Assured of the confidence of the entire nation. I offer to France myself as an attenua- t ion for her misery.' Petain has been harshly treated by the contemporary historians,...

Lord Randolph Churchill once declared that it was the duty of an opposition to oppose. Nothing during this Parliament has been a greater dereliction of that duty than the...

There is something thoroughly unconvincing abOut the sudden discovery of the iniquity of Chicago's Mayor Daley. The Democratic party, for all its distinguished adherents, has...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH It would be hard, although by no means im- possible, to underestimate the importance of the Trades Union Congress. On an actuarial basis,...

Down, by order of the occupation forces, came the black flags from the Wenceslas statue in Prague, down too the anti-Soviet graffiti from the walls; up, once again, went the...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON Chicago—The Democrats are routed before they have begun. The spectacle of the Chicago streets last week must have been seen by everyone in the civilised...

FRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris—`Detente, entente, and finally coopera- tion'; such was General de Gaulle's theme song. in Moscow in 1966, in Warsaw in 1967, in Bucharest in 1968....

CZECHOSLOVAKIA TIBOR SZAMUELY Some thirty years ago the late Bernard Shaw declared that he could not believe that the Moscow Trials had been faked, because, if they were, then...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS 'Comrades, we are in the fight and will promise to be there when the fight is won'—Mr George Brown, to the Czech people. Comrades, we are in the fight....

STUDENTS STUART MACLURE At this time of the year upwards of 40,000 eighteen year olds are waiting to know if their 'A' level results are good enough to get them into the...

CRICKET CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Once when F. S. Jackson was about to bowl an over in a Test match at Headingley, a Yorkshire critic in the pavilion shouted, 'Put on Schofield!'...

STRIX The epithet is monosyllabic, which should re- commend it to sub-editors. Its meaning is clear. It occurs frequently in the works of Shakes- peare. It is unlikely to be...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY If you have been sitting ravished, -as usual, in front of your television set lately, it may have occasionally soaked through to your sleeping mind that...

PERSONAL COLUMN ANTHONY BURGESS I have just married again and my Italian bride's dowry consists mainly of a four year old boy called Paolo Andrea. He is monoglot. meaning he...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD To see within the span of ten days four in- teresting television plays is an experience worth recording. They were The Franchise Trail by Nemone...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON Dear Robert. So you have decided you want to be a doc- tor? At least, so your mother tells me. Evi- dently the decision was a sudden one and she...

THE ENVIRONMENT TERENCE BENDIXSON All over Europe people are fleeing from remote farms and villages and settling down in the bigger towns and cities. And all over Europe...

From the 'Spectator, 5 September 1868—Sir Thomas Henry, the Chief Magistrate, has stated in the Bow-Street Court that "Government has determined to put down prize-fighting."...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN Miss Faye Dunaway, whose appearance as Bonnie Parker was such an unforgettable eye- opener. looks as good in today's fashions as in the gear of...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN Few summers, even in this horrible modern cen- tury, have been so full of so much news as this. We have had a nauseating display of English complacency,...

HUGH TREVOR-ROPER Has any diarist, by his diary, raised his per- sonal credit with posterity? I can think of none; and those who have tried hardest have generally fared worst....

PETER DAUBENY In Micheal Mac Liamm6ir's own words, this book is `the story of my wanderings in search of Oscar Wilde and his importance.' It is the fourth and best volume of...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Gallows Songs Christian Morgenstern trans- lated from the German by W. D. Snodgrass and Lore Segal illustrations by Paul Klee (University of Michigan...

PENELOPE HOUSTON Horror Movies: an Illustrated Survey. Carlos Chirens (Seeker and Warburg 63s) Shakespeare on Silent Film Robert Hamilton Ball (Allen and Unwin 63s) There are...

ASHLEY BROWN Flannery O'Connor became known to a few readers in the United States as early as 1949, when two sections of her first novel, Wise Blood, appeared in Partisan...

East is West MAURICE CAPITANCHIK A Stronger Climate R. Prawer Jhabvala, (John Murray 25s) Forbidden Colours Yukio Mishima translated by Alfred H. Marks (Seeker and Warburg...

FRANCES DONALDSON The Ladies Bountiful of Mr Rogers's title are the benefactresses of creative artists—writers, painters, musicians—most of whom lived and worked in the first...

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The Indecisive Decade: The World of Fashion and Entertainment in the Thirties Madge Garland (Macdonald 63s). A useful handbook, and well-timed for those currently seeking to...

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EDINBURGH PHILIP HOPE-WALLACE The moralist within me—and you couldn't do twenty-two Edinburgh Festivals without one— wishes to proclaim a blinding glimpse of the obvious:...

