comment by loosing howl- ing gales across Britain. Two of the North Sea oil rigs were in trouble, but survived it; and then a new gas strike was announced by Shell and Esso only...

THE OPINION POLLS had already settled the matter to their own satisfaction: but still, Britain's general election had to wind on to its ordained climax in the polling stations....

and Mr Brezhnev suggested a Sino-Soviet summit meeting to discuss the countries' chronic differences. Mr Goldberg, America's chief representative at the UN, announced that the...

'The anatomy of civil society is to be found in political economy'—KARL MARX. A S this issue of the SPECTATOR goes to press, polling day still lies ahead. But if the opinion...

Friday April 1 1966

Our political masters confess they are puzzled. Not talk of the pound--why, they scorn the suggestion. Now the votes are all in, and their mouths are unmuzzled: But what they...

The Future of Mr Heath By ALAN WATKINS A s I write, a Labour victory is regarded as being as inevitable as spring flowers or a tough budget. This is therefore an appropriate...

I'm not very keen on the Common Market. After all we beat Italy and we saved France and Belgium and Holland. I never see why we should go crawling to them now.—Lord Attlee. He...

The Volatile British Voter By ROBERT BLAKE p ARLIAMENTS as short as that elected in October 1964 are rare exceptions in British history. Since 1832 there have been...

The Mechanical Man By JOHN WELLS W HOEVER else snatches open their morning papers and particularly their Sunday papers in the coming week with a bright-eyed eagerness to be...

Conservative By MALCOLM RUTHERFORD a Conservative, this time I shall be voting Liberal. This is, I take it, the best available way of recording a protest without positively...

March 31, 1866 War between Austria and Prussia has become much more probable. Each power declares that it is arming only to prevent attack, and special preparations known to be...

By JOHN BRUNNER T HE corpses continue to be trundled out. First it was the late lamented 4 per cent growth rate. Now the 25 per cent target of the National Plan. Can incomes...

T SEE that Mr Denis Healey has said that Mr 1Heath 'has 'a clear duty' to sack Mr Enoch Powell as his shadow Minister of Defence. I can't for a moment imagine that Mr Heath—...

It's sad to see that once great Liberal news- paper, the Guardian, degenerate to little better than a mouthpiece for Transport House. Like most converts, it has embraced the new...

I was attracted to the new English edition of Monsieur Nicolas, or the Human Hear( Laid Bare by the discovery that its author, the cele- brated eighteenth-century pornographer...

The need for 'purposive planning' has never been far from H. Wilson's lips during the election cam- paign. But it's been a cliché rather than a con- sidered argument. To...

By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS * VATICAN POLITICS AT THE SECOND VATICAN HE day of full Christian reunion is still far I distant. As the Archbishop of Canterbury's visit to the Pope...

From DEV MURARKA MOSCOW T HE Chinese decision to stay away from the twenty-third Soviet party congress has been received here with relief, if not with pleasure. The one major...

From SARAH GAINHAM BONN T ite difficulty about discussing German think- ing over NATO is that the Germans refuse to speak plainly about it. To the reluctance openly to...

By TIM PAT COOGAN DUBLIN W HAT'S going to happen at Easter?' Honestly I don't know, and what's more, I don't think anyone else does either. People are talking IRA, thinking...

Talking Your Way to the Top By ALAN BRIEN THERE is a widely-held theory, recently given an airing in the Advisory Centre for Education magazine Where?, that middle- and...

U From: Robin Farquharson, Jonathan S. Boswell, Ken Geering. Iris Glover, Oonagh Lahr, George A. Wheatley, Richard Lamb, Mrs. W. M. Sykes, C. H. Mellor, Elie Abel. Voters'...

SIR,—Mr Wheatley asks why you bothered to pub- lish something by a 'Felon' about prisons. Surely with a little thought Ml Wheatley might have answered his own question: it is...

SIR,—All discussion of the welfare state seems to be concerned with the financial aspects of it, but there is another side which seems to me to be more important. A perfect,...

SIR, —Mr Sherman asks how I reconcile approval of the Government's public spending cuts with their pledges on the social services before the 1964 election. Leaving aside that...

SIR,—Desmond Donnelly, understandably, cries: 'Spare us a landslide.' When one remembers that it is only in conditions of a tiny parliamentary majority for the Labour party that...

SIR, —In your 'Spectator's Notebook' on March 25 your reference to Liberal views on 'Vouchers in Wel- fare' gives the impression that Professor Michael Fogarty was the author of...

SIR, —My attention has been drawn to the letter from Mr Farquhar in your issue of March 18 in which he claims that the US experiments show that nothing has gone wrong....

and practical views on the value of deterrents, should be so wrathful as to denounce my plain and downright denunciation of criminals as nasty and cheap. Surely the subject is...

attended a mixed elementary school from 1904 to 1911. On only one occasion was a girl caned. It was considered that the nature of her offence war such that it could only be...

