In the nineteen-fifties the French learned the hard way that there were two types of devaluation: the panic-striken, forced devaluation a chaud, carried out in the wake of a...

Problems of a Young Conservative AUBERON WAUGH It is unfortunate, in a way, for the Tories that Ulster should have blown up again at a moment when they are still (holidays...

The devaluation of the French franc ought to have been the best thing that has happened to the Christian Democrats since the Russians invaded Czechoslovakia. The question is...

Government in bathing trunks P. FILO DELLA TORRE So Italy's month-long political crisis is over --for the time being. And as I predicted in these columns last month, it has...

Put out more flags KARL E. MEYER Whatever her differences with Roumania, the Soviet Union is unlikely to be able to use the deadly phrase 'out of control' to describe the...

A land without hope A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Next Thursday, 21 August. sees the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. It has often been said that the...

Prison security or public safety? GILES PLAYFAIR Lord Mountbatten, it may be recalled, was asked to conduct an urgent inquiry into general prison security — which, it was...

JOHN HOLLOWAY Photographs from Apollo 11 and Mariner 6 and 7 continue to come in (or perhaps I mean out), and confirm one's impression of the ferocious inhospitality of the...

Oxford revisited KENNETH ALLSOP I originally went up to Oxford feet first— doubtless an appropriate posture in the eyes of those who see it as a crypt of dead salues. I was...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS `We've hit on the base of a tower in each of our cuttings. There is a car-park near the foot of the hill and the village of South Cadbury has a pub. Quoted...

Strike me pink BILL GRUNDY I lay on the lawn in the summer sunshine and dozily drifted across into dreamland. It was a strange place; a place where the Daily Sketch supported...

Facts & fictions GEORGE SCOTT Question: When does a film report become a documentary? Answer: When you take longer and spend more money on it than you would ever get away with...

Majority rule LESLIE ADRIAN Cecil Kimber, manager of Morris Garages, built it in 1925. In the London-to-Land's End trial of that year it produced speeds of eighty-two mph and...

Magic touch JOHN ROWAN WILSON There is a story of an Englishman who visited Poland before the war to stay with some friends who were Catholics. While he was there they asked...

The Wilder shores of Rome DENIS BROGAN Passing a bookshop the other day, I saw the new Penguin edition of Thornton Wilder's first book, The Cabala. He wrote it after a year in...

JOHN BAYLEY Kathleen Raine's Blake and Tradition (Routledge and Kegan Paul, two volumes, igeos) is an expanded text of the Mellon Lectures delivered at Washington in 1962. Like...

PETER FLEMING Ernest Hemingway Carlos Baker (Collins 63s) Professor Baker insists that this is not a 'definitive' biography, and believes that such a work cannot be undertaken...

ROY STRONG Theatre of the World Frances A. Yates (Routledge and Regan Paul 42s) Anyone who blasts the Shakespeare indus- try to the ground deserves a very special prize. As one...

HENRY TUBE The Violent Friend: The Story of Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson Margaret Mackay (Dent 50s) Reviewing the official Life of Robert Louis Stevenson when it was published in...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Jennie Gerhardt, The Financier and The Titan Theodore Dreiser (Panther 8s, 8s 6d and 8s 6d) The Violent Bear it Away Flannery O'Con- nor (Faber 30s) The...

PATRICK ANDERSON fo Leave Before Dawn Julien Green (Pete' ,)ss en 38s) his Timeless Moment Laura Archera (Chatto 42s) he City That Shone Vivian de Solo Pinto Hutchinson 50s)...

THOMAS BRAUN A History of Sicily: Ancient Sicily to the Arab Conquest M. L Finley (Chatto and Windus 36s) The Greek colonists who settled in Sicily and South Italy in the eighth...

CHRISTOPIIER BOOKER Killing No Murder: A Study of Assassina- tion as a Political Means Edward Hyams (Nelson 42s) 1 doubt whether, in her recommendation of a more liberal...

