Nationalism Cluster concept ANTHONY QUINTON K. R. Minogue (Batsford 21s) This tranquil and level-headed book about a shapeless and convulsive subject is one of the first in...

Scarne's Complete Guide to Gambling Mister big SIMON RAVEN John Scarne (Constable 80s) Into this book, the blurb informs us, John Scarne 'has put a lifetime of study and...

Tools of the trade MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON A week or two ago I received a book for review which took me back to the days when I was a medical student. This was the latest...

Cox and box TELEVISION STUART HOOD It takes a crisis w ith its ,dorm centre remote from the great cities of the world to remind us how backward ate are in telecommunications....

What can the great powers do? THE MILITARY BALANCE LAURENCE MARTIN The assorted charts and diagrams with which the daily ppers briefed their readers on the Middle Easi order...

King of Patagonia BRITAIN & EUROPE DAVID -HOWELL, MP In a week which has seen the outbreak of a new war, the disintegration of Britain's European policy may seem a relatively...

King of the doves THE PRESS DONALD McLACHLAN So Mr Cecil King, it seems, has joined the doves, while the rest of the national newspapers-the Guardian excepted-made hawk-like...

In the wilderness AMERICA LESLIE NEWTON Washington--'Ontario? Where's that?' The Nebraskan hitch-hiker had never heard of Ontario. Nor had he ever seen anything like the 1900...

Sir: How disingenuous can Mr Douglas Houghton be? In your last issue he claimed that the Abortion Law Reform Asssociation, far from being rich is 'poor and amateur.' One would...

Giving offence Sir: It is a pity that Charles Wood is in Turkey and unable to reply in his inimitable way to the misleading trailers and panic-stricken apologies with which the...

Chichester on the cheap Sir: The Times, in its supplement of 27 May entitled 'Sir Francis Chichester: A Welcome from The Times,' says of the voyage: 'There are cynics who ask...

Beasts of the tax burden I Sir: it was most interesting to read Nicholas Davenport's article for 26 May where he compared the percentage of tax levied to the GNP of various...

Sir: Re the Sir Francis Chichester event-hasn't any newspaper editor yet realised how a good bit of news can be blown-up, distorted and made terribly boring by maximum press...

Sir: Mr Douglas Houghton gives the impression in his letter that the Abortion Law Reform Association struggles on alone, and without assistance. In fact it has close...

One awful example I Sir: That my review of Fifty Works . . . We Could Do Without did not consist of 'extensive abuse,' as claimed by two of its authors (Letters, 2 June), is...

Men in revolt I Sir: Mr David Footman has drawn our attention to the fact that a large part of The Russian Terrorists by Ronald Seth, recently published by ourselves. appears...

Cheque mate Sir: Mr Hilary Rubinstein says (Letters, 2 June) that at $220,000 I had got the price wrong that the Observer paid for the serialisation of Svetlana's TSwenty...

Sir: How very odd that Mr Stuart Hood (2 June) should bestow such overwhelming appraisal for Charles Wood's Drums Along the Avon, which did very little but aggravate any...

Et in Arcadia Phillpotts ARTS HILARY SPURLING If the Royal Shakespeare Company invented one style for Shakespeare's histories, they have perfected another for comedy,...

Sir William's bear OPERA CHARLES REID On the analogy of I1 Taharro and Gianni Sh/icchiji, grave Nhettinig an appetite for gay, the English Opera Group is double-billing two...

Sterling and the Middle East MONEY NICHOLAS DAVENPORT The story goes, and as far as I know has never been contradicted, that Prime Minister Eden withdrew from the ill-starred...

Market notes CUSTOS Reality is always slow in coming to overbullish stock markets and it needed the actual outbreak of fighting in the Middle East to bring equity shares down...

A hundred years ago From tie Spec ator, 8 June 1867-The evil star of the House of Hapsburg seems to be fairly in the ascendant. The Archduke Maximilian is in the hands of...

Portrait of the week The war between Isracl and the Arab states began in obscure circumstances early on Monday morning in the Sinai desert, and quickly spread to all fronts....

The battle of Stansted In the month that has passed since the White Paper naming Stansted as London's third airport was published-, an unprecedented volume of opposition has...

Life under 'Arab socialism' INSIDE NASSER'S EGYPT IVOR POWELL Ivor Powell returned to England last week after four years in Egypt, first as a cultural adviser in the Egyptian...

0 Diary of a breakdown PERSONAL COLUMN PENELOPE COLLINS There is a game that children play at parties called Musical Parcel. A present is wrapped up in layer after layer of...

The arts of Venus CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS The planet Venus has been reported by the University of Arizona, contrary to previous beliefs, to be hot, dry and totally devoid of life....

Lessons of the crisis POLITICAL COMMENTARY ALAN WATKINS By the beginning of the week, so everyone agreed, the atmosphere in those warm Westminster corridors had changed. A w...

Ulysses CINEMA Words failed him PENELOPE HOUSTON (Academy One, 'X' London) Well, the Academy seems to have a sell-out, and no one has yet reported vigilantes in Oxford...

Easing the brakes JOHN BULL What has moved the Government this week to relax the hire purchase controls on cars is the realisation that their own modest growth target -3 per...

U Thant's war LETTERS From John A. F. Ennals, Dr C. B. Goodhart. Norman St. John Stevas,,AlP, Espeth RhysJWilliamns, Randolph S. Churchill, James Reeves. Thomas W. Gadd,...

Abortion and the law Sir: The paragraph of mine in Grania from which Diana Hamilton-Andrews quotes (Letters, 2 June) read, in full as follows: 'Of course the middle-aged mother...

MAy Life Artist in living? || . JOHN ROWAN WILSON | Havelock Ellis (Neville Spearman I When Havelock Ellis died in 1939 at the age or eighty, he left behind him not only an...

Collected Poems 1937-1966 Summoned by Bell ANTHONY BURGESS Martin Bell M:ic- millan 25s) In no season can a poet's spare volume prevail against the big batteries of...

SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK J. W. M. THOMPSON il In a bleak week Mr Callaghan has been a great comfort to everyone, I'm sure. His weekend promise that 'during the next twelve months...

.After the cease-r-Ar . Af~~ ~~~~ f ^|A:i,,":;''r, Iqt is is&eldom fthat ,a: general is, given the pporlupity tof l ht the same battle a second Ime. Blesse d*wthbtiS gpod...

A brief life: R. H. Dundas BOOKS JOHN AiTBREY, FRS R. H. Dundas, of Ch: Ch:, Oxon., was Scotch bv birth, his father sheriff of Duns, BerwickShire (whence also Duns Scotus,...

Orphan wiih a Hoop: The Life of Emile Bustani Arabian knight GEORGE HUTCHINSON Desmond Stewart (Chapman and Hal To anyone who didn't know Emile Bustani, Mr George Brown...

Israel and the left 1938-1967 TIBOR SZAMUELY For many centuries a favourite pastime of gangs of louts in Central Europe was to corner some terrified, Jew and taunt him with...

Gog Andrew NEW NOVELS Britain's answer DAVID GALLOWAY Sinclair (Weidenfeld and Nicol- son 30s) Go to the Widow-Maker James Jones (Collins 30s) The Paper Dragon Evan Hunter...