Sta,—All credit to David Rees for his careful reading of Rovere (page 377. SPECTATOR, March 25, 1966).. It It was indeed my old friend Tommy McIntyre who 'put the real muscle...

Marriage Lines As an antidote to the boredom, vulgarity and A platitudinising of our present troubles I can recommend a visit to Covent Garden, where the Royal Ballet is...

- v - THEATRE Knightsbridge Wonder By HILARY SPURLING O UR current adulation of 'pop culture' is a prime device for keeping ahead of the Joneses—and not basically different...

All Over Girls Alfie. (Plaza, 'X' certificate.) HE philanderer as funny man is one thing, I the philanderer as wrecker of lives another, and shaking the two up together...

ACROSS 1. Revolutionary road-blocks (10) 6. When pots turn red it's a signal 10. Acts ts taken in alternation? (5) 11. End as a matter of course? (9) 12. Beg, with a settlement...

Aviary. 10 Chinaman. 12 Thespian. 13 Midrib. 15 Rail. 16 Patriarchy. 19 Steamships. 20 Stow. 23 Eddish. 25 Milliard. 27 Aiguille. 28 Cantab. 29 Georgian. 30 &achy. DOWN -1...

Not All There T HOSE with an appetite for Shakespeare have been on thin commons in the theatre this winter, so that one sat down to The Winter's Tale on the Third Programme...

English Blake By JOHN HOLLOWAY `O NE .1-NNE I have finished,' Blake wrote of the coloured copy of Jerusalem; 'it con- tains 100 Plates, but it is not likely I shall get a...

IT is taken for an axiom nowadays that poetry should be a quintessence of language which, if one can bear it at all, one cannot bear for long; and so the epical is out of the...

Atomic Diplomacy : Hiroshima and Potsdam. The Use of the Atomic Bomb and the American Confrontation with Soviet Power. By Gar Alperovitz. (Seeker and Warburg, 35s.) Day of...

A Small War Made to Order. By Norman Lewis. (Collins, 21s.) The Russian Interpreter. By Michael Frayn. (Collins, 21s.) The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. By Yukio...

All this the master of the language knows: Your conjugated errors cage you in That you may learn at last what I say goes. Decline 'I am.' Or so decline what follows Is your own...

Selected Poems. By Gunter Grass. Translated by Michael Hamburger and Christopher Carroll, 21s.) Christ: A Poem in Twenty - six Parts. By Gavin Bantock. (Donald Parsons, 25s.)...

DR FRAKOISE HI \RV is Director of Studies in Archaeology and the History of Painting at University College, Dublin, and for many years has been one of the undisputed authorities...

Savings and the Witch-doctors By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT I N the last two weeks I thought I had exposed all the inflationary aspects of a dear money regime, but no! Mr Oliver...

By CUSTOS I F the investment dollar premium can rise to 25 per cent--s-it is now 22 per cent—before the election what can it do if Labour is returned with a huge majority? I...

The new Stock Exchange account will see the end of 'tax loss' selling for the financial year, but perhaps the beginning of new selective liquidation of company equities whose...

By LO I 11 It I. R Y O N February 25 Custos commented on the results of Imperial Chemical Industries, the largest chemical company in the UK. The very full report from Sir Paul...

ASHANTI GOLDFIELDS COR PORATION IMPROVED PROSPECTS UNDER NEW REGIME THE 69th annual general meeting of Ashanti Gold- fields Corporation Limited was held on March 30 in...

It is disappointing that the Treasury have re fused to allow NEW BROKEN OWL to transfer its domicile to Australia, although both its business and its management are situated in...

that many appliance firms have a standard charge for each hour of their mechanics' time. A housewife found this out the hard way, when she was billed for an hour's work for a...

And So to Bed By LESLIE ADRIAN THE spate of March marri- ages was a bit previous this year, the Budget having been deferred in favour of that less predictable and irregular...

bang. For £68 you can now buy a return air ticket to Sofia, hire a car for a week and have another week in a Black Sea resort. The hotel bills during your week's motoring are...

Sun, Sea and Islands By ANDREW ROBERTSON I was sorry that he missed out on the Paros lobsters and the local wine, which is unresinated and full-blooded dark red. But, of...

Faugh! By STRIX TAUGH ! These bloody sportsmen are enough to sicken any decent person.' Mr Leslie Pine, from the closing pages of whose new book After Their Blood* this...

Election Inquest including contributions by EDWARD BOYLE, MARK BONHAM CARTER, SHIRLEY WILLIAMS, and PETER PULZER. As April 8 is Good Friday, next week's SPECTATOR will be...

B y PHILIDOR No. 276. A. R. GOODERSON (Problemist, Sept., 1965) BLACK (4 men) wurra (9 men) For anyone of my generation who saw (or, still more, suffered from) the genius of...