Established 1828 99 Gower Street, London WC1 E 6AE Telephone: 01-387 3221 Telegrams Spectator, London Editor: George Gale Associate Editor: Michael Wynn Jones Literary Editor:...

Mr Barber's Budget deserved its parlia- mentary and public triumph and it is right that Mr Heath should share in that triumph: for a Prime Minister and his Chancellor can be...

On another occasion I came out of the Daily Express office and saw a taxi with its door open and Brendan inside, obviously drunk. The reporter he was with was coming into the...

In the morning, very early, he put his trousers and jacket on top of my py- jamas—his own shirt and vest and pants being in the washing-machine, and took a taxi to London...

I was having a suit fitted. There was a knock on the door and the fitter went away to answer it. I heard him talking to a youth v ith an unbroken voice. telling him, nicely...

Earlier, during the better times, when Bren- dan and Beatrice had rented a peat-burning Connemara cottage, I went to see him, meeting them off the Arran boat, they hav- ing had...

The Stansted campaigners won more than their own campaign. in fact : they won the campaign for all inland sites for a third Lon- don airport. When the chips were down, only the...

Whatever the Treasury may have thought about expense, however fiercely the Depart- ment of Trade may have argued for an inland site, it has become clear that neither the Commons...

Dan Farson's laborious and rather sloppy account of Brendan Behan on TV last Sun- day. came closest to the man when his wife. Beatrice. was talking. She speaks a clear and...

It was at this time that a woman reporter from London, dressed doubtless smartly by Fleet .Street standards but looking like a ludicrous tart in Connemara. tracked him down....

with a bit more abandon than usual this year.' And why not? In many ways things have taken a turn for the better. Some Caligulan Consuls such as Mr Barber and Mr Davies have...

The Spectator, 99 Gower Street, London W.C.1 Please supply the Spectator for one year 7 two years E m Cheque enclosed ❑ three years 0 I NAME ADDRESS MO MEN MEM SPECIAL LONG...

It was, I confess, almost intolerably discreet. All except for the Hansard shorthand writers assembled outside the Chamber while our Honourable members are saying their morning...

CHARLES GOODHART There have been a lot of changes lately in laWs affecting morals and conscience, brought about by Private Members' Bills with the government disclaiming...

Wednesday 31 March: Sir Keith Joseph an- nounced the sting in the Budget's tail—higher national insurance contributions to finance the higher pensions and social service...

Education for what? by a correspondent now in Pretoria If the ordinary white Rhodesian could get just one reasonable request met by British politicians, he would probably ask...

Seaham Harbour to the Savage Club COLIN MacINNES When Sweet Saturday Night, a book about the Music Halls, appeared some years ago, there was one review I awaited with trepida-...

Not such a super market JOHN TERRAINE To begin with, a personal statement : I would not like it to be thought that my long-stand- ing opposition to Britain joining the Com-...

SPRING BOOKS The Bishop of Durham on God and rationality Reviews by Patrick Cosgrave, Marcus Cunliffe, Robert Orr, Angus Maude, Hugh Plommer Charles Wilson, Simon Raven,...

Fifteen Men on a Powder Keg Andrew Boyd (Methuen £3.25) 'La vie est la vie', wrote General de Gaulle, 'autrement dit, un combat, connate pour les nations et comme pour les...

Tony Tanner has taken American literature for his field. As his previous book Reign of Wonder showed, he has considerable gifts as a critic. He is confident, alert, ingenious...

The Enquiry Concerning Political Justice William Godwin edited with introduction by K. C. Carter (Clarendon Press £3.25) Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolu- tion P. A....

How We Lived Then Norman Longmate (Hutchinson £4.50) No one under the age of thirty is likely to remember anything about the second World War. Few of those who lived through...

Architectural Judgement Peter Collins (Faber £3.00) This book sets out to show what analogies exist between the judgments of learned Judges in courts of law and those judgments...

Literature and Politics in the Nineteenth Century Essays edited by John Lucas (Methuen £3.50) Nearly all the great Victorian writers (says Mr Lucas) `chose to confront political...

This book is ostensibly about a remarkable and courageous lady, Mother Teresa of Calcutta; and indeed Malcolm Muggeridge begins it with a nicely written and rather moving...

God and Rationality Thomas F. Torrance (oup £2.75) 'Whither theology?' is a question which many ask and to which they claim that they get no answer, whether they wait for it or...

The Itt,ggernattis Graham Bannock (Weidenfeld and Nicolsort £3.25) British industry has no luck. There was Mr Wedgwood Benn, and he loved bigness. Now there is Mr Bannock, and...

Anatomy of Printing: The Influences of Art and History on its Design John Lewis (Faber £10.00) Mr Lewis is a book-designer and lecturer in typography. His best-known previous...

A Month of Sundays Dorothy Parker (Mac- millan £2.10) Why is it that fatuity has such power to survive and spread when excellence has long since leapt off into the void? Why is...

1970 are now available and may be obtained, price 50p post free, from the Sales Manager, The Spectator, 99 Gower Street, Lon- don wcl. Copies of most of the pre- vious indexes...

Whenever conversation turns to that vexed question: whither the novel?-1 always think of my old friend Nichol Fleming. He left Christ Church, Oxford, at the same time as I did,...

No. 1476 DAEDALUS A prize of £3 will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 19 April. Address solutions: Crossword 1476, 'The Spectator', 99 Gower Street, London...

