There is a blessed regularity about the politi- cal history of France. What General de Gaulle himself has called 'the delights of anarchy' alternate with the pursuit of glory...

`Initially there is the demand for a fractional amount of student participation . . . The next step is increasing student representation whilst, at the same time, establishing...

Every generation, it seems, must have a simple economic ideology in which it can repose a blind, unreasoning faith. For our fathers it was the mystique of the balanced budget :...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH The Prices and Incomes Bill, said Mr Jack Page, a young Tory member, during Tuesday's second reading debate, marked the beginning of the...

In France, a revolt; and perhaps a revolution. Between six and eight million workers were on strike, many of them occupying their factories and proclaiming worker government. At...

FRANCE -1 MARC ULLMANN Paris—The outcome of France's crisis is hard to predict. But already we know what is at stake: and it is something more than the future of France....

debate on the second reading of the Irish Church Suspen- sory Bill terminated last night in a majority of 54 for Mr. Gladstone, the numbers being 312 for the Bill, and 258...

FRANCE - 2 JOSEPH CHAPMAN Paris — it might be concluded, by those who are not here, that the extraordinary events of the past few days have demonstrated once and for all the...

STUDENTS IAN MacGREGOR The first thing that strikes you about Essex University is the architecture: four great black slabs of brick rising into the clear East Anglian air—the...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON Oakland, California—First, the league stand- ings. Senator Kennedy is plainly a stronger candidate than the polls or my own reservations had suggested,...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS 'And Kings creep out again to take the Sun.'— Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Conquering Kings their captions take From policies they plan to make: Cecil in a...

LEGISLATION JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE I suppose most of us, during our schooldays, came across the schoolmaster whose hold on his class was notoriously weak, and who, from time to...

PERSONAL COLUMN MAURICE COWLING Maurice Cowling is a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and author of 'Disraeli, Gladstone and Revolution.' Over the , last two months we have...

J. W. M. THOMPSON Mr Crosland introduced a new and civilised note into the Stansted affair as soon as he arrived at the Board of Trade last year, and the terms of the new...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY It is, I imagine, easy to get bored with Mr Cecil Harmsworth King, particularly if you are not him; and over the last week or so I reckon I've had my...

• CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN Two years ago, the annual report by the Council of Industrial Design opened with a restrained display of national flag flapping. There was a...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN Many years ago I found among my father's books a two-volume, lavishly illustrated history of the Franco-Prussian War. The author's name I have long...

POSTSCRIPT MARTIN JARRETT-KERR Being a Modest Proposal for the Better Cir- culation of the Members of the Body Politick An ingenious and learned Authour has but lately given us...

BOOKS ROBERT BLAKE On his own definition Bagehot was not strictly an historian at all. He observes in his essay on Lord Brougham, published in 1857 when he was thirty-one,...

J. ENOCH POWELL As I write, I see on the shelf in front of me a dumpy book, with covers sun-bleached, worn and gnawed by cockroaches. It is William Sleeman's Rambles and...

IAIN CRICHTON-SMITH This is volume two of the collected stories of Fred Urquhart and contains twelve pieces, one or two of only five pages or so and the last one of over forty...

PETER VANSITTART Richelieu D. P. O'Connell (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 63s) The seventeenth century, though of Mongol ferocity, was in essence a movement towards reason and order....

JEAN FRANCO Our Lord Don Quixote Miguel de Unamuno translated by Anthony Kerrigan (Routledge and Kegan Paul 56s) In his short story, 'Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote,'...

DAVID PRYCE-JONES Moshe Dayan : A Biography N. Lau-Lavie (Vallentine, Mitchell 30s) The war last June has led to a state of sus- pended animation in the Middle East; the Arab...

DAVID WILLIAMS The Story of My Heart Richard Jefferies with an introduction by Elizabeth Jennings (Mac- millan 25s) Jefferies died in 1887 at the age of thirty-nine. And he'd...

Post Bondage PETER PARLEY Once in a Lifetime James Mayo (Heinemann 25s) An Impartial Eye Pierre Boulle (Seeker and Warburg 25s) The Munich Involvement Frederick Mullaly...

PENELOPE HOUSTON Saturday, 18 May: the day, the dam broke at the Cannes Film Festival. In the general con- text of what is happening in France, the Cannes affair adds up to...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Giselle's tragedy is not so much that she is betrayed, goes mad, dies, and then has to dance nightly in a damp forest; rather, it is that her story has...

