there by a British Prime Minister for seven years. Though it was agreed on both sides there was little chance of progress, he was received with some cordiality and paid his...

went ahead with his early warning legislation nevertheless. Mr. Edward Heath began a campaign to save the No. 89 bus route and Mr. Douglas Houghton prophe- sied a new Ministry...

'DEFENCE SPENDING TO RISE' proclaimed the Daily Worker, adding a new interpretation to an already confusing issue. Publication of the Defence White Paper was preceded by the...

issue of the SPECTATOR is in most readers' hands, it is possible that the starter will have fired his pistol for the next general election. If so, it is a safe bet that the...

By R. A. CLINE MHE Government's White Paper on the en- I franchisement of leaseholds (an emotive and loaded phrase suggesting some sort of liberation) is a deceptively innocent...

Mr. Humphrey in Vietnam Fthm MURRAY KEMPTON NEW PORK P RESIDENT Johnson can count one victory in the depressing struggle for freedom in South- East Asia : he has liberated...

Mr. Brown's Wages Bill CLIVE JENKINS One year's subscription to the 'Spectator : f 3 15s. (including postage) in the United Kingdom and Eire. By surface mail to any other...

How the Election will be Fought By ALAN WATKINS T HE unity on show at Westminster this week has been impressively monolithic and Stalinesque. I refer, of course, to the unity...

By NORMAN ST. JOHN-STEVAS, MP rrillE Tory party dislikes being in opposition I and it is quite right. Opposition in our un- reformed Parliament, as Labour found for thir- teen...

Sir David Luce Wonders what's the use Of making a holocaust Of the dollar-cost? If they want the Phantom We can decant 'em, And the Spey-Mirage Is a mirage. But with a swing...

M R. Selwyn Lloyd's journey to Rhodesia hasn't produced any surprises, but it con- firms, as the SPECTATOR has long argued, that the only sensible course is to restart the...

An MP friend, recently in Hungary, tells me this latest joke in top Hungarian Government circles. Party official to leader of deputation of disgruntled farmers: 'And what sort...

The choice of Mr. A. N. Halls to succeed Mr. Derek Mitchell as the Prime Minister's Principal Private Secretary certainly seems to justify the concern I expressed here last...

All the obituarists will no doubt salute Vicky as the greatest cartoonist of our time. This I am sure he was. Not only was he a draughtsman who had equipped himself with a...

write a duplicated letter from the Government Chief Whip, dated Febru- ary 17, 1966. 'Dear Colleague,' it begins (I hasten to point out that it isn't in fact addressed to me;...

By ALAN WATKINS O N Monday a mass meeting of the East Harrow Conservative Association dis- regarded the views of its officers and passed a resolution urging that Commander...

(The 20th Party Congress ended in Moscow ten years ago this week) By ALEC NOVE 'What is Volgograd?' 'Volgograd is Stalingrad. It was renamed in 1961 . . 'And this battle,...

On the Ceiling By JOHN ERICKSON I T was certainly a malignant wit who, in intro- ducing the discussion of 'Britain's Military ROle' in Part I of the statement of the Defence...

John Melvin. ARIBA, Ian T. Smith. Donald Reid. David G. Woodley. David Roberts. A. R. Cole-Hamilton. R. L. Archdale, A. E. G. Wright, Patrick Sergeant. J. C. Vorvoreamt, Robert...

expression does little credit to his powers of reasoning; it should be obvious to him that the economic freedom of one man is no longer paralleled by the economic slavery of...

Mail in the Van By DESMOND DONNELLY HE Daily Mail went up this week to four- ' pence. The surprising fact was that it had stayed at threepence for so long, after the Daily...

qualifications, the showing of The War Game, apparently as a kind of vaccination therapy.. Do we really have to see a picture .of a child being raped and strangled before we...

SIR,—I am a sixth-former at one of the oldest, ant what is acknowledged as one of the best, grammar schools in the country, and it is now faced with the bogy of comprehension....

SIR.--While the fate of Mr. Crossman may now be in some doubt, there can be little doubt as to the fate of the Packington Estate in the hands of the Islington borough council...

the time of the alleged incident. If the state is to permit homo- sexual acts in private it cannot, to be consistent. condemn Commander Courtney's conduct. DAVID G. WOODLEY 9...

Sta,--In his article. 'A New Deal for the Homo- sexual' (February 4). Mr. Christopher Chataway, MP, mentions that both Gallup and NOP now show a clear majority in favour of...

stiews of the Church of Scotland on homosexual law reform persistently paraded as though they were the only religious body whose attitude mattered. In fact their opinions are...

completely over- stating the case for what he calls a 'progressive penal policy with its emphasis on reform.' The prime object of the law is surely to protect the legal rights...

with Love') states 'the Russians had treated [the Ruman- ians] with more than usual clumsiness from the begin- ning,' and that 'It dawned eventually on even the most pro-Soviet...

dig- nity and sense one expects from him of the results of the election to the Oxford Professorship of Poetry, and of his admiration for Mr. Blunden's work; and there we can...