True blues PENELOPE HOUSTON Don't Look Back (icA, Nash House) The Great Train Robbery (Berkeley, V') Therese and Isabelle (Continentale and Cinecenta, 'X') Don't Look Back,...

BRYAN ROBERTSON Edvard Munch stands in exactly the same relationship to expressionism as Degas to impressionism: he was its most lucid and coherent exponent, if not its...

From the 'Spectator, 14 August /869 — Parlia- ment was prorogued on Wednesday last, the 11th inst., with little ceremonial, the Queen's Speech being, in fact, a formal message,...

Vulgar is as vulgar does HILARY SPURLING The Other House (Mermaid) Much Ado About Nothing (Aldwych) Henry James's painful relations with the stage seem to have ended, at any...

Plain clothes Don MICHAEL NYMAN The Proms this year seem more than ever to have been planned as a kind of metro- politan vacation course in practical, but fairly conventional,...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT August is the silly season in the financial world as- in others and the funniest thing that has happened is the sudden devalua- tion of the French franc (by...

JOHN BULL The City is once again humming with news of mergers and takeover battles. The names are well known—Forte's bidding for Sky- ways Hotels, Acrow for Allied Iron-...

Sir: I am grateful to Nicholas Davenport (2 August) for calling my Companies Bill 'a line effort in a good cause' and there is much in his article with which I agree. I do not,...

Sir: Your contributor Mercurius Oxonien- sis (26 July) writes an excellent appreciation of the character and qualities of the late Dean of Christ Church, Dr C. A. Simpson. He...

From W. S. Brownlie, M. J. R. Miller, Dr C. H. V. Sutherland, Sir Brandon Rhys Williams, MP. P. K. Smith, Partha Surra Goswami, G. Reichardt, Professor Earl Miner, Leonard G. H....

Sir: In his article on race and intelligence (9 August), Peter J. Smith supports the idea that 'intelligence is 75 per cent hereditary and 25 per cent environmental'. It is...

Sir: You have printed an article (2 August) sympathetic towards the Senator in the situ- ation in which he finds himself. This has been followed by two letters congratulating...

Nigeria started to wage her genocidal war against the innocent people of the State of Biafra, the intention of that country has been, and still is, to decimate or possibly to...

Sir: In the last issue to hand (21 June). Mr Peter Croft of Christ Church ends his letter with a paragraph showing that the capacity for moral discrimination is not dead in...

Sir: Do the motorists among your readers want to use three-star (95 octane) petrol and if so, do they find it difficult to obtain? The Consumer Council would like to know, so...

Sir: Permit me to point out to Mr Mickle- wright who rejects (Letters, 9 August) my suggestion that releasing the Krogers will amount to interference with the law, that a few...

Sir: I am sorry that Mr Enoch Powell has been frustrated in his ambition to become the Viceroy of India, although, as an Indian, I am delighted that my nation no longer has to...

Sir: As John Sparrow's eulogistic quotation from the Times Educational Supplement demonstrates, the motto of our progressive- permissives would appear to be: If You Can't Beat...

Sir: I am working on the life of George Morland the painter (1763-1804) and would be grateful for any information re- garding the whereabouts of any of his works in private...

Sir: I worked at the BBC during the war, though not in Mr Playfair's department (Personal column'. 9 August). 1 remember well the two brown-overalled visitants, but the second...

La vie en rouge JOHN WELLS Austerity, writes Scampi de Mornay, our man with his finger in the French wind, is not a word that coaxes a smile onto the wine-cracked lips of the...

No. 566: Speed bonny car ... It is reported that a bridge may be built to link the island of Skye with the Scottish mainland, in order to stimulate economic development....

PHILIDOR J. Savournin (1st Prize, Europe Echecs, 1967). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 451 (Roberts): P x P, no threat. I K - Kt 7; 2...

Across 1 Border-line churchman? (6) 4 Being a bit old-hat, no doubt! (8) 9 They caused the pensive Selima's down- fall (8) 10 Nursery ones let you down gently! (6) 12 Olympian...