I F the 1966 Labour party conference is remembered at all, it will be as the occa- sion on which the Government finally decided to implement the notorious Part IV of the Prices...

At the United Nations anyone can pass As middle-class, But the supply seems very scant Of statesmen who are Non-U Thant. CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS T HE man sitting at the end of the row reserved for newspapermen had large shoes and a card marked Tress' thrust rather too osten-...

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN S HALL we, before very long, be 'getting The Times for 4d? That is the question which has been lost sight of amid all the gossip, searching of...

By NIGEL LAWSON I T is a common conceit of writers on contem- porary events to suppose that one is living through some great historical turning point. All the same, a better...

October 6, 1866 There is a revolution going on in Burmah, and no less than four Princes, sons and grand- sons of the reigning monarch, have each been proclaimed King. The...

Myself, I'm not sorry that the amateurs have failed. They had probably lost heart anyhow, after a recent encounter with one of the most eminent of all Conservatives, whose...

TORY CONFERENCE PREVIEW By ANGUS MAUDE, MP I T is now two years since the Conservative party went into opposition after thirteen years of power. For a few months it seemed as...

T HE recent American decision to raise the subject of the anti-missile missile in the councils of NATO suggests that President John- son is finally about to take, if he has not...

By JAMES BOYCE I F you visit Belfast and find yourself outside one of the prefabricated tabernacles of our more evangelical sects you will hear a curious sound— a wail as of a...

By J. W. M. THOMPSON T T was in 1952 that the first rumours of 'some great scandal at the Tate Gallery began to circulate widely in London, and towards the end of that year the...

MEDICINE TODAY By JOHN ROWAN WILSON In this country the significance of such forms has always been very limited. They have cer- tainly never been the equivalent of a contract...

AMERICA From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK M R JOHNSON did not intend to set, but clearly anticipated, the direction of American politics when he observed last summer that those...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS SINCE his relatively recent emergence into the public consciousness, the Prime Minister has frequently sought and won for him- self flattering...

in a page article but what he has to say about sex in schools seems both ambiguous and too general. You cannot dismiss homosexuality by saying it occurs amongst teenage males...

SIR, ---Alan Williams's letter (September 23), with its impertinent implication of dishonesty, would be better ignored were it not for the damage such im- plications can...

SIR, —You appear to endorse the French solution to the world liquidity problem. But is there not a dilemma in that if the price of gold is raised only a little the problem will...

outlook that are taking place in the public schools today Mr Bruce Lockhart's article of September 23 may possibly have given an incomplete picture of them. And certainly when...

Sia,—I am grateful to Lord Dalkeith for putting me right about Scottish Unionists. As l understand it, they were as much against Irish Home Rule eighty years ago as they are...

[LETT u1r@rrxE Minn From: Hugh McKillop, Ivan Gray, Philip Mason, Derek Bloom, Mrs Mary Whitehouse, Ludovk Kennedy, Jack Sheppard, Gordon Evans, Drs H. B. Wright and G....

SIR,—Mr John Wells is amusing about Early School and anyone who is amusing is forgiven. But Early School disposed of a period early in the day and allowed more freedom later in...

Note- book,' September 16) may like to try out another idea the next time he finds himself in an hotel without a writing table but filled with enormous chests of drawers....

SIR,—Mr J. R. Wilson ('Medicine Today,' Sep- tember 23) has written an excellent example of how to damn with faint praise and to sneer at what one cannot understand. He says,...

SIR,—Mr Sills, in his temperate letter, asks if we have been fair to 'our kith and kin' in Rhodesia. 'Are we being fair to the Southern Rhodesians?' he writes. Considerations of...

Sia,—The hardly veiled sneer element in Tibor Szamuely's 'Life with Uncle Tito' is sufficient for most informed readers to consign the article to the wastepaper basket where it...

THEATRE By HILARY SPURL1NG HE National Theatre must be its own ad- I vertisenzent — must impose itself on the public notice, not by posters and column adver- tisements in the...

CINEMA A RTHUR SYMONS wrote of Duse : 'As she moved about the room of the Turners, in the National Gallery, it was with little cries, with a sort of unquiet joy. "The dear...

MUSI C ANOTHER Mahler beanfeast is upon us at the . n k Royal Festival Hall, or, as the 'antis' might say, another rush of Mahlerite lemmings to a brink that somehow never sees...

By ROBERT RHODES JAMES ACCORDING to one House of Commons ver- sion, the parliamentary failure of Harold Nicolson could be explained thus: For his maiden speech, the House filled...

'FAINT, pale, embarrassed, exquisite Paterl'— Henry James's words have become the stock judgment, and poor Pater's fastidious, delicate prose is little read today. We think of...

THIS is, as from the author of The Concept of Mind it could scarcely fail to be, a bold and rollicking book. It is also, surely, the most in- portant work about Plato to have...

By ANTHONY BURGESS M R A. ALVAREZ, writing on Lenny Bruce's autobiography, reminds us how that sick scourge or WASP-swatter jumped from a second- storey window shouting: 'I'm...

Life and Letters Summer Storm. By Cesare Pavese. Translated by A. E. Murch. (Peter Owen, 30s.) The Wreck of the Cassandra. By Frederic Pro- kosch. (W. H. Allen, 22s. 6d.) Eyes....

ACROSS 1. Rose bends over the lute with a determined air (8) 5. Fruits of wrath (6) 9. What very fine metalwork! (8) 10. Definitely Omar Khayyam's night- ingale 'that in the...

ACROSS.-1 Delves. 4 Abidance. 10 Booking. 11 Lobster. 12 Need. 13 Stay- at-home. 16 Intent. 17 Comets. 20 Diaries. 21 Heroic. 24 Bread-board. 25 Barm. 27 Clobber. 29 Default. 30...

A Solitary War. By Henry Williamson. (Mac- donald, 25s.) I HAVE considerable sympathy with the eighteenth-century historian who used to pull down the blinds of his coach when he...

No. 303 J. HARTONG (Good Companions, 1920) WHITE to play and mate in two moves ; solution next week. Solution to No. 302 (Barry) : Q - Kt 4 !. threat Q4. K Kt 4 ; 2 Kt - B 7....

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT AFTER their exciting fisticuffs the finance minis- ters at the- IMF jamboree trooped home— 'primitive barbarians' (French) and 'unlicensed amateurs'...

By JOHN BULL E VERYBODY has kept very quiet about the price ,Lord Thomson puts on The Times. No money is to pass between the two parties as considera- tion, no Times shares...

By CUSTOS T E new account on the Stock Exchange opened brighter in anticipation of the return of the ICI application money (over £200 million) but cheerfulness quickly...

Claret Crisis By LESLIE ADRIAN Meanwhile, in the , past week or so, the head- quarters of Calvet, Bordeaux's greatest nego- ciants, has been burnt down, taking with it...

More About Pots By LORD EGREMONT A FM months ago- SPECTATOR, June 3, 1966) , I was prompted by a report in the London Times to write one of these Endpapers about the silver...