Winning worm HILARY SPURLING Mrs Mouse, Are You Within? (Duke of York's) A self-conscious citizen in his shirt and absurdly large, loose underpants stands waiting without...

ART BRYAN ROBERTSON The current orthodoxy, which decrees a uni- formly giant scale for painting and sculpture, is under fire from Mark Tobey's show of small and extremely...

WALL STREET WILLIAM JANEWAY 'If the dollar goes the way of the pound. will Wall Street follow the London Stock Exchange?' The assumptions behind this question—perhaps the most...

JOHN GRAHAM Washington—King Pellinore spent the greater part of his life hunting the questin' beast, one of the most elusive animals to be found, or not found, in the jungle...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT That the Conservative peers defeated the Government in the House of Lords on an amendment to the Industrial Expansion Bill— by sixty-seven votes to...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL The battle for Cambridge Instrument is hotting up very nicely. I bought 300 shares for my speculative portfolio six weeks ago at 38s 9d. That was...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES I learn of a new and disagreeable addition to the Government's methods for getting its way with industry. As a contribution to the incomes policy, the price...

Sir: Rarely has the SPECTATOR, even under its present regime, which has gone a long way already -towards making it an organ of ill- thought-through views, lent itself to so many...

LETTERS From: Mrs Winifred Ewing. MP, T.C. Skeffing- ton-Lodge, E. E. Bonn,r''S McKinlay, !an McKendrick, Timothy Harrison, S. M. Had- dock, Robert E. Walters I. G. Wood,...

CUSTOS There are signs of a quieter and more nervous market. The Financial Times index has moved irregularly, a few points either way from the 465 mark. What is noticeable,...

Sir: The language of Mr Barton-Armstrong's letter of 17 May (as Dicey once said of Black- stone) 'is impressive. . . . It has but one fault; the statements it contains are the...

Sir: Will someone please tell me why almost every present-day writer on naval matters must be so intellectually , timid? Professor Martin, in his article concerning Russia's...

well content if the party were decimated at the next election (your leader of 17 May). That would mean, if decimation means anything at all, a loss of fewer than forty seats....

Sir: B. J. Hurren's letter (17 May) is convinc- ing so far as supersonic flights originating in Britain are concerned. Will he now make his Bc, CD' calculations for ssrs...

(Letters, 17 May) of sonic boom problems, it would be amusing to speculate on the future pattern of international airline routes: Australia could be approached, we are told, at...

friend Mr Skeffington-Lodge describes (Letters,. 19 April) as having competence, courage, kindness, steady nerves and loyalty to friends? Surely this type of man is Prime Minis-...

Sir: Mr Swanton (Letters, 10 May) shoul4 know that it is as absurd to condemn s porters of Mr Powell's arguments because some hooligans have assaulted innocent Indians and...

Sir: Although I share Aneurin Bevan's general view of the British press, some of my best friends are journalists. All the same, let me assure Mr Grundy (17 May) that I would not...

Sir: Henry Tube has no need to continue wait- ing for an English translation of Raymond Radiguet's Le Ba) du Comte d'Orgel (17 May). This work, under the title Count D'Orgel...

Sir: In his most interesting article about The Gadfly (17 May) Tibor Szamuely gives a some- what exaggerated impression of the extent to which the book and its author were...

Sir: In his article on advertising (10 May) Roger Pemberton asks why it is that when BP claims to 'set the pace' in its advertising, it does not 'offer at normally manned pumps...

Sir: `Fool that I am . . (S. Holmes, Solitary Cyclist and Hound of the Baskervilles). Mr John E. Robson (Letters, 3 May) is absolutely right and my review was indeed obstructed...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS Chaos, according to the Daily Telegraph, struck the National Association of Flower Arrange- ment Societies of Great Britain last week when they met at...

COMPETITION Trevor Grove reports: Inviting suggestions may be the first step down the treacherous path that leads to professional suicide: but at least the risk of asking...

Across 1 Just the ticket for a tired soldier (6) 4 It comes twice a month, and on the nail! (4-4) 9 Wine for the bird! (6) 10 He must have a beautiful eye (8) 12 Instrument of...

PHILIDOR P. F. Blake (1st Prize, The House, 1898). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 387 (Guidelli): B - K 5, threat Kt - B 6. 1 . . . B...

Freud went to Greek mythology for his psycho- analytic symbols, the Oedipus complex and all that. Suppose he had turned to Alice in Wonder- land instead? Competitors are invited...