EDWARD BOYLE A generation ago the idea of a complete per- formance of The Trojans, entire and uncut within the compass of a single evening, would have seemed almost...

THEATRE Spats away HILARY SPURLING The Apprentices (National Youth Theatre at the Jeannetta Cochrane) Trixie and Baba (Royal Court) 'It may possibly be imagined by severe...

CINEMA Untrusties PENELOPE HOUSTON The Birds Come to Die in Peru (Curzon, 'X') It's about six months since an-engaging thriller called Sebastian came and went rather rapidly...

ART BRYAN ROBERTSON The most delightful exhibition this summer by a native artist is the present display of con- crete poetry by Ian Hamilton Finlay at the Axiom Gallery. I...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT A month ago there was an interview in the Chicago Tribune between the well-known economist Mr Eliot Janeway and our financial secretary, Mr Harold Lever. Mr...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT KENNETH BAKER, MP Kenneth Baker is managing director of three companies in the Minster Trust Group. He won Acton for the Conservatives in the by-election...

WILLIAM JANEWAY The world today is living in monetary limbo. This is what confronts monetary authorities and governments around the world as they prepare for the annual IMF...

CUSTOS This bull market goes on and on. Share prices have scaled new heights again this week. The Financial Times ordinary share index is above 500 (504.8 on Tuesday night)....

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Widows and orphans please turn to another page, for this week I am going to describe a share which has become an out-and-out specu- lation. You could double...

LETTERS From: Chief 1'. Olu Fayemi, Chike lbik, W. Haydon, Leslie Palmier. Celadon August, K,• Bush, Mrs F. R. Leanii. Giles Play fair. Rev Canon H. R. Wilson, Andrew S. AI,....

them of their basic human right—self- determination and freedom—the Russians and their Warsaw Pact allies have committed the third most atrocious and monstrous act of the day...

Russian troops from eastern Europe, is most likely to come about if it is mirrored by the withdrawal of American troops from the West assumes that the Russians are there only to...

Sir: I read David Bryson's article 'Ivan the lost' with great interest (30 August). But what neither his nor any other articles I have read since my return from Czechoslovakia...

Sir: The Foreign Secretary, Mr Michael Stewart, MP, has asked me to draw your atten- tion to a passage in the article 'How to make the Russians go home,' which appeared in the...

your periodical, I feel obliged to sample a little of what you have to oiler from time to time. It was with great delight that I came across Tibor Szamuely's recent review of...

Sir : Tibor Szamuely is to be congratulated on his series of excellent articles exposing the real aims and consequences of Soviet Russia's do- mestic and foreign policies....

Sir : Not having read the autobiography of N. Podhoretz, reviewed in the SPECTATOR of 30 August, I can't say whether the flagrant untruth you print there is due to the reviewer...

Sir : I should like to begin my reply to Mr R. L. Travers—unfortunately I do not know his military or naval rank—by pointing out that I am not an 'academic Catholic' (Letters,...

Sir : Mr E. N. Smedley Aston asks (Letters, 23 August) into which of Mr Nicholas Daven- port's three categories the film, Girl on a Motorcycle, would fit. I suspect that it...

John Pritchett (Letters, 30 August), and by conventimal standards it ob- viously is. He deals with human character and conduct not in terms of moral judgments, but by...

Sir : Is Mr Raven writing facetiously or in earnest (2 August)? If the former, his article is in dangerously bad taste; if the latter, it is pathetic. I restrict myself to three...

Sir: I overlook Mr John Braine's charming irrelevancies and non-sequiturs (Letters, 30 August). But I don't think that I ought, for his own sake, to allow him to rewrite...

Sir: I suppose that by some standard your story, 'The Operation,' might be considered clever and sophisticated (23 and 30 August), but in my opinion it is disgusting and obscene...

the Pope's encyclical Humanae Vitae and Mr Dubcek's encounter with his comrades of the Warsaw Pact should have happened when they did? In a year before the communists took over...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS `Jack was embarrassed, never hero more, And as he knew not what to say, he swore.' Lord Byron, The Island. Gentleman Jack Gowon, the dapper and...

Across 1 Poles having an inner conflict, all due to the birds! (8) 5 Gliding fish (6) 9 Mrs Mopp with the china, delightful! (8) 10 Warren detective (6) 12 Garland, neatly...

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...

to compose an octet, using the given rhyme words, on either summer holidays in England, the us presidential election, or a postman's apologia for the higher postal charges . . ....

PHILIDOR Black White 5 men 7 men J. Berger (Deutsche Schachzeitung, 1887). White to play and mate in three moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 402 (Loshinski): B - B...