R GEORGE BROWN has appropriately remarked that there is a new element of fluidity in international affairs, and nowhere is this.more apparent than in the two halves of Europe....

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS ETURNING to those warm Westminster cor- n . ridors after the stirring events of the past month, the most striking thing one notices is how...

Every child, said Gilbert, shall Either be a Liberal Or a Conservative. And that was how it used to be In eighteen-ninety-two or three, In ninety-four or five. Today the young...

L ST week the SPECTATOR invited all those taking part in the Conservative party confer- ence at Blackpool to complete a brief question- naire about the conference. The response...

AMERICA From MURRAY KEMPTON Jack Ruby was tried in a Dallas affronted be- cause his act had blackened its already grimy reputation for peace and order, before a judge who...

MR JOHNSON'S JOURNEY From DAVID WATT It is a useful occasional exercise to think of Johnson's policy in these terms—as a constant, obsessive battle for flexibility regarded as...

Right Result, Wrong Answer By IAN GILMOUR, MP AWYERS may be the best people to inquire j a into wages, sin, the docks, and every other aspect of British life. They are not, at...

M R. ROY JENKINS is to be congratulated on taking the unprecedented step of recom- mending a posthumous free pardon for Timothy John Evans. I do not know, of course, what...

By TIBOR SZAMUELY I STEPPED out of our gateway into a street that had been one of the city's main thoroughfares and was now utterly deserted. The advancing tanks had not yet...

MEDICINE TODAY By JOHN ROWAN WILSON I call it New York Nose after an older and more descriptive system of nomenclature which includes such conditions as Gyppy Tummy, Delhi...

THE LATE SHOW By STUART HOOD MHERE is no more stringent test of a television I programme than to view it in the lounge of a provincial hotel. Judging by the way the audience...

By DAVID LAZELL M sin present era of instant unemployment, a fine flourish of government policy, is, I hear, to be followed by National Labour Exchange Year, an inspired...

October 20, 1866 The papers have been filled all the week with tedious accounts of a grand reception given by the King and Queen of the Belgians to 1,000 British Volunteers....

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN T HE loss to Buckingham Palace of his chief press-handler, after. only a year's service, is a blow that Mr Denis Healey must bear like a man. But...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS ON the back of the dust- jacket of Private Case— Public Scandal* there is a photograph of two people, one gently embracing the other, reading an...

McKillop and Heckstall-Smith to my letter printed in your issue of September 30. Both these letters revealed the outdated, unpro- fessional ideas which lie behind them. Mr...

iNE D. 1TM From : L. Bruce Lockhart, Peter Middleton, Edwin Hubbard, Alan Williams, Henry William- son, Michael Christiansen, Viscount Chandos, E. D. O'Brien, Alan Wood and...

SIR,-1 read with considerable interest Mr Anthony King's article entitled 'Opposition: Illusions and Realities' (October 14) and was somewhat surprised that he failed to mention...

Whitehouse for having used the phrase 'front organisation for Moral Re-Armament' when inquiring about the Clean Up TV Campaign and the National Viewers' and Listeners'...

SIR.—Your reviewer (October 7) of my novel, A Solitary War, declares that 'it is a silly book at best, and at worst a bore.' For him, 'none of the people in this thinly veiled...

SIR,—A propos your leading article 'Opposition Years' (October 14): Gallup at last gave the Tories a lead, As night follows day this will surely increase, Gallup, alas, will...

SIR,—Your review of Two Men Who Saved France gives it high praise in almost every respect, but it suggests that General Spears's account is coloured by a 'particular brand of...

SIR, —Mr Szamuely (September 30) makes so many misrepresentations of our letter that they cannot be left unanswered. His charge that we take 'considerable liberties with the...

objective reviewer. Certainly I have never pretended to be. Political, social, personal prejudices are as difficult to banish from one's mind as they are from our present Prime...

SIR,—The story of 'the plot that never was' first re- vealed ('Spectator's Notebook,' October 14) by the admirable Walter Terry in the Daily Mail? Come. Come. The first...

Mr Brook's Lemon By HILARY SPURL NG L sr week London made its first major excur- sion into the much heralded documentary theatre. U S is an attempt at a new form of motley...

ART V ISITING Birmingham, like Windsor or Hove, reminds me that I really must finish my complete corpus of back views of statues of Queen Victoria. This time, however, I was de-...

RADIO ) COME weeks ago I was talking to a literary agent, when the name Beckett cropped up. `Oh, that fellow who wrote something with God in it, wasn't it?' he said. Two tramps...

ART relation to their intricacy of texture and motif. These simple observations are prompted by the glowing exhibition of watercolours, and a couple of sculptures, ranging from...

A Donkey's Years Balthazar. (Cameo-Poly, 'A' certificate.)— Georgy Girl. (Carlton, 'X' certificate.) R OBERT BRESSON's Balthazar is undoubtedly a superbly made film, possibly...

MUO By ROBERT RHODES JAMES O F all political emotions, that of mistrust is the most difficult to communicate. If it were possible to ask a Tory in the 1850s why he did not...

Memoirs of My Life. By Edward Gibbon. Edited from the manuscripts by Georges A. Bonnard. (Nelson, 84s.) THE book we know and (most of us) love as Gibbon's Autobiography was put...

Good Intentions millan, 21s.) . The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aitken. (Heinemann, 50s.) TRUE short stories, the ones whose intended single effect leaves the reader...

Taste and Remember. By William Plomer. (Cape, 18s.) Surroundings. By Norman MacCraig. (Chatto and Windus, 15s.) 'A.' By Louis Zukofsky. (Cape, 35s.) Nights and Days. By James...

NEW NOVELS High White Collar The Lie. By Alberto Moravia. Translated from the Italian by Angus Davidson. (Seeker and Warburg, 30s.) An Object for a Walk. By Robert Liddell....

archaeology a mere load of junk. But these new pseudo-sciences are still dependent on pre- selected material, the fractional survival of a largely perishable past, which they...

THE features of William Haggard's writing are his sophisticated, worldly style plus his astute- ness. The Power House (Cassell, 18s.) has a definite political background : the...

THE ECOVONY A 'THE 6011 By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT l N the western world every nation is a business and every finance minister a chairman of the board of directors. (I purposely...

By CUSTOS MRS boom in the gilt-edged market has re- ceived a check after a very considerable rise. War Loan has moved up to 52-& to yield 6.85 per cent, which is an...

By JOHN BULL I T is time to look at steel shares again. Only in the past week or so have they emerged from a three-year period of uncertainty as to whether or not the companies...

No. 305. Specially contributed by R. HANCOCK (Bucks) yawn to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 304 (Rice) : Kt - R no threat. r .. Kt - Q 6; 2 P -...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN RAIN, rain, go away: what an unclean suggestion. Did you know that the lava- tories of Britain dispose of about eighty million gallons of...

Level. tt Orleanist. 12 Sordello. t3 Severe. 15 Gong. 16 Epic. 17 Tunes. 20 Needs. 21 Rout. 22 Anna. 24 Tobias. 26 Bastions. 29 Charleroi. 30 Agree. 31 So-so. 32 Stand treat....

ACROSS I. Dinner's just about over (6) 4. What's Rose doing to the roses? (8) to. Concern of `with-it' lexicographers (7) s. Phrases that take heavenly shape (7) 12. Unbiased...

By LORD EGREMONT I WAS at a family house- party with several elderly relations. After dinner they went on talking to each other yackety-yack in the drawing-room. When Aunt...