FOR THE LAST TIME, Members of Parliament assembled before dispersing to fight the general election. The mood was excitable, and even before the last heavy jokes and hearty...

of the Easter Rising of 1916, and in Wales another explosion (also set off by nationalist ardour) damaged the Clywedog Dam. In Birmingham two school- girls had to abandon their...

and all 124 people aboard were killed. Kwame Nkrumah broadcast to Ghanaians from neighbouring Guinea, know you are still loyal to me,' but no one actually inside Ghana seemed to...

ALTHOUGH the party manifestoes have been duly published in full in the heavier daily newspapers and their essen- tials ritually beamed to tens of millions on two television...

Friday March 11 1966

When that Aprille with his shoures soote The polls of March bath forced to the roote, When Maister Wilson with his swete breeth Inspired bath o'er holy Jo and Heath, His eyen...

The Phoney War By ALAN WATKINS rritt€last week has been the period of the phoney war. Nothing has really begun yet. Both parties have published their manifestoes; and...

The Prophet of the Utterly Absurd By TIBOR SZAMUELY (Recently senior lecturer at the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute) I'm the Prophet of the Utterly Absurd, Of the...

By NIGEL LAWSON The economy's getting better. . . . He [the Chancellor of the Exchequer] will give an abso- lutely fair, frank, straight, honest statement tomorrow in the House...

right to seize Berkhampstead Commons, and being a Peer for- midable in law courts seized it, and built three miles of iron railings round it. The commoners think he has not a...

Swings and Roundabouts By MICHAEL STEED T HE concept of a national swing became gener- ally accepted in the 1950s, despite some mis- givings about the automatist view of the...

Hog Fat at Armageddon From MURRAY KEMPTON WASHINGTON 'What all the wise promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass:—Melbourne...

Milton's Paradise Lost? By KEITH KYLE T HE President and the Prime Minister of Uganda, both men with strong political followings, are at each other's throats. Yet so far...

H WILSON seems to be getting a little touchy these days. Following my comments on the recent changes in his private office and in the Cabinet office a fortnight ago, the Prime...

best out of the weather. The long, glorious summer of 1959 was unforgettable: a dreamy succession of scorching days that never seemed to end. The best summer we've had since...

This isn't the first time the following snatch of dialogue has been quoted in the press this week, but it's worth quoting again. Robin Day (on Panorama. last year): 'And, when...

today graduates from occasional contributor to the status of a regular fortnightly columnist: he and "Strix will be taking turn and turn about with the Endpaper. Lord Ferernont,...

A good deal of the money that's going on Labour isn't betting in the normal sense of the word at all, but an insurance policy taken out by nervous capitalists fearful of what a...

Morality and the Health Service By JOHN ROWAN WILSON A WEEK or two ago a Labour MP, speaking on the Health Service, quoted two question- naires—one in England which showed that...

Life with the Lions By JOHN WELLS TT now seems generally establkhed in this 'country that elections should be likened in the public mind to race meetings, and it is possible...

A unique exhibition of 1.500 recent scien- tific and cultural books opens at the London University Library, Senate House. W.C.1. on Monday at 10 a.m. Admission and Catalogue are...

Me and My Vote By ALAN BRIEN AN odd thing about this election is the number of people with froth on their lips, veins bulging and noses wrinkled, who tell you loudly how...

- u - EDIME From : M. J. Fennessy. D. Macs, , regor. George A. Wheatley. J. 0. Stansfield, W. Williams, Professor J. G. Bullocke, Mrs. Charles Davy, Andre's' Belsey, A. J....

Sus. — it is a popular belief that corporal punish- ment is no longer used in our schools. This. I believe, is a complete fallacy. Even so, I was rather surprised to learn from...

War Game, which was- has Mr. Watkins actually seen a nuclear war? If not, why does he think the rest of us need to? DORIS DAVY Ridge House. Kingston. Lewes, SUAAex SIR.--Paul...

under this heading are points of opinion rather than fact. There is, however, one fact which is worth bearing in mind; that is, that every professional criminal is, necessarily,...

to publish that diatribe (couched in its anti-social prison jargon) from 'Felon'? It is certainly coming to something when convicted criminals are given space in a paper such as...

Slit.--If the Minister of Pensions feels unable, in pre- sent circumstances, to do anything about the earnings rule for pensioners between sixty-five and seventy years of age,...

SIR, —This letter, from a businessman not officially connected with the Conservative party, is a plea that the party shall restate its basic position in un- mistakable terms....

SIR,--Nigel Lawson has now joined several other commentators in assuming that the drop in cigarette- smoking last year was caused by the high rate of duty on cigarettes. Every...

Bradfield College. says that the majority at his public school would welcome inte- gration with the state system. Does he include the masters? Any government, Conservative or...

SIR, — In your February 18 issue (which contains a review of my novel Two People) Clement Crisp refers in his ballet column to a statement by Balanchine on the law of optics for...

Sig,-1 should be extremely grateful for a brief 'right of reply' to what I consider to be some very unfair criticism of my letter (February 25). Mr. Milligan bases his...

Stit—I have subscribed to the SPECTATOR for SCUM thirty to forty years. I had not thought that I should live to find it in the hands of an editor capable of taking an attitude...

