I t would be a mistake to suppose that the election of a new Leader of the Labour Party—and a new Prime M i n ister—will of itself mark a new departure in national affairs....

The Labour Party held its first two leader- ship polls. Out of six contenders for the burdens of office in the first, one (Mr Cros- land) was counted out, two ( Messrs Wedg-...

Foot wins the war Patrick Cosgrave The period of a contest for the leadership is a fevered time in any political party: the utterances of partisans, whether vindicated or...

Lord Avon is nicely upholding the agreeable tradition that provides us with books of memoirs from retired statesmen. Sixteen Years after the appearance of his first sub-...

£12.00 6 months £5.50 £6.50 By Airmail (1 year) Zone A (North Africa, Middle East), and Europe .. £15.00 Zone B (USA, Canada, India. South America, rest of Africa) £17.00...

Thin green line Auberon Waugh Earlier this week, I saw a most amazing sight. It happened a few hundred yards from my French abode, on a track which runs between the village of...

Anthony Holden New York America's bicentennial election campaign needed a court jester to stifle the nation's Yawns, and suddenly it has one. It is not Jimmy Carter, whose...

Philip Vander Elst One of the principal themes that has domi- nated the American presidential campaign up till now has been the unpopularity of big government with electors of...

Jim Higgins Troon, Scotland 'Politics', said Lenin, `is concentrated econ- omics' and, whatever you may think about the rest of his ideas, you have to agree that he had a point...

George Gale Leonard James 'Sunny Jim' Callaghan once said of his friend and sailing and travelling companion, the Old Etonian ex-communist Secretary of State for War John...

Christopher Booker This year it seems likely that some £ 500,000,000 of public money—equivalent to Britain's share of the entire Concorde Programme—will be spent on...

Logie Bruce Lockhart One of the particular magisterial bees in my mortar board is a pastime I run with sixth- formers, rather pretentiously called 'Public Speaking'. All...

Edward Pearce The English are trying very hard to come to terms with foreigners, to make their own vowels, genteel or proletarian, jump through the hoops required to pay due...

Charles Stahl Not too many people in the Western world are cognisant of the fact that our monetary system is not the only one in existence, and that the East European trading...

appreciate objective comment on the Middle East. To add to your knowledge read MIDDLE EAST INTERNATIONAL We are a specialist magazine, founded in 1971, published monthly in...

What we expect of Jim Nicholas Davenport By the end of last week the stock market had already assumed the victory of Mr Callaghan. The FT index of industrial shares had risen...

No, Mr Macmillan Sir : A possible line to take over Rhodesia is the very reverse of Mr Maurice Macmillan's proposal. Mr Macmillan's idea is for Britain, on account of her...

Sir: William Trevor (13 March) writes: 'Lewes was married when she [George Eliot] met him, and remained so, sharing his wife in a bohemian manner with a man called Thornton...

and Mr Jacob Gewirtz's letters (Spectator, 13 and 20 March), which attack Patrick Marnham for his article: 'is Israel racist ?' Mr Hyam Maccoby states that `Mr Marnham makes...

Sir: I feel that one of the most significant factors in the correspondence on Patrick Marnham's Israel article was Baroness Gait- skell's revelation that Dr Shahak's 'League for...

Sir: Pace Mr Lionel Bloch (Spectator, 6 March) those who 'with deep-seated feel- ings' believe that Britain's Palestine policy from 1917 to 1948 involved grave injustice to the...

Sir: The primary system, advocated by Mr Keith Raffan, is a cumbersome way of effecting by two operations what the single transferable vote accomplishes in one. Under either...

Sir: With regard to Mr Marc Attwood- Wood's complaint about the misuse of the word 'careening' there is at least one excel- lent modern literary precedent which sug- gests...

Council, not East Essex County Council, as was erroneously stated under his letter last week.

The rise of a minor poet H. J. Eysenck Freud and His Followers Paul Roazen (Allen Lane £10.00) This book is difficult to review because certain value judgments are implied in...

Olivia Manning So Late into The Night The fifth volume Of Byron's letters and journals, edited by Leslie A. Marchand (Murray £5.95) What more brilliant figure in literature...

Al Capp Conversations with Kennedy Benjamin C. Bradlee (Quartet £4.50) Fifty or so years ago, there flourished an American biographer no one now remem- bers, and whose books...

Humphrey Trevelyan The Genius of Arab Civilisation edited b y A. Hayes (Phaidon £13.95) The World of Islam edited by Bernard Lewis (Thames and Hudson £12.50) Patterns in...

Duncan Fallowell Northern Lights Tim O'Brien (Marion Boyars £5.95) Nostalgia is such a wanton weed that any optimist worth his salt would be quite justi- fied in refusing all...

Benny Green The Cleveland Street Scandal H. Mont- gomery Hyde (W. H. Allen £5.95) A Casebook of Jack the Ripper Richard W hittington-Egan (Wildy and Sons The soft underbelly...

Nigel Cross Lovecraft: a Biography L. Sprague de Camp (New English Library £5.75) H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), fantasy and science fiction writer, led a life so pathetic that...

Elspeth Huxley The Last of The Nuba Leni Riefenstahl (Collins £10.00) Nobody as sophisticated as Leni Riefen- stahl could really believe that in a province of Sudan there...

Dee Wells Qoodbye Father Maureen Green (Rout- ledge and Kegan Paul £3.95) C ompulsive readers will read almost any- t hi ng, that is a hoary old truth. But even c ,_ °...

WANTED: LIONS AND SHADOWS. Christopher Isherwood, hardback, Hogarth Press, 14 . Church Lane, Southampton. BRASSEY'S NAVAL ANNUAL, Volumes 1924-8 and 1931-39 inclusive. R.P.T....

The game without rules Hans Keller It happened in 1934, at the very latest; so the intellectual teenagers—be they seven- teen or seventy—who, the day before yesterday,...

Choir practice John Bridcut Fleet Street has so indulged itself over the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Amendment) Bill that it has failed to observe another shop being...

Midas touch Kenneth Hurren Very Good Eddie by Guy Bolton, from a farce by Phillip Bartholomae; music by Jerome Kern (Piccadilly) Gaslight by Patrick Hamilton (Criterion) Very...

Explorations John McEwen Retrospectives are apt to drain artists but Dick Smith's device at the Tate last summer of presenting a series of reinstalled one-man shows deprives...

Breakdowns Jeffrey Bernard They keep promising us that madness, like cancer, is moving steadily towards the great day of the final cure. The puzzle they say is about to be...

No. 905: Is this a record? Set by Harrison Everard: The letters of the famous make good reading. Competitors are asked for a letter to the Times from Dylan Thomas, Bernard...

for prose or verse comment from Sir Walter Raleigh on the present dearth of potatoes. Alas! The truth is that Sir Walter could no more have brought the first potatoes to Europe...

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10 Ratel I I Elemi 12 Emana- tion 13 Faberge 15 Haircut 17 Stellar 19 Fantail 21 September 23 Cling 24 Minim 25 Clothiers 26 Campanologist. Down: 1 Agree- able 3 Iambi 4 Athlete...

The unclued lights (all but one in Chambers's) have something in common. One of the other lights is hyphenated. ACROSS 3 Arkwright up could be! (11) 9 A crazy Scot's...

awarded for the first correct solution opened on 20 April. Entries to: Jac 249 (or Crossword 1736), T he Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL. (Entries for both...