rather Mr. Wilson made it official. He had, he carefully explained, been planning it since December. Mr. Callaghan followed it up with a sort of preview budget promising a tax...

THERE has been no instance of a single- 1 term government in Britain since the Labour administration of 1929-31. That is one measure of the size of the task that now faces Mr....

Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown while the President was on a peace mission to Hanoi, Peking and Moscow. Dr. Nkrumah was told the news by Mr. Chou En-lai and at first refused to...

was reported to be deteriorating and the British government made another of its formal protests. The Soviet authoritia meanwhile achieved a hard landing on Venus and promised an...

Friday March 4 1966

Big Jim and his Magic Cornucopia By ALAN WATKINS cy Er 1966 be the year of the voluntary efficiency i d audit for all of us,' remarked Mr. James Callaghan rather dauntingly in...

It does seem rather strange to me • That they should favour Cao Ky. He's sometimes right and sometimes wrong As, in his day, was Than Van Huong. And neither worse nor better...

The King Over the Water From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK W HATEVER Robert Kennedy is after, its pursuit rather plainly embarrasses him. On a Friday, he had suggested that, if we...

The Big Yawn By DESMOND DONNELLY, MP T HE general election is off to an extraordinary start. I cannot recollect a comparable situa- tion. The press made the decision. It...

By DAVID WILLIAMS N ATIONALISM in independent West Africa still has no nations through which to express itself. This, with the deficiencies of politicians, is the main reason...

Voters, Polls, and Myths By PETER PULZER O NCE upon a time there was a theory about the behaviour of the British electorate enshrined in the metaphor of the 'swinging...

March 3, 1866 Mr. Goschen made a very able speech on the hustings at Guildhall, on Monday. He com- mented on the great change of feeling from the jealousy and distrust of...

By NORMAN ST. JOHN-STEVAS, MP p ou rricAL parties. like politicians, are nar- cissists. They like to see themselves. The Tories today need a contemporary version of Disraeli's...

Whip's warning to Labour MPs invited to appear on television, and suggested that Mr. Short had succeeded in persuading the BBC to withdraw an invitation to Mr. Tom Driberg to...

I T'S a little bit odd to find a Labour Chancellor taking £17 million out of the pockets of improvident punters, doubtless living in furnished rooms and gambling with next...

I don't normally expect to find myself agreeing with the far left general secretary of ASSET, the foremen's trade union, Mr. Clive Jenkins; but in his campaign against Mr....

What is the election going to be about? The cost of living? Rhodesia? Mr. Wilson? If that extraordinary fringe lobby, the anti-fluorida- tionists, have their way. it will be...

his Rhodesian policy collapsing about him, he's decided that the best form of defence is attack. For the duration of the election campaign, it's clear, his refrain is going to...

Ripper, who, in Dr. Strangelove. pressed the nuclear button be- cause he believed that the Communists were rendering him sexually impotent by poisoning the water supply. The...

By CHRISTOPHER CASSERLEY N o revolution : a total population less than one per cent of India's: a per capita income at the worst three or four times that of India— it is...

By CLIVE JENKINS M R. GEORGE BROWN'S 'Early Warning' Bill resembles nothing so much as General Franco's cosy domestic arrangements for manag- ing his unruly workers. Has the...

Below the Wheatline From CHANCHAL SARKAR DELHI OME foreign correspondents here must be quite apuzzled. Spurred by stories of alarming drought in India they flew over to see...

Whiter Than White By ALAN BRIEN I HAVE four possible open- ings to my column this week-I wish I hadn't. But since they have presented themselves, it seems a pity to waste any...

ACROSS 1. Is this the cause of goose-flesh 1. on ships? (8) 5. Impale a Latin thing back round Kew (6) 2. 9. How Scotland is edged? (8) 10. Pismire on edge of town 46) 12. The...

be congratulated on a remarkably perceptive and well-balanced examina- tion of the evolving relationship between constituency associations and their Members of Parliament. I...

SIR,--Your leading article 'The Importance of Mr. Mayhew' last week states: 'At immense cost, we are defending Malaysia from an Indonesia that has itself ruthlessly suppressed a...

