderstood writer; yet fifty years ago he was...

The Flowering of the Middle Ages. Edited by Joan Evans. (Thames and Hudson, 6 gns. to December 31, then 8 gns.) The Great Pilgrimage of the Middle Ages. By Vera and Helmut Hell....

No. 302. H. W. BARRY (1st Prize, La Strategie, 190I) WHITE to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 301 (McIntyre): 1 Kt B x, P - Q 7 ; 2Q- Q 4 and now...

For a Sick Friend The fingers of the left hand: eyes In a smoky forest, straining, with Zang! as a slack string jumps on the fret, Or suddenly anchors and the Forest clears. But...

A Circle of Friends. By Julian Mitchell. (Con- stable, 25s.) The Eye. By Vladimir Nabokov. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 18s.) Men at Work. By Honor Tracy. (Methuen, 25s.) Burster....

I 61 3 MINIMA ill WI Eli III 1 :7 lii ii I 2/ • 22 23 1 i v 26" 1 24 27 k• ACROSS 1. Researches to discover those damned fairies! (6)...

ACROSS.-1 Budget. 4 Log-cabin. 8 Lachesis. ro Grandi. 12 Inset. r3 Eradicate. 14 Giver. 16 Indolence. 17 Polonaise. 19 Moses. zi Concealed. 22 Targe. 24 Stilly. 25 Idolater. z6...

By D. W. BROGAN Q UITE recently, the once famous and opu- lent Boston banking house of Lee Higgin- son finally closed its spider-webbed doors. The purchasers of what was left...

Now the late fruits are in. Now moves the leaf-starred year Down, in the sun's decline. Stoop. Have no fear. Glance at the burdened tree: Dark is the grape's wild skin. Dance,...

By JOHN BULL W I1AT is the point of talking about produc- tivity—even to the Prime Minister at Lancaster House—if the demand for your pro- ducts is collapsing and expensive...

L NI MACAW arlr By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT rrHE World Bank—its proper title: the Inter- I national Bank for Reconstruction and Development—has just issued its twentieth annual...

By CUSTOS TOCKBROKERS are not actually starving but on 3Monday this week the number of bargains marked-7,352— was the lowest turnover since December 1957. This was partly due...

CONSUMING INTEREST By PETER GOLDMAN These magazines, however, are handicapped in one important respect. Unlike the other sources of consumer information mentioned, they lack...

By STRIX THE Labrador, curled up under my desk, gave a low growl. 'What's the matter with you?' I muttered absently. Then my nostrils recog- nised, tardily, the acrid,...