George Brown must go—but not for the reasons usually advanced. It is the Chalfont Affair; and -net -the latest exchange of pleasantries with Lord Thomson—the • coff- ducL of...

- The theoretical case for reforming -the House of Lords is irrefutable. The power of -the executive in Britain has inc reased, is in- - creasing, and ought to be 'diminished. A...

, London lies on the map lik.a.huge jellyfish, threatening as-it grows to engulf. its surround- ings for many miles in al} directions. The planning strategy proposed this week...

'Legislation will be introduced to. reduce the powers of the Houk of Lords and to eliminate its present hereditary basis,' taid the Ottien's . Speech. The speech also referred...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Long before the Queen's speech on Tuesday, everybody knew that the House of Lords was for the chopper. Mr Crossman's leaks had been so heavy...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Shirley Temple is running as a Republican candidate for Congress on a platform which promises her constituents 'a happier time for all through moral...

AMERICA WILLIAM JANE WAY Four months after the conclusion of the Ken- nedy Round trade negotiations, the Finance Committee of the United States Senate is con- sidering a sheaf...

RHODESIA MALCOLM SMITH Malcolm Smith recently arrived in this country following his resignation as editor of the Rhodesia Herald, a post he had held since 1962. On Tuesday the...

CRIME & PUNISHMENT GILES PLAYFAIR In its White Paper on the treatment of juvenile offenders (August 1965) the Govern- ment committed itself to a policy of no change regarding...

THE PRESS DONALD McLACHLAIST To the layman reader of The Times it may seem odd, as it did to Mr Quintin Hogg, that the newspaper should carry one day a leading article against...

RUSSIA: FIFTY YEARS AFTER-3 TIBOR SZAMUELY Two great social revolutions have shaped modern history: - the French and the Russian. But nothing could be more different than the...

J. W. M. THOMPSON One must beware of growing cynical about society's fumbling attempts to 'plan' the helter- skelter changes which are happening to the environment. A brilliant...

PERSONAL COLUMN ANTHONY BURGESS 'The fire has spread from your ships,' cries Theodotus to Caesar. The first of the seven wonders of the world perishes. The library of...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN The next best thing to drinking wine is talking about it, and the next best thing to talking about it is reading about it. Among the premiers...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON When I was a small boy I vas troubled greatly by motion-sickness. This used to loom particularly large on long car journeys, when it would become...

From the 'Spectator', 2 November, I867—Mr. Anthony Trollope has retired from the Post Office, and his friends and colleagues have commemorated that event by a dinner given to...

TABLE TALK PENIS BROGAN I have for some time past been pondering the question of the 'brain drain' and the recent re- port on the subject makes the question even more topical...

C. B. COX Hawkeye, Pathfinder, Deerslayer, the trapper, Natty Bumppo, are the various names of the hero of James Fenimore Cooper's famous Leatherstocking series of novels. Ile...

J. M. COHEN This Oxford edition is definitive. The plays, their variants, letters and notes bearing on their composition and staging and some other introductory material,...

Judge's story DAVID REES The Beauty of the World Honor Tracy (Methuen 25s) The Tomorrow Country Jack Wilson (Muller 25s) Wyke Regis John Leonard (Gollancz 30s) Enemy and...

ARNOLD BEICHMAN Over lunch in New York the other day,,,,a young, attractive New Left university girl are-. scribed her unhappiness about the Negro problem. At a recent...

MARY HOLLAND The Bloomer Girls Charles Neilson Gattey (Femina Books 35s) When I was writing a weekly article on fashion and hard up for something, anything, to write about, one...

The Undergrowth of Literature Gillian Free- man introduction by - David Stafford-Clark (Nelson 30s). A woman's-eye view of the ex- tremely wide range of publications devoted to...

IAN NORRIE Books for adults are reviewed by adults, and adults read the reviews. Children's books, with freak exceptions, are also written and reviewed by adults, and the...

WILLIAM BUCHAN The Shadow Land Peter Vansittart (Macdonald 16s) In their very different ways these two books would make a good addition to the library of any intelligent older...

PETER VANSITTART Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll illustrated by Ralph Steadman (Dobson 63s) The traditional fairy-tale necessarily mingled the light and the dark, as Carroll...

STELLA RODWAY The Battlefield William Mayne (Hamish Hamilton 18s) This is a book where children and adults rival each other, as in life, in the quirkiness and inconsequence of...

ELAINE MOSS Many people believe that background in children's books is a divisive element (out-with- pony-club, in-with-'pop') and so it can be if it is merely a sterile...

Full of magic ELIZABETH JENNINGS illus- trated by Don Bolognese (Chatto and Vs'indus 18s) William Faulkner seems the most unlikely person to have written a children's book....

DAVID WADE The Owl Service Alan Garner (Collins 15s) Alan Garner's latest novel has many of the qualities of his previous work. It is profoundly imaginative and written in...

6d). Dr Bamberger is an international authority on children's books and his third collection of stories, finely illus- trated by Emmanuela Wallenta, is rich, varied and meaty....

