a formidable one. He had to face a Party bitterly divided by the Government's Policies, depressed by its performance, and de eply dispirited by an unprecedented series...

Last Friday's conference of the Foreign Min- isters of the Six in Brussels and the Franco- German weekend Summit meeting in Bonn mark the end of the phase of recrimination which...

The Labour party, assembled in conference at Blackpool, voted down the Labour govern- ment's prices and incomes policy by 5,098,000 votes to 1,124,000: the party's executive...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Blackpool—The official slogan for this year's Labour party conference is proclaimed from great banners hoisted above the Edwardian splendour...

GREECE MICHAEL LLEWELLYN-SMITH Athens—NAT means Yes. Last Sunday in glorious late summer weather the Greeks went to the polls and said a bigger Yes than anyone had forecast....

Tomas Cernikowski, a Czech student who fled to Britain last month, made a series of trans- lations from the wall posters and underground newspapers published in Prague during...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON New York—Journalism seems to bring a sense of duty to the presidential campaign, but it is a tedious and unattended duty. A man whose tasks set him to...

DEFENCE LAURENCE MARTIN Laurence Martin is Professor of War Studies in the University of London and defence cor- respondent of the SPECTATOR. In naval circles the ship of the...

THE ECONOMY VERNON BOGDANOR Vernon Bogdanor is a Fellow in Politics at Brasenose College, Oxford. `Their policy is to reduce the standard of life of as many people as are...

Bour- bons have made their exit from Spain--4.e., from Europe. In the last days of September, Isabella's ministers, the brothers Concha,—the Marquis of the Havannah and the...

J. W. M. THOMPSON It is a thoroughly unscientific habit, no doubt, but many people find it natural to visualise large, incoherent organisations in terms of one person....

PERSONAL COLUMN TIBOR SZAMUELY I knew Lev Bezymenski fairly well in Moscow about twenty years ago, so the publication here of his volume called The Death of Adolf Hitler...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN The episode of this week that has come most close to my bosom has been the refusal of the Associated Society of Locomotive En- gineers and Firemen to...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON My favourite French cheese has taken a sudden jump in price. Presumably devaluation is at last beginning to bite, and it now comes at nine shil-...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD It says something about the nature of the pro- gramme that, when I went to check a name on the cast list of The Caesars, Granada's Sunday night epic, I...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY There is only one sensible way to read a news- paper—the way I do. You start, as do all men of taste and judgment, at the back, and only when you have...

THE MILITARY PHILOSOPHERS-1 ANTHONY POWELL Anthony Powell's 'The Military Philosophers,' the ninth novel in his sequence 'A Dance to the Music of Time, is to be published by...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS If it becomes possible in the near future to control the sex of human offspring, what will be the likely social consequence? Amitai Etzioni, professor of...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH George Orwell, it has been suggested, is ultimately 'less memorable as an artist than as a man.' And Tom Hopkinson, dismissing The Road to Wigan Pier as...

PETER FLEMING A History of Warfare Montgomery of Alamein (Collins 84s) Fighting is, apart from cooking, the oldest of the skills which homo sapiens found it obliga- tory to...

JOHN GIELGUD The son has done his father proud. He has written a book that is fiercely loyal and affectionate, yet makes no attempt to gloss over the wiliness and weaknesses in...

Rich and rare MAURICE CAPITANCHIK A Very Private Life Michael Frayn (Collins 21s) Myra Breckinridge Gore Vidal (Anthony Blond 35s) Without a City Wall Melvyn Bragg (Seeker and...

HENRY TUBE King Queen Knave Vladimir Nabokov trans- lated by DmiIri Nabokov in collaboration with the author (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 30s) Hebdomeros Giorgio de Chirico...

Desperate men PETER PARLEY Zion Road Simon Harvester (Jarrolds 25s) The Bird-Cage Kenneth O'Hara (Victor Gollancz 25s) Take a Pair of Private Eyes J. T. McIntosh (Frederick...

ROBERT HUGHES Antimemoirs Andre Malraux, translated by Terence Kilmartin (Hamish Hamilton 50s) . . The "little brothers" will speak softly to the flames who are their dead, and...

Decisions for a Decade Senator Edward M. Kennedy (Michael Joseph 35s) and Journey into Politics John V. Lindsay (famish Hamilton 25s). Mayor Lindsay quotes St Benedict: Sena-...