EN5 L'_ro From: 'Felon,' I. Bruce-Gat-dyne, MP, Miles Hudson, R. S. l• Hawkins, Rodney Barnes, S. D. W. Milligan, Michael Edgcombe, Maurice Craig, Barbara Tuchman, Rev. Timothy...

and The War Game, and saw the latter soon after it was made last year. I should like to assure Mrs. Davy that he is neither sadist nor frustrated artist. although I suppose it...

the many lessons of naval history over the past thirty years. This is not a question of whether the Royal Navy or the RAF will play the major defence role in the 1970s. It is...

defence of the grammar school! Mr. Smith.should choose his quotations more carefully: nothing could be less clear than describing ths com- prehensive system as 'a regrettable...

Si.- Like Mr. Smith (Letters. February 25). I am a sixth-former. hut at a public school, which is faced with a similar 'bogy,' that of integration into the state system. But it...

The Proud Tower describes himself as 'infuriated,' a curious mood for a critic but perhaps the fact that he often writes in the same period suggests that it may be the fury of...

What about Part 3 of Sinister Street, Sonia, and The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Greene? TIMOTHY BEAUMONT 59 West Heath Road, London, NW3

forth as a champion of grammar-school education against what he calls, revealingly enough. 'the bogy of comprehension,' he will do well to purge his future letters of such...

Arsenic and Old Lace. (Vaudeville.) A PERFORMAN( ti by Duse was apt to be a most devastating criticism of the play,' wrote Desniond MacCarth■ in 1924. The commercial theatre is...

[J'A"0 8M112 - MIU TELEVISION This is Where I Caine In By STUART HOOD B EING heartily tired of seeing Wilder bull- frogging across the screen, of his frigid wife and glum...

Cuddly Ploys T HE sheer woman-hours that must have gone into the making of Jann Haworth's exhibi- tion at the Robert Fraser Gallery make one feel limp to think of them. Perhaps...

Ivory Power A Times fourth leader once chided me for ..something I had said about charm in art, the argument being, I think, that since charm was a good thing, you couldn't...

Parsif oily TF ever there was an opera that should have 'fallen with a bump between all the stools, that opera is Parsifal. I came away from the Covent Garden revival, to which...

That Old Black Magic By FRANCIS WATSON TN all excellent beauty, Bacon long ago bade us 'consider, there is some element of strangeness. Nearer to our own day we have...

Richard Aldington: An Intimate Portrait Edited by Alister Kershaw and Frederic- Jacques Temple. (Southern Illinois Univer- sity Press, $5.95.) THIS pious effort to rehabilitate...

THOSE famous powers of recall of Compton Mackenzie's continue to provide the reader with almost too rich a tapestry of recollection, too many enticing names, all the more...

THE blurb of this book announces that Tom Wolfe's 'wildly unconventional pieces . . . are Topic Number One in New York literary circles. His prose has the bursting impact of a...

By BRIAN CROZIER T wo kinds of book are being written about I Africa : the romantic and the realist. The first are almost indecently numerous and the second regrettably few. Of...

IT is a pity the publishers present Mr. Payne's book as 'the definitive biography.' This claim will antagonise the experts, and may well mis- lead. The Rise and Fall of Stalin...

Knights and Dragons. By Elizabeth Spencer. (Heinemann, 21s.) .4 Question of Living. By Kenneth \Varner. (Michael Joseph, 21s.) There Goes Davey Cohen. By Wendy Owen....

By CUSTOS T HE equity markets were ready for a turn- down before the shadow of a general elec- tion fell. Wall Street had become bearish and the profitless prosperity which has...

Mr. Callaghan's Day By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT T HE planning of the public expenditure, which is the key to the control of the economy, has advanced a great deal in expertise since...

With the election clouding the prospects of industrial shares, the oil group should find in- creasing support. BP were quoted ex the rights at 69s. 6d.—the new at 19s. 9d....

By PHILIDOR No. 272. F. FLECK (1st Prize, Magya , Sakkalct, 19641 WHITE to play and mate in two moves ; solution next week. Solution to No. 271 (Orlimont). x R— Q B 6!, R—R 4 ;...

By STRIX D-ANOY, a three-engined Junkers 52, took off from Anhsi in north-west China one day at the end of August 1937; its destination was Kabul and its 1,500-mile flight...

Capital Grains By LESLIE ADRIAN Stimulated, I bought a dozen more brands of packeted rice (it is increasingly difficult to buy loose grains outside Soho) and discovered some...

Lord Egremont begins a new fortnightly column One year'ssubscription to the 'Spectator': £3 15s. (including postage) in the United Kingdom and Eire. By surface mail to any...