(Nelson 9s 6r1). A small collection of nursery rhymes for which Jenny Williams has drawn outstanding pictures which combine traditional nursery lore with the highest stan-...

Winter's Tales for Children, 3 edited by Kevin Crossley-Holland (Macmillan 30s). A collection of stories, poems and a play for children over nine, newly written by distinguished...

Stories of Courage Cleodie Mackinnon (ouP, Oxford Children's Reference Library, 21s). Inspiring tales of moral steadfastness and physi- cal endurance, told concisely but...

A Long Vacation Jules Verne tianslated by Olga Marx (ouP 16s). Historically speaking, a connecting link between Robinson Crusoe and The Lord of the Flies: fourteen shipwrecked...

The Story of Our Heritage V. M. Hillyer and E. G. Huey (Nelson, nine volumes, 10 g ns). A scrappy encyclopaedia of world history, pure and applied art which dares to call...

William Blake : an Introduction Anne Mal- colmson (Constable Youn g Books 21s). Not all of Blake's poetry speaks directly to the youn g ; here, notes illuminate the symbolic...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD Something very curious is happening to the English language. It is that in prepositional phrases the accent is coming more and more to be thrown on to...

BRYAN ROBERTSON An artist called Jean Louis makes from plastic, in shallow relief on the wall, large cloud-like shapes, softly rounded in contour, which appear to swell up from...

Samuel smiles HILARY SPURLING Honeymoon (Hampstead Theatre Club) What baffles me about our various well-mean- ing avant-gardes is their prodigious appetite for punishment....

CHARLES REID On the night that Pierre Boulez followed up Berlioz's 'Fantastic' Symphony at a London Symphony Orchestra concert with its so-called sequel and complement, the...

Fish go back PENELOPE HOUSTON Barrier (Academy Three, 'A') The Day the Fish Came Out (Rialto, 'A') The first few shots of Jerzy Skolimowski's Barrier are dazzlingly,...

STERLING -NICHOLAS DAVENPORT This earnest discussion of the 'reserve' status of sterling is becoming tedious and tendentious. I thought Mr Callaghan was somewhat con-...

JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE The most important and controversial piece of economic legislation in the parliamentary ses- sion which began this week is going to be the so-called...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT JOSEPH RANK Mr Joseph Rank is deputy chairman and chief executive of Ranks Hovis McDougall, the biggest flour-milling group in the country. Last week my...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES- When Mr Ronald Grierson was seconde&from the . great merchant banking house of S. G. Warburg to get the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation under way,...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL My starting point this week is the Suez Canal. Hopes of an early reopening have fallen sharply in the past fortnight. As a result, shipping, in spite of the...

CUSTOS The share market has moved through its 400 barrier (Financial Times index), as I ex- pected, and is still moving ahead in a 'bid' feverish state. Phoenix has increased...

tomb in Westminster Abbey— Maitre Corbeau! Anthony Asquith 27 Thurloe Square, London SW7

Sir: Mr Raven (20 October) did not look care- fully enough. The striking and inimitable epitaph which appeared on the wall above him (it also appears on the floor) in...

Sir: Fie on my dear old friend Denis Brogan! It wasn't the Maclean, it was the Macneil (of Barra in the outer Hebrides from whom I am distantly 'descended) who responded to...

Sir: It is misguided to see the solution to Britain's industrial problem through the implementation of two such . reactionary measures as were suggested in last week's leading...

Nisei Vinson (21st October) to change his drink- ing habits. He has only to take a taxi to his plat* ,.ef drink instead of driving to it. Would he grudge a taxi fare to save...

Sir: Mr Vinson's rejoinder (27 October) does sot seem very convincing. 'Social conduct' is surely already 'subject to prescribed limits' under various generalised heads which do...

in general behaviour this country may in due course be engulfed in one of its peri- odical waves of puritanism. I am inclined to believe that the first waves are already upon us...

LETTERS From Diana Prior-Palmer, Robert Hartman, Anthony Asquith, Graham Hutton, C. R. W. Shearer, Stephen Harris, Mrs D. E. Estcourt, Mrs M. Daniels, Richard Twentyman, Miron...

entertaining and sophisticated 'Table Talk,' but may I, as a humble layman, question one of his judgments last week (27 October)? He says that Brand was a great Speaker. But...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS John Glashan, the creator of tiny..beardecl men mooning about in front of enormous heaps of architecture, is certainly one of the funniest cartoonists...

Sir: With the object of encouraging new talent, Adam, the Anglo-French quarterly, announces the creation of three literary prizes of £100 each, to be conferred at six-monthly...

No. 473: The word game Competitors are invited to use the following twelve words, taken from the opening pages of a well-known work of literature, in the order given, to...

Across 1 Sisterly fellow-traveller with Lionel and Slingsby (6) 4 After the dance, ancestor fails in the end but finds equilibrium (8) 10 Horseman (7) 11 Horsemen (7) 12 The...

PHILIDOR White 11 men 9 men L. Loschinski (2nd prize, Przepiorka Memorial Tourney, 1949). White to play and mate in three moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 358...