Stx,--Dizzy wasn't the only sensible one—when Gladstone, as leader of the Liberal party, was as „al to condemn Parnell, he replied: 'What! because a man is called a leader of a...

his kind remarks about our eating habits but he is much less than accurate in writing 'some City Editors are even welcomed at board lunches.' My experience is that all City...

contain expressions of opinion capable of being construed as critical of the Soviet political system. His works were published in the West. It needs, therefore, no innuendo of a...

SIR, —Your reviewer of Lady Birkenhead's Illustrious Friends says that my grandmother, Lady Millais, killed with a slanderous letter to Mrs. La Touche the slight hope Ruskin had...

A Background of Continuous Drizzle By HENRY TUBE ‘ - r) ADIO is an ideal medium for a writer: the Jrk quality of the writing is everything,' writes Martin Esslin, head of the...

SIR,—It is strange to find your city commentator approving the abolition of exempt private com- pany status. He acknowledges that the equity share is the kingpin of the capital...

Sex and Society "TEACHING'S so intellectual and when it's not I intellectual, it's bossy, or most of it.' says one of the characters in The Knack, expressing a theory the...

Misdeal J OHN CR kNKO has always had a gift for comic choreography and at his best—in Pineapple Poll, Bonne Bouche or the blissful sequence with a wandeling table in Sweeney...

N\ isp and \\ huffle `TAKE care of the sense, and the sounds will r T take care of themselves.' Lewis Carroll's pleasantry is elevated by some into an aesthetic principle. What...

Capital Show Paris vu par . . . ('X' certificate). Thomas l'Im- posteur (`A' certificate) (both Paris-Pullman). ?C ris vu par . . . six New Wave directors will onfirm the...

By ROBERT RHODES JAMES A HISTORICAL comprehension of any period usually carries with it the perils of a strong sense of personal identification. But it is surely not fanciful...

New Light on Old Ghosts. By Trevor H. Hall. (Duckworth, 25s.) MR. HALL has in the last ten years been author or part-author of several books in the same genre: The Haunting of...

The New Radicalism in America (1889-1963): The Intellectual as a Social Type. By Christopher Lasch. (Chatto and Windus, 45s.) Executive Reorganization and Reform in the New Deal...

The Norman Conquest. By Dorothy Whitelock, David C. Douglas. Charles H. Lemmon and Frank Barlow. Edited by C. T. Chevallier. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 21s.) To most amateurs. the...

Portrait of Japan. By Hakon Mielche. Translated Reischauer. (Harvard/O.U.P., 52s.) A Short History of Japan. By Malcolm Ken- nedy. (Mentor Books, 6s.) THE first three of these...

Medieval Welsh Lyrics. Translated with an intro- duction by Joseph P. Clancy. (Macmillan, 30s.) . TRANSLATIONS of over one hundred poems by twenty-five poets of the...

In the Spring the War Ended. By Steven Linakis. (Cassell, 25s.) OXFORD and Alexandria have always been grave- yards of the reputations of minor novelists. I can think of only...

ECONOIN MIE The Threat to Wall Street By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT E VERYTHING about America is fabulous. I say this with absolute sincerity after looking again at a few statistics...

By CUSTOS T HE rise in equity shares has been halted as I write and the trend is downward. I have lately been stressing the fact that the rise has been due in part to unwilling...

When the Labour government came into office investors were nervous of road transport shares in view of the threat of nationalisation, and the leader of this grOUp-TRANSPORT...

The less buoyant tone of the market was set by ICI, whose disappointing report discomfited the bulls. Pre-tax profits were down by 10 per cent and earnings amounted to only 16...

By LOTHBURY T HE first report - by Mr. D. W. G. L. Haveland, the new chairman of Staveley Industries, is a satisfactory one for the year ended Septem- ber 30, 1965: Pre-tax...

CONSUMING INTEREST Help Wanted By LESLIE ADRIAN WIZEN mum has the flu (A, B or just the usual), and junior decides to ac- company her with the measles, what dad does is to...

King's Evil By JOHN ROWAN WILSON o Ir seems now that George Acute intermittent porpbyria is a disorder of metabolism in which attacks of abdominal pain and vomiting are...

By PHILIDOR P. A. ORLIMONT (Muenchener Zeit- ung, 1927) WHITE to play and mate in four moves ; solution next week. Solution to No. 27o (Caresmel): Q — B 4, no threat. Excellent...

Cruising Down the River By ANDREW ROBERTSON But great as Abu Simbel was and will be again, to think thus is to lose a proper apprecia- tion of what the Upper Nile has to show....

it is still to France that the vast majority of holidayers abroad go. Over one and a half million last year made the Channel crossing, to find in many cases that they had...

The Inside Story By ALAN BRIEN THE difficulty about writ- ing a column like this is not where to begin but where to stop. What- ever the official subject of the piece, I begin...

ACROSS 29. 1. Lip? (10) 30. 6. A well-plucked 'un (4) 10. Palindromic revolver (5) 11. Like music among the palms? (9) 1. 12. Appealing cry from the Islands 2. is most...