Mr Heath's decision last week to speak out about the gravity of the country's financial situation, and to end what the Financial Times termed 'the truce under which poli-...

France,' General de Gaulle commented some years ago, 'the left betrays the state and the right betrays the nation.' The dis- tinction implied in this particularly delphic remark...

`I no longer desire to be a member of your -Government,' wrote Mr Ray Gunter to Mr Harold Wilson. So the Cabinet lost its only senior trade unionist, and the Prime Minister's...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Far more remarkable than the fact of Mr Gunter's resignation was the manner he chose. For as long as anyone can recall, he has been muttering...

ISRAEL STUART HOOD It is not often nowadays that one can claim to have assisted at the birth of a new television service. For the last couple of months I have been doing...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS It is reported that the Government's proposals for the upper house, while imposing further restrictions on the legislative powers of the peers, will increase...

From the 'Spectator', 4 July 1868—English Revenue Officers have no vote. Mr. Monck thinks they should have. So does the House of Commons, which on Tuesday, committed the Bill,...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON New York—It is not really Vice-President Humphrey's fault that, as the weeks go by, the Democratic nomination seems ever more likely to be his and ever...

THE BOMB LAURENCE MARTIN This week's parallel Russian and American announcement of willingness to resume talks on nuclear arms control may well bring forward the debate on...

J. W. M. THOMPSON It seems that the gospel of self-expression by means of violent protest is still pretty well confined to places of higher learning and scholarship. To date,...

PERSONAL COLUMN JOHN ROWAN WILSON One of the crucial experiences of my life took place in a small casino at Velden, in Austria. I was at that time playing a system, the details...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY No news is good news, some idiot once re- marked. He was wrong. No news is bad news, as every editor knows. But even worse is un-news, and I'm just about...

THE LAW R. A. CLINE Are strikes illegal or legal? It is one of the staggering features of our labour law (a fine name for a non-existent code) that the matter is still not...

RICHARD LYNN RiChard Lynn is professor of psychology at The Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin. The argument for student loans in place of student grants is being...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN At the height of his power and glory, Sukarno of Indonesia surprised an audience of Holly- wood moguls by casting them as agents and...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN R.M.S. 'Queen Elizabeth'—`Men are we and must grieve': and to have just finished my last voyage on what must be one of the last voyages of the 'Queen...

SUMMER BOOKS WALTER LAQUEUR It is doubtful whether anyone in England and America, save specialists in nineteenth century Russian history or literature, has read Alexan- der...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH In his inimitably exasperating book Love and Death and the American Novel, Leslie A. Fiedler has little good to say of Thomas Wolfe. He is 'morally...

PETER VANSITTAR T Ian Hay (Major-General Beith, 1876-1952), a long-superseded best-seller, was stigmatised by Orwell as 'an exponent of the clean-living Englishman tradition at...

GRAEME WILSON In the Coventry Guild accounts For stage-props and attire This item stands among the many That Miracle Plays require : To Jonathan Williams, fourpence, For...

GEOFFREY BARRACLOUGH German society, both in east and in west, has changed beyond all recognition since 1945. If, in the east, something of the old 'public spirit,' formerly...

China with Miss Ping HENRY McALEAVY 'What does anybody here know of China? Even those Europeans who have been in that empire are almost as ignorant of it as the rest of us....

Joseph (Hutchinson 35s) Conscience confined ROBERT BIRLEY Trials do not always follow the course intended for them. Every now and then in history there is a trial where the...

The skinny hand HENRY TUBE The Love Object Edna O'Brien (Cape 21s) Keziah Dane Sue Grafton (Peter Owen 32s 6d) Views frotn the Lake Philip Toynbee (Chatto and Windus 21s) The...

KENNETH ALLSOP Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the...

C. C. WRIGLEY Nigeria Walter Schwarz (Pall Mall Press 45s) As the Guardian's commentator on Nigerian affairs, Mr Walter Schwarz played an appre- ciable part in mobilising the...

MORTIMER WHEELER Britain in the Roman Empire Joan Liversidge (Routledge and Kegan Paul I05s) Roman Britain remains a seemingly inexhaus- tible attraction to professional and...

(A. and C. Black 25s) Life class MARTIN JARRETT-KERR Dr Leavis once said that there were two reviews of Eliot's Cocktail Party he would like to see—one by Lawrence, one by...

