do not speak the same language The League of Nations was a flop. Has the United Nations, begun twenty-five years ago, been any better? and is it likely that from it will grow,...

PETER PATERSON Government hurries on apace, mocking all those Labour politicians who only three weeks ago were jeering at three months of drift and inactivity by their...

Canadians were horrified by the murder of Mr Pierre Laporte, Minister of Labour in the Quebec provincial government, and one of the two people kidnapped by cells of the Quebec...

The great Common Market Swindle—it is no less—continues apace. The structure of the swindle, which has been perpetrated by Conservative, Labour, and now Con- servative...

NICOS E. DEVLETOGLOU Some two and a half millennia ago, the charge that 'there is a pestilential busybody called Socrates who fills people's heads with wrong ideas' (Plato,...

LOUIS CLAIBORNE The streets of New York today are perhaps as unsafe as the streets of London in Queen Victoria's time. That would no longer matter much to Mr Nixon, who has...

AMERICA The last best hope on earth DENIS BROGAN Washington, DC I have been in the United States exactly a fortnight and I leave in exactly a week. This is by no means my...

Another world? DAVID COHEN Having spent a great deal of money on an advertising campaign that proclaimed 'Ber- muda—another world' to attract more tour- ists, the riots in...

John Davies and Parliament: Heath's silent verdict ENOCH POWELL The more the new organisation of Whitehall which now confronts the returning House of Commons is studied, the...

Only a game Who Are the two That Jackie Charlton longed to do? He boasts he'll catch the bastard's shirts And pull at them until it hurts— But only in an international— And...

Raising the tone By 'a Conservative' The controversy surrounding the decision to sell arms to South Africa has produced much heat and little light. It has induced moral...

The Irish idea of justice CONSTANTINE FITZGIBBON The Irish attitude towards the whole concept of justice, and to the whole apparatus of its administration from the policeman...

Prices and wages BILL GRUNDY The Guardian went up this week by a penny to 9d. Denis Hamilton of the Times Organ- isation recently made a speech in which the question of a...

Death by merger PETER J. SMITH In at least one country in the world, learned scientific journals are offered for sale on railway station bookstalls. Needless to say, it does...

From the 'Spectator,' 22 October 1870—There is an idea rapidly gaining ground among our own people, in Germany, and in America which ought to be discussed. Is it not possible,...

Sir: Anthony Lewis's suave letter is another example of what I was complaining about. He argues that I was obviously an unsuitable author of a profile of Enoch Powell for the...

From: Brian Inglis, B. Joseph, Pere- grine Worsthorne, Bernard Levin, William Sansom, Patrick Cosgrove, Harry J. T. Blackwood, M. T. Bremridge, J. Reilly, F. P. M. Cook, Ralph...

note 'The First Fascist?' in your issue of 9 October, that hoary myths die hard. The Jewish con- cept of a `Chosen People' is poles apart from the Nazi concept of a Herrenvolk....

Sir : Diana Graves, in her anec- dotage, was right to suspect that the nature of the porbeagle might not be too delicate. Indeed, the por- beagle is sometimes ten feet long, and...

Sir: I would like to make an obser- vation or two about Mr Martin Seymour - Smith ' s hysterical e ff u- sion which masqueraded, in your issue of 3 October, as a review of my...

Sir: I happened to pick up last week's (3 October) copy of the SPECTATOR and turned to an article of John Graham's about the Ego- politics of Mr Nixon etc. I am afraid that I...

Sir: In re singular/plural, P. N. L. Lycett misapprehends me. Varia- ability and flexibility (highly-prized attributes of English) arc by no means the same thing as mere mental...

Sir: - The Open University is por- trayed as an excitingly new devel- opment allowing people who never attended a university to study for a degree. There is nothing new about...

Sir: Allow me to protest vehem- ently, if a little belatedly, against your indecent verbal caricature of Dr A. L. Rowse ('Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Historian'), which you...

Sir: So much of what is said and written about the Middle East crisis has either an emotional bias or is too complicated to follow. Having studied the complexities of these...

Sir: 'It seems to me sometimes that the industrial revolution has left scars not only on England from which her towns and countryside may never recover but also a scar on her...

Sir: I was amazed by the para- graph in the 'Spectator's Notebook' (10 October) in which the writer, after recounting highly unflatter- ing anecdotes concerning the Hungarians...

Sir: I am intrigued by your correspondent's difficulties in regard to the presence of spiders in his bath. I thought that by now the answer was clear and well known, and I feel...

No. 627: Fond farewell A fashion which has given so much pleasure to at least half the popu- lation must not go unelegised. Competitors are accordingly in- vited to indite a...

JOHN VINCENT The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill Robert Blake (Eyre and Spottis- woode 60s) There is one aspect to the Conservative party on which fresh thought is...