No. 645: All in a day's work Set by Jane Doe: 'PAPER BAG TACKLER required. Experience with Chadwicks or B/F essential.' So ran a recent Daily Telegraph 'situations vacant'...

Charles Seaton reports: Competitors were asked to supply g love letter to or from any of the black characters of history. Two of those sug- gested proved far and away the most...

9 Dashed 10 Bastille 12 Orangery 13 Vested 15 Kegs 16 Emancipate 19 Cranesbill 20 Epic 23 Leerie 25 Grandeur 27 Oratorio 28 Figaro 29 Spending 30 Bolton. Down: 1 Bedrock 2...

Man in the irony mask KENNETH HURREN I have bad news for Tony Palmer, the sub- terranean correspondent of this journal. Out in the country over the weekend, it was several...

Three's a crowd CHRISTOPHER HUDSON After Shadows and Faces comes Husbands ('x', Columbia), John Cassavetes's latest, most tedious attempt to get actors to improvise...

RODNEY MILNES Far too much record re- viewing nowadays is carried on at the level of whether Signora x trills more prettily than Madame Y or if Maestro z shades a ru , bato...

Price of violence SOUREN MELIKIAN The three latest sales of Modern Masters in Paris focus attention on what I believe to be a far-reaching shift of values, aesthetic as well...

Teify- Soldier for rao54; _owe/Ault of We4ex.n. Nakions,is Murders comet ifed , in teWar,which had , unforfuaately mucii. concerned 614the 'grid should/ '.come to 14i....

Sir: Readers of the SPECTATOR with a reasonably long memory who also read the Observer will have rubbed their eyes in astonish- ment at Bernard Levin's review of Lord...

Sir: Mr W. M. Phipps , Hornby points out (20 March), in reply to my advertisement, how hateful would be a foreign occupation if this took place, after our voluntary disarmament;...

the right, indeed the duty, to treat all sources, written or oral, as only primary data, to be rigor- ously examined and compared with all other available data be- fore an...

From Peter Owen, L. E. Weidberg, the Rev John Bishop, C. H. G. Wood, Elizabeth Snowden and others, Facts of fiction Sir: With astonishment I read Auberon Waugh's comments (27...

Sir: For weeks I have read the SPECTATOR with great interest be- cause of Professor Trevor-Roper's review, which has given rise to so much controversy, if controversy is the...

the seriousness of the oil crisis. For the longer term, the days of cheap oil are undoubtedly over: in the short term the progress of nego- tiations between the oil companies...

Sir: I see Gibraltar is to the fore with you again. You were good enough to print a letter or two from me on that theme in May 1965. I still think much the same, viz, that at...

Sir: There seems to be some con- fusion in Mr D. A. Young's mind (March 20) between 'interest' and 'influence'. Of course British poli- cies are of 'direct interest' to a number...

Sir : Mr Hendry (27 March) attempts to answer my protest against our coercion into the EEC by thrice developing my state- ment that 'we are to have no more say in our fate',...

Sir: The right wing mentality of a government floundering from one crisis to another with no clear sense of moral authority dictating its decisions, is. perhaps, best illus-...

Sir: If you people played cricket, I said in 1947 to some-Germans watching a game outside Bad Oeynhausen. 'maybe we wouldn't have had the war.' Though this may have been an...

Sir: Taking our giant wolfhound O'Higgins for a stroll on St Os- wald's Day to the haystacks where once stood our baronial gallows tree, there was time to ruminate whether the...

Sir: You have given Mr Powell a page in which to discourse on 'The Morality of Profit' (6 March). Will you give me a few paragraphs? I have now some leisure of mind in which to...

Hardly was the printers' ink dry on my exhortation to the gilt-edged market to look forward to a re- duction in Bank rate when the rate was lowered one full point—to the...

delivered a severe lecture on the modesty of my National flutter, but there are a thousand. better races for 'getting-out' operations and financial caution, at least, allowed...

ob- viously the brainchild of someone who is not frightened by the administrative grades of the Civil Service—quite clearly our re- doubtable leader Mr Heath. Free depreciation...

If the Government are tired of the to-be- pitied. but immovable. Lord Melchett and need a better man they shouldn't be afraid of giving him the push just over the little matter...

There has been some silly talk that the British Steel Corporation should buy up steel stockholding firms so that they will pre- empt, so the .argument goes, the selling efforts...

People whose arithmetic is good were against the Anglo-French Concorde development, and they may well have been right, on strictly arithmetical grounds, if their advice had been...

Raymond Postgate, who has just died, was a friend of mine and it is always difficult to write well about the loss of a friend. Yet the awe which one never quite lost in relation...

We all, I suppose, have our own private symbols of the spring. To some the season is announced by the daffodils, to others by the cuckoo, and to others by the blossom on the...

TONY PALMER The myth of the revolutionary student was brilliantly analysed in the February !dition of Encounter by Graham Hou g h where he ar g ued that it was about time we...

CAROL WRIGHT Paris's image as a tourist city has not been rosy for some years now. She has been accused of high prices, rudeness and com- mercialisation of the visitor. Yet in...

England CAMBRIDGESHIRE Garden House Hotel' *"* CAMBRIDGE Cambridge 55491 Royal Cambridge Hotel*'** CAMBRIDGE Cambridge 51631 CORNWALL Meudon Hotel' "* NEAR FALMOUTH Mawnan...