J. 0. URMSON The hydra of determinism has too many heads to permit total decapitation in 180 chops or pages. The ancient controversy about human freedom can be expected to...

Praise the damned JOHN HIGGINS Dr Faustus (Stratford-upon-Avon) You Know I Can't Hear You When the Water's Running (New Theatre) Clifford Williams remains one of our most...

MICHAEL SULLIVAN Now that we are almost completely cut off from China by a wall of mutual misunderstanding, we must seize every chance to enjoy her artistic heritage, and our...

Sidelights JAMES PRICE Faces (National Film Theatre) Rondo (Academy Three. 'A') The Odd Couple (Plaza, 'A') Blue (New Victoria, 'A') Faces, written and directed by John...

MONEY NICHOLAS DAVENPORT In the old days of British films no producer would be counted worthy of support unless he had a foreign name, preferably Hungarian. In the present...

FINANCE USA WILLIAM JANEWAY Has the tax increase taken the pressure off America's, and the world's, financial markets and set the American economy on a stable course? The short...

.CHRISTOPHER FILDES The idea of making a cause celebre out of Mr Jocelyn Hambro was (if I may maintain my usual studied moderation) never one of the Government's best, and the...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT The author is a partner in a leading firm of London stockbrokers. When the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers was issued at the end of March, there were...

The market in equity shares, as measured by the Financial Times index, reached a new record level, above 483, on Wednesday of this week. On the previous day the gold tigures...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL I think that the potential in Gallaher has been underestimated. I refer to the fact that the current share price-27s 3d—is only a very modest amount above...

LETTERS From: Quintin Hogg, IAP , 'God,' John Bradley, A. J. S. Innes, Mary Renault, the Rev Canon D. F. C. Hawkins, Angus Buchanan, Onyekaba Nwankwo, Anna M. Cienciala, Gordon...

century, 'There are three kinds of atheists; persons of subtle understandings, men of profligate principles and ignorant pre- tenders to thinking.' Which of these, if any, is Mr...

contributing an article to your journal in order to have the pleasure of seeing a banner head- line : 'GOD ON KENNETH ALLSOP AND QUINTIN HOGG.' As, however, I know so much more...

Sir: I am afraid that it will be a long -time before it is possible to take a balanced View of the origins of the Nigerian civil war, 'but it is important not to allow partial...

of the universe.' There is no such thing. There is a great common basis between religion and science. Devotees of both must accept the great many-sided 'given.' The spring and...

Sir: In his comments on Mr Simon Raven's admirable 'Homosexuality without cant,' Mr Hopcutt is surely implanting more errors than he removes (Letters, 21 June). It is, of...

informed comment 'Murder by proxy' (14 June). Thank goodness Robert Horton (Letters, 21 June) put on record what we who have lived in Nigeria for years know to be the true...

conceived play for one of the world's larger oilfields,' Mr Horton (Letters, 21 June) was merely echoing the. erroneous view that has been marketed about—that the Biafrans were...

Sir: I fear that I must take issue with Mr D. C. Watt's review of my book, Poland and the Western Powers 1938-1939 (28 June). Accord- ing to the reviewer, 'Its central theme...

Sir: In his article `Imbecile power' (31 May), Cohn Welch speaks of Maximilian Robespierre in an extremely derogatory way. He asserts that Paul Johnson, editor of the New...

Sir: You ask (28 June) what I would have said if the House of Commons had rejected the Government's sanctions order, made to imple- ment the Security Councrs decision under...

Sir: It is well known that English is a secret language. Any foreigner who dares to criticise Miss Nancy Mitford, our most brilliant ex- ponent, would do well to spend time...

Sir : Perhaps a guest, as I am in your country, should maintain a discreet silence, but Mr Patrick Cosgrave's words on the failure of the young in his essay on student power (14...

Sir : I wonder if I might be allowed to correct one point in Christopher Hollis's most interest- ing article (14 June)? It is incorrect to suggest that English players have any...

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...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were asked to compose an octet, using the given rhyme- words, on one of the following subjects: a meteorologist bemoans his native clime; the...

PHILIDOR Black White 2 men 5 men W. Massmann (Die Schwalbe, 1st Prize, 1942); White to play and mate in four moves; solution next week. If it were Black's move, White would...