SIR,—The 'brace ot American academics' must concede either 'Anglo-Saxon arrogance' or, what is worse, ignorance, with respect to M. Guilbaud's formula for the percentage of...

doubtless have judged you right (as indeed I have) as to why the BBC withdrew its invitation to Mr. Tom Driberg to appear on a 24 Hours programme on Vietnam. But I am sure they...

our water, appalling as it is in principle (think of its extension to hormones in the water to control population and mescalin in the water to weaken our resistance to...

&a,—Mr. R. A. Cline, in his article in your issue of February 25 on the Government's White Paper on Leasehold Enfranchisement. states: 'Never has any statute taken away the...

Thread Holds The Slender Thread. (Plaza, 'A' certificate.) S OME situations are so fit for a film that from early in the cinema's history they have been its clichés, then its...

J. M. W. Turner: The Fallacy of Hope By BRYAN ROBERTSON T URNER remains the supreme master of the English School : he made, furthermore, some of the most original and...

Mini-Montmartre By TERENCE BENDIXSON I E the anti-vivisectionists have a splinter group that worries about experiments on human beings they had better go quickly to Harlow in...

A Measure of Pleasure Measure for Measure. (Theatre Royal. Bristol.)— Tine Perforating Giant. (Royal Court.) 'I 'm sorry to see this . Ned.' says one of Con- greve's young...

floc us Pancras W E are in the thick of the twelfth St. Pancras Arts Festival. On the operatic side we have had Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, which Gerald Gover conducted. Verdi's...

By PATRICK ANDERSON I T is interesting that of the three long and dis- tinguished plays by Eugene O'Neill now pub- lished in paperback* two date from his period of retirement...

THE academic loose in the world of publishing today can be forgiven for having a. certain hunted feeling. Once a week he gets news of yet another series of...

The Landscape of Nightmare. By Jonathan Baumbach. (Peter Owen, 27s. 6d.) FAULKNER is justly famous as a regional novelist, the recorder of the rich, violent life of a small area...

TALZAC'S greatness,' writes Mr. Oliver in his ex- cellent monograph, 'is widely acknowledged, yet there is more disagreement about its quality. He remains as awkward a figure as...

The Rise of the Technocrats : A Social History. (Methuen, 35s.) The Genesis of Modern Management : A Study of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. By Sidney Pollard....

The Blue Pavilion. By William Buchan. (Gerald Duckworth, 21s.) The Secret Soldier. By John Quigley. (Hutchinson, 25s.) Hall of Mirrors. By John Rowan Wilson. (Collins, 21s.) The...

I stare at the rain all day, Watching its long nails tear The light; all summer freeze, Even in sunlight hear The dripping trees. —Mist, and silence, broken: No, not broken,...

TOPPING the list is The King of the Rainy Country, by Nicolas Freeling (Gollancz, 18s.). Freeling at his very best means superb reading — and not from the top of one's head, as...

L ii a The City and the Election By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT F OR the City, a general election is always a bore. It tends to hold up financial deals and postpone market issues....

THE 89th Annual General Meeting of the East- bourne Mutual Building Society will be held on March 30 at Eastbourne. Mr. Laurence A. Catiyn tChairman). in the course of his...

CUSTOS T l IF excitement this week was the sudden spurt in steel shares on Mr. Wilson's interview statement that the industry will be nationalised on the basis of the old White...

POLICYHOLDERS' BONUSES SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASED IN CENTENARY YEAR MR. JOHN F. JEFFERSON, Chairman, has issued the following statement with the accounts which will be presented...

month's Which? on choosing a cooker, so boringly rehearsed on BBC's Choice, there have been some polite exchanges between Buckingham Street and Grosvenor Place on !he matter of...

Edmund Penning-Rowsell - s dictum in the Financial Tinies of last Friday that 'if it is wine you are after, the dearer classes provide the better value.' Mr. Penning-Rowsell was...

Feeling the Pinch By LESLIE ADRIAN I RISH High Toast, Vanity Fair, Royal Cardinal and Café (not Casino) Royale may sound like racehorses, and indeed they could win by a nose....

By LOTHBURY M R. C. JOHN DUNHAM, president of the Co- operative Permanent Building Society, has much to say of considerable interest in his report fur 1965. He emphasises that,...

to be swindled in modern Britain than were our mediaeval ancestors, whose range of choice was minute and whose knowledge of the wares available was (in part thanks to the strict...

On God and Land By LORD EGREMONT T HAVE a house in Sussex and another in Cum- berland. I have an old friend in the Midlands with whom I often stay on my way from the one house...

By PH1L1DOR No. 273. F. FLECK (version by A. R. Gooderson; Die Schwalbe, 1948). WHITE to play and mate in two moves ; solution next week. Solution to No. 272 (Fleck) : B—Kt i...

The Mood in the Marginals-1 J . W . M. THOMPSON One year's subscription to the 'Spectator' zf3 15s. (including postage) in the United Kingdom and Eire. By surface mail to any...

Abberley Worcestershire THE ELMS HOTEL, Great Witley 231. Arundel Sussex NORFOLK ARMS HOTEL, Arundel 2101 Bath Somerset 63 FRANCIS HOTEL, Bath 5295 Beauly...