L'Affaire Ben Barka By ALAIN JACOB I T'iFRE is still plenty to learn and. one would T hope. to be told about the disappearance in France of Mehdi Ben Barka. But things have...

OXFORD'S ROADS The Cause That Wasn't Lost By ROBERT BLAKE THE long-aswaited letter from Mr. Crossman about the Oxford road plan, in particular the road across Christ Church...

Copper Shares The situation in copper is alarming. We have very small stlcks in this country and the Ameri- cans have now banned the export of copper because of the Vietnam...

Investment Notes By CUSTOS THE new account on the Stock Exchange Topened firmly and such is the tight supply- demand relationship that some exceedingly bad reports did...

Rubber Shares An excellent report on Malayan rubber shares from a leading firm of brokers calls attention to the following attractions: (1) the dividend yields are mostly over...

Company Notes By LOTHBURY SIR ARCHIBALD FORBES, chairman of the Midland Bank, makes some interesting points in his annual report: (1) that he regrets that once again, in...

Afterthought SIR.-With entire seriousness Mr. Alan Brien writes: 'On Wednesday. this week. Robert Pitman called British "progressives" to demand an invasion of Nigeria to...

SIR.-M r. Edward Lucie-Smith writes in the I SPECTATOR of 'the rather academic nature' of Edmund Blunden's technique in poetry. A less appropriate adjective than 'academic'...

The Judgment of Hull SIR,-Whatever one's views on the outcome of the Hull North by-election, it provides one consolation for those like myself approaching middle-age who were...

SIR.-Robert Lowell will doubtless be elected to I the chair of poetry at Oxford. He is American; he writes in a streamlined contemporary idiom; and that is what the...

SIR,-I am not a graduate of Oxford but of that other place which has now unfortunately become an extension of the ICI research department, but is still sited in the Fens, yet I...

Think Again, Mr. Crosland SIR,-NMr. J. M. Cobban's admirable article raises the fundamental question of the precise legal status of the direct-grant schools. In origin they are...

Blunden versus Lowell SIR.-I have considerable respect and admiration for Mr. Robert Lowell and his verse. and I hope one day to see him in the Chair of Poetry at Oxford. But...

Scoop of the Week 9JR,-I regret that you published a truncated and highly misleading account of a piece I had written on how Sir Hugh Beadle broke the deadlock between Mr....

The Science of Science By ANTONY FLEW SOmNE years ago, before he disappeared into (and later with) the Ministry of Technology, Sir Charles Snow put into circulation the now...

Quatsch! Biography of an Idea: Memoirs of Public Relations Counsel Edward L. Bernays. (Simon I and Schuster, New York, $12.95.) 1 Cardinal Spellman called to say the event...

Next month the first of the 1961 vintage of champagne w ill be coming on to the British market. From to o houses only, for Charles Heidsieck brought their 1959 out only in...

Supennachiavelli As a chronicler of the continuing narrative of British party politics Bob McKenzie is in a class apart. His regularly updated British Political Parties has...

Spectator's Notebook 'M not surprised that Labour's docile left wing is registering a token protest at the Govern- ment's prompt public expression of support for the...

M Manners Makyth Man All the same, Transport House were plainly running scared. This is the only explanationand excuse-for the silly smear about my mortgage in the Labour...

Surprise: No Surprise Meanwhile, the great British public showed an even greater lack of interest than usual in all these goings-on by its derisive treatment of Mr. Gott at...

Common Cause I rejoice at the end. in the small hours of last Sunday morning. of the longest and most serious crisis in the troubled history of the Common Market. De Gaulle...

Smile. Please McKenzie subsequently goes on to discuss the resignation twenty-one months later of Sir Alec Douglas-Home. and comments that 'the final straw for Sir Alec may...

7-Portrait of the Week- yIHERE IS NO readiness to talk, no readiness for I peace, in that regime,' said President Johnson, explaining his decision to start bombing North...

I MR. ROY JENKINS, the new Home Secretary, I arranged for some of the mail-train robbers to give a press conference in Durham prison to clarify reports about their conditions....

I IN BRITAIN, the political air was filled with talk I but peace was notably scarce: Mr. Heath and NIr. Wilson duelled in the Commons, Labour's victory in the Hull North...

Maudling v. Powell IN a recent newspaper article, Mr. Denis Healey quoted Mr. Dean Rusk's explanation of the difference between academic and political argument: 'One is...

Mr. Heath and his Critics SIR,-Whv does individual liberty require too many qualifications today to be the idje force of the Conservative party (your editorial of January 21)?...

