If—as seems likely as we go to press—the Government goes back on its earlier agree- ment in principle to the BOAC take-over of British United Airways and forbids the merger, one...

Harold Wilson's status symbol DAVID WALDER During the last week or so Labour MPS and parliamentary candidates have been posi- tively rooting around in their constituencies for...

No new Vietnam in Laos CRABRO War knows no frontiers. During the Algerian conflict the French army 'was con- tinuously faced with a choice between, on the one hand, acceptance...

Stand up the hardliners MARTIN WALLACE Belfast—There was never any real doubt that the Unionist government wand receive its vote of confidence at Stormont on Wednesday. All...

State intervention, Tory style KEITH JOSEPH, MP Last week the former Labour minister Dr Jeremy Bray attacked in these columns both the present investment grant system and the...

When Willy meets With GEORGE GALE Chancellor Willy Brandt of West Germany meets Prime Minister Willi Stoph of East Germany at Erfurt, in Thuringia, now part of East Germany, a...

J. W. M. THOMPSON People who don't like the idea of law and order' becoming a concern of the electors ought to reflect that at any rate it is far too serious a matter to be...

Can the universities survive? VERNON BOGDANOR Vernon Bogdanor is a Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, Much of the discussion on the ideology of the student revolt has...

On a professor & a novellist MERCURIUS OXONIENSIS GOOD BROTHER LONDIN1ENSIS The news that you send me, viz: that your silly London gazette the Times has publickly declared me...

Masks off BILL GRUNDY When I was at university there used to be a splendid Professor of Music called, most magically, Humphrey Procter-Gregg. It was a name so exactly right,...

Farms or follies DENNIS WARREN Dennis Warren is the manager of a 2,500 acre estate in Oxfordshire. 'God gave up making land a long time ago, but he is still making people'....

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS The Government majority at the end of the recent defence debate sank to twenty-one and Mr Mellish, the Chief Whip, com- plained that he wondered whether his...

An American Attica DENIS BROGAN It is with great distress that I find myself charged by a Mr R. Emmett TyreII (Letters, 28 February) with making snide remarks in this column...

Moses in a lounge suit ANTHONY BURGESS In James I's reign the two conceivably greatest books in the Western world appeared—the Authorised Version of 1611 and the First Folio...

C. HUGH LAWRENCE The Twelfth Century Renaissance Christopher Brooke (Thames & Hudson 35s) Forty-three years ago the American mediaevalist Charles Homer Haskins wrote a book...

John Julius NORWICH A History of the Crusades Vols 1 and 11 general editor: Kenneth M. Setton (Uni- versity of Wisconsin Press 238s) 'Whatever is done well enough is done soon...

TED HUGHES The Environmental Revolution M a x Nicholson (Hodder & Stoughton 84s) Perfectly timed, and with an unusually qualified author, The Environmental Revolution manages...

Martin SEYMOUR-SMITH Seneca's Oedipus adapted for the theatre by Ted Hughes (Faber 6s) Prometheus Bound derived from Aeschylus by Robert Lowell (Faber 20s) Seneca's ten...

CLARENCE BROWN The Oxford Chekhov Vol V: Stories 1889- 1891 translated and edited by Ronald Hingley (ouP 42s) The Oxford Chekhov is a monumental work —that is the first thing...

ELIZABETH BOWEN Making Conversation Christine Longford (Faber 28s) Christine Longford's Making Conversation first came out in 1931. Anyone who was con- scious at that time must...

NIGEL DENNIS The town of Elysia is famous for its raspberries, The raspberry-fields run to the horizon on every side: Between each field lies a strip of water-meadow On which...

ANN WORDSWORTH The Quest for Ranunitn: D. II, Lawrence's Letters to S. S. Koteliansky edited by George J. Zytaruk (McGill! Queens UP 113s) Planning Utopia is quite a favourite...

JOHN BETJEMAN The Survey of London Volume 35: The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden edited by F. H. W. Sheppard (Published for the Gtx by the...

JOHN FLETCHER Poems in the Rough Paul Valery translated by Hilary Corke (Routledge and Kegan Paul 84s) Between them Routledge and the Bollingen Foundation have been engaged for...

HENRY TUBE Slaughterhouse Five or The Children's Crusade Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (Cape 30s) If I say that Kurt Vonnegut's new novel is about the destruction of Dresden and that it is...

NICHOLAS MANSERGH Report of the Irish Boundary Commission, 1925 Introduction by Geoffrey Hand (Irish University Press 65s) The Trish Boundary Commission met for the first time...

PENELOPE HOUSTON A colleague's hard-line comment this week on Michelangelo Antonioni, apropos Zabriskie Point (Empire, 'X' London), was that while Antonioni is undeniably an...

Treasure trove BRYAN ROBERTSON It is hard to tell how a public saturated with images from newsprint, the streets, television, will react to the truly stupendous exhibition at...

War dance CLEMENT CRISP A couple of years ago BBC television showed a film of a Brazilian folk dance ‘‘hich originated among the slaves imported by the Portuguese; under cover...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT The budget of 1966, which introduced the selective employment tax, was for me a memorable occasion. I had gone to Great George Street to collect the budget...

From the 'Spectator', 19 March /870 — Henry of Bourbon, infante of Spain and cousin of the ex-Queen, has been shot by the Duke de Mont- pensier. The two men had been enemies for...

JOHN BULL Offshore funds are beginning to attract a good deal of attention. To the general public they have an attractive free-booting air, rather as if they were pirate unit...

Sir: Mr Enoch Powell has the unfortunate habit of making controversial statements as if they were self-evident truths which re- quire no corroboration. For example in your last...

Sir: It is surprising to find a journalist of the distinction of Ludovic Kennedy achieving such vast generalisations as those in his article on New York (7 March). If I may...

Sir: I was most gratified by Mr Szamuely's enlightening article (14 February) on Tito's policeman and the subsequent correspond- ence. It is high time that the long tradition of...

From Datne loan Vickers, MP. K. Treeby, R. Marcetic, L. A. Holford-Strevens. J. M. Venables, J. F. McCrindle, N. J. Ogbuehi, Bruce S. Reed and Geoffrey Williams, R. J. F....

Sir: By way of comment on John Rowan Wilson's very middle-class eulogy of money, here are a few things that the possession.of a. small fortune may, in certain circumstances,...

Sir: It was more than a little odd to read in your issue of 7 March Sir Denis Brogan in- dicating that it was not clear for Jacobites in the reign of Queen Victoria 'who the ap-...

Literary life E.M.S. This is the cautionary tale Of poor misguided Henri Beyle Who weathered many a major scandale Under the nom de plume of Stendhal. He kept his trousers in...

Sir: What does your reader Mr 'James Adams' mean when he says in his letter (14 March) that 'the trouble seems to be that the Negro wants his PhD, Cadillac, etc, not merely now,...

Sir: We would like to correct a few points made in J. W. M. Thompsdn's notebook (7 March) about the book we are currently writing on Denis Healey and British defence policy....

No. 597: Singalong Set by Joyce Johnson: In giving pro- grammes, the Radio Times now runs song titles on to each other in a single paragraph, e.g. '0 care, thou wilt despatch...

Across: 1 In Lancashire they are eaten fat! (7) 5 Briefly incorporated and seen to give off fumes (7) 9 A wing in the MCC to get the cane (7) 10 'Then nightly sings the — owl'...

PHILIDOR L. I. Losh nski (Tihischrift v. d. Ned. Schaak, 1930). Wh'te to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 482 (Maslar-2K 5/4P3/Rlp I p3/...