ROBERTO CORSANO A History of Sicily Denis Mack Smith (Chatto and Windus, two volumes 90s) Sicily has always had the ability to make myth into reality, but in preparing his...

Well spoke HILARY SPURLING Hair (Shaftesbury) The Advertisement (Old Vic) ' "It's Michael!" I cried. "Rendezvous 15.00 hours. I think he might propose. I've got to be...

PENELOPE HOUSTON Carl Theodore Dreyer died last March, aged seventy-nine. One of the great names of cinema, dutifully honoured. But when people thought about his films, the...

ART PAUL GRINKE After the chaos of the last Venice Biennale, where the British Pavilion with its splendid two- horse team of Riley and King provided a wel- come oasis of calm,...

OPERA CHARLES REID this year's first Ring cycle at Covent Garden ended on Saturday with a GOtterdammerung which restored my faith in the Wagnerians of the Royal Opera House....

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT The annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are being held in Washington this week, promised to be the most exciting in...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Australian mining shares have been plunging sharply. The list on Monday night sounded like the roll call after a massacre: Great Boulder down 35s at 107s 6d...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES You know the Leicester Temperance? That's right : the building society which whacked its rate on new mortgages up to 8 per cent for a fixed term of two...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT MARTIN J. GRAFTON Martin J. Grafton is the Director of the National Federation of Building Trades Em- ployers. A few minutes on television and some news-...

COMMODITIES JOHN CAVILL International commodity agreements fall into two types whether they be the International Sultana Producers' agreement or the Inter- national Wheat...

CUSTOS The breaks in this two year old bull market, when they have come, have been abrupt. To see the Financial Times index down 23 points, or 4 per cent, in a week is enough...

Sir: One is scarcely surprised that your politi- cal commentary of 27 September should deal with Paul Foot's somewhat over-clever Penguin The Politics of Harold Wilson. I say...

Powell's 'estimate of the power of human reason, and not least his own, in pre- dicting the probable oourse of human events' (27 September). If a former colleague so mis-...

Sir : I note that in his letter in your issue of 27 September Professor Trilling claims to know better, from the other side of the Atlantic, what was the state of teaching in...

LETTERS From Geoffrey Grigson, D. E. Folkes, T. C. Skeffington-Lodge, Mrs F. R. Leavis, Lilian von Versen, R. L. Travers, R. T. M. Lindsay. Beverley Woodroffe, Geoffrey Birch,...

Sir : Judged by his fascinating diaries, Harold Nicolson was a 'dear,' loving man, a wonderful family man, with charming values. He wished to draw a line between himself and all...

Sir: I have been a subscriber to the SPECTATOR for many years and find much of interest in every issue. Nothing you have ever said has so aroused my admiration and gratitude as...

of preparation for a cricket tour of South Africa, the MCC committee has forced that tour to be cancelled at the eleventh hour, causin g severe disruption in the life of the...

Sir: Your correspondents Grenville Jones and George Knapp (Letters, 27 September) have performed a most useful service in pointing to a deplorable deficiency in the manner in...

Sir : I have no pretension to being a biblical exegete, and Mr K. W. Nicholls (Letters, 27 September) is as likely to be right in his inter- pretation of the story of Onan as I...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS and JOHN FORTUNE It has been estimated that if all the pyjama cords at present in use in this country were taken out and laid end to end there would be...

African leaders had as reported in the West Africa issue of 21 September about the OAU Summit! They supported Nigeria's war against Biafra and condemned countries which allowed...

Sir: That was an inspiring article on pain by Kenneth Allsop (13 September). Neither mawkish nor braggy (I quote him), and without a trace of self-pity despite his many years of...

Sir: I have been commissioned by British, American and Continental publishers to write a life of Albert Einstein which will deal not only with his scientific work, but with his...

COMPETITION Competitors are invited to use the ten following words taken from the opening passages of a well-known work of literature, in the order given, to construct part of...

PHILIDOR Black 15 m H. W. Grant (1st Prize, B.C.F. Tourney 113). White to play and mate in two moves. Solution next week. Solution to no. 406 (Shinkman): Q - R 1 !, no...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were invited to compose an octet, using the given rhyme words, on one of the following subjects : lines to a lover during the recent floods, on...

Across 1 Flighty sea-dog in appreciative mood? (5, 7) 9 Latest neckwear from Carnaby Street (9) 10 Head's a regular tear-jerker! (5) 11 Seal of the old school tie, of course (6)...