BRIAN CROZIER Salazar and Modern Portugal. Hugh Kay (Eyre and Spottiswoode 85s) It is not, I maintain, a frivolous concern for topicality that makes me start this review of a...

PATRICK COSGRAVE Islands in the Strewn Ernest Hemingway (Collins 40s) Islands in the Stream recounts three episodes in the life of Thomas Hudson, painter. He entertains the...

JOHN CASEY Dickens the Novelist F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis (Chatto and Windus 50s) The authors ferociously dismiss those critics who 'tell us with the familiar, easy...

of conversion DAVID KNOWLES The World of Bede Peter Hunter Blair (Seeker and Warburg 80s) Bede the Venerable has several titles to fame. He is the first writer (if not the...

TAYA ZINKIN India's China War Neville Maxwell (Cape 100s) Mr Maxwell writes brilliantly. He has made a far better case for the Chinese than they have ever made for themselves....

JOHN BRAINE Bech: A Book John Updike (Andre Deutsch 30s) I can remember the time, discovering Dos Passos, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Farrell, O'Hara, when the chief feature of...

MICHAEL WHARTON A.P.H.: His Life and Times Sir Alan Herbert (Heinemann 63s) My Commonplace Book Mary Stocks (Peter Davies 55s) Whatever Happened to Tom Mix Ted Willis (Cassell...

T. C. W. BLANNING Frederick the Great Nancy Mitford (Hamish Hamilton 80s) It would be difficult to write a dull book about Frederick the Great. He lived for seventy-four years...

DOUGLAS HURD Who Killed Enoch Powell? Arthur Wise (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 30s) Chief the Honourable Minister T. M. Aluko (Heinemann 12s) Political thrillers are so fashionable...

ROGER SCRUTON Exiles and Emigres: Studies in Modern English Literature Terry Eagleton (Chatto and Windus 36s) Except for Conrad, Eliot, and D. H. Law, fence. the 'exiles and...

A. R. PREST Papers on Planning and Economic Manage- ment Ely Devons edited Sir Alec Cairn- cross (Manchester University Press 60s) Ely Devons first made his mark on a national...

J. M. ROBERTS The European Renaissance since 1945 Maurice Crouzet (Thames and Hudson 35s) This book must suffer by being launched in the wake of Richard Mayne's tour de force....

J. H. PLUMB The Diary of Samuel Pepys a new and com- plete transcription edited by Robert Latham and William Matthews (University of California Press) Vols 1-111 (1660-62),...

GILLIAN WIDDICOMBE Sometimes I wonder why so much music criticism is so polite. Approximately thirty seconds later I conclude that it must be the side-effects of the...

or, the Royal Ballet revamped CLEMENT CRISP Am I alone in welcoming the new regime at Covent Garden? I cannot believe so, though the carping, the wailing and gnashing of...

Major and minor KENNETH HURREN There are times when I am taken inescapably by the notion that the Royal Shakespeare Company would rather be doing almost anything except...

Bronco bnrcya;Ti PENELOPE HOUSTON It takes some doing these days to bring in a feature film for less than £20,000. (K es, usually and properly saluted as an example of...

Chaff and charm EVAN ANTHONY On the evidence of her work on view at the O'Hana Gallery, Budapest-born Zsuzsi Roboz can be placed firmly in the 'women glib' school of art. Her...

People for sale Patrick Skene CATLING One of the oldest tricks of the journalistic game is to deplore cheesecake while shovel- ling it into the public's insatiable maw. 'Look...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT The first ceremonial duty of a Lord Mayor of London is to invite the merchants and bankers of the City to a feast at the Mansion House at which the guest of...

The making of a Super Minister STANLEY JOHNSON In the big world beyond the basement windows, the environment issue gets bigger and bigger. Both Chataway and Crosland appear,...

From the Financial Times 16 October: LONDON AND BOMBAY £800,000 BID FOR SITA The first deal by London and Bombay In- vestments, which came to the Market only three weeks ago,...

I cannot say I shall be sorry if Mr John Davis gives Lord Melchett the push from the British Steel Corporation. He was the appointee of that young buck of the Labour Cabinet...

The group of transatlantic tourists in the famous French country restaurant were deferential about the food, knowledgeable name-droppers re wines, gentle in their be- haviour,...

'How can I stop someone cutting down a tree?' It was the voice of a neighbour which presented me with this question on the tele- phone at breakfast time the other day, and the...

Someone pointed out to me last week that among the underground newspapers of which I had almost reverentially spoken, there was one that was actually being prosecuted under the...

Bailey's Hunting Directory does not have a wide circulation. But, like Wisden and other sporting bibles, it is a compulsive read 'for the dedicated, and it has its moments even...

DAEDALUS A prize of three guineas will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened on 2 November. (Last week's date should have read 26 October.) Address...