In each of the last two decades the Middle East has contributed a war to the turbu- lence of the age, and it is a safe bet that in the 1970s it will contribute another. But the...

Nothing to declare AUBERON WAUGH The recent report of the Select Committee on Members' Interests (Declaration) is the product of a passing whim of the Prime Minister's which...

Fodder lobby CRANLEY ONSLOW, MP Since we are all now being exposed to a renewed barrage of propaganda in favour of massive increases in the public funding of overseas aid...

The devil wore a crucifix GEORGE GALE A few weeks ago my wife and I were hasten- ing through streets and squares of Kensing- ton wet and cold with rain, looking for a house...

A Bonn diary Malcolm RUTHERFORD Bonn—The acceptance of change here has been rapid. A few weeks ago a public infor- mation poll showed some 60 per cent of the people believed...

The Russian Government is making a very important experiment. The Oxus now flows into the Sea at Aral. It once flowed into the Caspian, its old bed being still visible enough to...

Chamberlain in cloud cuckoo land ROBERT BLAKE A year ago I was allowed by the Public Record Office to examine on behalf of the SPECTATOR the cabinet papers for 1938 about to...

Red sloop TIBOR SZAMUELY _ As we enter what is probably an election year it becomes ever more important for the Conservatives to establish the main lines of Labour strategy....

J. W. M. THOMPSON The orgy of year-end and decade-end stock- taking doesn't seem to have produced any very clear consensus about the recent past, except possibly a modest...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS If music be the food of love, play on— Provided the subscription's fully paid. The only thing that we insist upon: No blackleg chamber music shall be played....

Backward into the 'seventies CHRISTOPHER BOOKER Two almost infallible rules for the observer of human affairs are, first, that people always think that the situation...

Q and A RHODES BOYSON The new proposal for sixth-form examina- tions is a further attempt, ostensibly for the purpose of aiding university selection and the non-academic...

Lean year BILL GRUNDY The last twelve months have probably been the most important in broadcasting since the commercial TV companies arrived on the scene fifteen or so years...

Sign of cancer JOHN ROWAN WILSON When I was a young surgeon we all knew how to treat breast cancer. While it wasn't exactly easy, it was at least straightforward. You did an...

the Cherbourg-Haifa yacht race.'

Bear up LESLIE ADRIAN At the turn of a year, still more of a decade, prophecy is in the air. The young Russian historian who foretold the break-up of his country's empire as...

Fathers and sons DENIS BROGAN A year ago, all over the us, the 'in' poem was Yeats's dark, prophetic 'The Second Coming'. It was quoted in leaders and in Congress, by...

PATRICK ANDERSON The end of a year and a decade, the season- able nostalgia for Christmas holidays before the war when, to a literary schoolboy, the emphasis was all on books...

ANTHONY STORR The Mechanism of Mind Edward de Bono (Cape 35s) Dr de Bono possesses a mind not unlike that of Lewis Carroll. If he is ever out of an academic job, some...

DONALD McLACHLAN The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS Heinz Hahne translated by Richard Barry (Seeker and Warburg 90s) Now that we have among us, in the...

ELIE KEDOURIE The British in the Middle East Sarah Searight (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 70s) Mrs Searight's book forms part of a series on the 'Social History of the British...

TIBOR SZAMUELY Our Own People Elisabeth K. Poretsky touP 42s) The Red Orchestra Gilles Perrault (Barker 55s) Few Soviet spy stories have happy end- ings. '1 here are only two...

JEAN FRANCO Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair Pablo Neruda translated by W. S. Merwin (Cape 18s cloth, 8s paper) Neruda's Twenty Love Poems were pub- lished in 1924 when...

BRYAN WILSON The American University: How It Runs, Where It is Going Jacques Barzun (our 48s) Black Studies in the University edited by Armstead L. Robinson, Craig C. Foster...

Whoa! the fairies! HILARY SPURLING Christmas is a hard time in the theatre. Difficult to know whether to be more pleased or mortified at the sight, on the one hand, of so many...

Space, Time and Movement in Land- scape Freya Stark (Her Godson, 17 Ormond Yard, London swl. 15 gns). Readers of Freya Stark's work will be familiar with the photographs which...

Old master MICHAEL NYMAN Imagining myself immune from novelty, wrapped up against surprise in the dying em- bers of the 'sixties, I was hardly prepared to be left gasping with...

Dolly mixture ROBERT CUSHMAN Hello, Dolly! (Odeon, Marble Arch, V') Impiously updating Lorenz Hart's lyrics for Manhattan, I came up with: And `Hello Dolly' Is quite the...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT This is the conventional time for peering into the future and if I choose the dullest of subjects it is because I feel so strongly about it. It is the rate...

Signs of Recovery? JOHN BULL Since I last wrote about Wall Street (27 December), that most depressed of markets has cheered up somewhat. The incoming chairman of the Federal...

From P. B..Edwards, Stephen Milligan, Rev Guy Bowden, Archibald Tober, Ronald Cholodny, T. C. Skeffington-Lodge, John Todd, M. Parry, Tom Pocock, John A. Yates, Rev A. R. D....

Sir : I have been reading your journal for about three months and had begun to wonder when I might at last read something by one of your contributors on the difficult situation...

Sir: Pornography is so dull, sex is fun or it is nothing Therefore I have no sympathy with John Rowan Wilson's contacts (2(1 December) who, because of age or dis- ability, are...

Sir: My earlier protest (Letters. 29 November) at the wretched caricature of our Queen some time ago. was written in anger. But this protest at the dreadful caricature of...

Sir: The Greater London Council's plan to link the Thames embankment with Ringway One—described as 'monstrous' by Mr Stephen Gardiner (27 December)—makes nonsense of their...

Sir: I wonder if one of your correspondents with a fair knowledge of constitutional law might be able to answer a point that I was reminded of by J. W. M. Thompson. when I read...

Sir: What a 'sour puss' paper the SPECTATOR is (20 December) for the week covering Christmas! Few of your able contributors are guilty, though I note with sorrow that my friend...

Sir: I would respectfully suggest that an- timony has a better claim than zinc (27 December: Question X, 1) to be included among the chemical elements known to the Ancient...

Sir: Professor Pedley's very provocative letter (20 December) is all the more remarkable for its complete inattention to fact. I nowhere accused him of 'unworthy motives'; I did...

Go said the Bird JOHN WELLS President Johnson had not intended to ex- pose himself on television last Saturday night. This shocking disclosure, and an in- dication of the role...

No. 586: Readers' revenge SPECTATOR readers who struggled ineffectu- ally over last week's Christmas quiz might care to exact their revenge by setting a fiendish brain-teaser...

PHILIDOR L. Loshinski (2nd Prize, Olympic Tourney, 1964). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 471 (Eason): Q-B6, threat Q-B2. 1 B x Q; 2...

Across 1 The height to which a Romantic artist might aspire? (6) 4 Such a nervous theatrical movement! (8) 9 Lace as a border-line case (6) 10 Where one might expect volcanic...