SIR,-You, and all those who advocate de faci., recognition of the Smith regime, are confusing two separate issues. It may well be that Mr. Smith enjoys the support of the...

THE PRESS The Sunday Scene By DESMOND DONNELLY, MP LET US take a look at the Sunday press. A change will shortly take place at the Sunday Telegraph. Or will it? Mr. Donald...

LEVfl_____ From: David Ennals, MP, Jerem y Bray, MP, Christopher Rowland, MP, W. P. Kirknman, Norman St. John-Stevas, MP, Peter Sichel, Nora Beloff, B. D. Barton, Robin Davis,...

SIR,-In your recent strange leading article on Rhodesia, vou refer to the 'handful' of Conservative MPs who voted in faxour of oil sanctions. The editor of the SP[CTATOR...

ThwOE~ ~®D~J~~7 u NVEHJEE OUm l Is the 'Irk' a Fascist Beast? By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT W iOEV'FR would have imagined that the birth of the DEA's little financial baby-the...

COMPANY MEETING BRITISH SUGAR CORPORATION LIMITED EXCEPTIONALLY FAVOURABLE RESULTS THE 30th Annual General Meeting of the British Sugar Corporation Limited will be held on...

Gradus ad Parnassum The Comn puter will grade the students' essays. Students are warned that it will not be favourable to jokes, to unusual words or to unfamiliar...

SEX AND SOCIETY-I A New Deal for the Homosexual By CHRISTOPHER CHATAWAY, MP F OR the third time since Sir John Wolfenden reported in 1957, the House of Commons will vote next...

On Guard! The Rise of Christian Europe. By Hugh Trevor- Roper. (Thames and Hudson, 35s.) THIS is a very refreshing book. Medievalists are cautious, not to say myopic, folk;...

The Captives A close community of two: Outside, a storm bangs like the police. Arrest the world; it will not do To breach this unpredicted peace. Two conscripts, man and woman,...

Victoria (Montparnasse) Guide Julliard de Londres. By Henri Gault et Christian Millau. (Julliard, Paris, NF21: 39s. at Heywood Hill.) THIS is a guide by two French people,...

Coups de Grace By MALCOLM RUTHERFORD I SOME days ago a story appeared in the press that very shortly Britain and Zambia would jointly produce the coup de grace that would...

WOE457DPEFrur YEE Industrial Brinkmanship By PETER JENKINS So far the railrwa crisis has been handled Lstrictlv according to the book. Although the trains are more likely to...

SIR,--Anvone who was unacquainted with current Fnglish poetry would be seriously misled by Mr. Lucie-Smith's address in last week's SPECrATOR. His Admiration for Lowell is...

&RV Miller's Phoenix By HILARY SPURLING A FIRING squad, a victim against a wall, a at01ley of staccato gunshots: 'Dull, didactic, banal, stupid, shallow, philistine,...

MUSIC Jones the Callas THERE has been so much talk about what happens on the Covent Garden stage, and under it, in the new Fliegende Ho/linder that one might suppose Richard...

TELE VISION Alpha Minus C Yics have been known to say that G ranada's reputation is highest with those members of the public a ho do not actually watch television but read...

t?o oo? At Home with Auden By C. B. COX AUDEN'S new book* begins with a sequence of twelve poems about the various rooms in his Austrian house, from the most public to the...

Travelling Woman The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Volume 1. 1708-20. Edited by Robcrt Halsband. (O.U.P., 84s.) THE Oxford press has acquired almost a...

Belfast Blues The Emperor of Ice Cream. By Brian Moore. (Andre Deutsch, 21s.) The Virgin Soldiers. By Leslie Thomas. (Con- stable, 21s.) Assorted Prose. By John Updike....

POLITICA L CO MIMEN TAR Y Lord Protector Wilson By ALAN WATKINS W ELL, as I was sa ing last week before being Wso rudely interrupted by the Hull by-election, one of the major...

CINEMA Pretty Things My Home is Copacabatza. (Continentale, 'U' certificate.) -Returnz from the Ashes. (Prince Charles Theatre, 'X' certificate.) FOUR children, refugees...

Crowd Scene AT the Airts Council headquarters in St. James's Square there is a large gathering of Rumanian art from the Middle A-es. beautiful. enjoyable and curiously...

SEX AND SOCIETY-2 Love's Labours Exposed By STORM JAMESON IT is not true that no intelligent woman s novel is now complete without a clinically detailed description of...