It is the Government's policy', declared the Chancellor of the Exchequer four months ago in his Letter of Intent to the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, `to...

Candidates for oblivion AUBERON WAUGH You know the shocking record of the Tory-controlled Westminster City Council', cried Mr Arthur Latham, Labour candidate in the North...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Not once nor twice in our rough island story Labour has pinched its gimmicks from the Tory, And now—to show how much they love their neighbour— The Tories...

Rescuing Mr Nixon MURRAY KEMPTON New York — The Moratorium—its sponsors were careful not to use the word 'strike'— against the Vietnam war may have been most significant and...

God's own propaganda GEORGE GALE Last Sunday I was one of the many—of the too many—who appeared on Malcolm Muggeridge's television programme The Question Why. At the end of...

The Unionists' two-way stretch MARTIN WALLACE Belfast—Like Captain Terence O'Neill before him, Major James Chichester-Clark is being forced to defend his reforming policies at...

Queen has agreed, if her health permits, to open the Holborn Viaduct in person on the 6th November, to the great joy of the City, which has, however, resolved to give no enter-...

A reply to my critics ROBERT ODAMS 'Robert Odams' is the pseudonym of an official of the Supplementary Benefits Com- mission; his article, 'The truth about the welfare...

J. W. M. THOMPSON The present inclination to write Sir Edward Boyle's obituary as a politician may well prove to have been premature. It will be very odd if he doesn't return...

An open letter to Edward Boyle PEREGRINE WORSTHORNE Dear Edward, Although we have known each other for many years, the relationship has never been close--which perhaps excuses...

Polls apart BILL GRUNDY It was that wild old man, the Sage of Ecclefechan, who once asked 'How can I believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance?' To be sure,...

Unholy Orders R. A. CLINE Calling up the electorate into constituencies is a tricky and tempting business. It affects the very heart of the constitution, the balance of power...

Invalid power JOHN ROWAN WILSON It is astonishing how we assume that people in high political offices are free from the ordinary weaknesses of mortality. Who, for instance,...

'Vintage volumes LESLIE ADRIAN In 1912 the Wine Trade Club's dranb:, society put on a charity show at the Rol Court in Sloane Square. One of the pl:":1 was a little farce...

An old man's war DENTS BROGAN Washington—I see that the Pacific slope cast of Hair (Mr Kenneth Tynan's version of A Midsummer's Night's Dream I believe), are, for the moment,...

P. T. BAUER In his recently published book, A History of the Asians in East Africa, 1886-1945 (ouP 55s), Dr J. S. Mangat provides the back- ground to the enforced exodus of...

RONALD HINGLEY My Testimony Anatoly Marchenko trans- lated by Michael Scammell (Pall Mall 45s) Life in Russia Today Jack Miller (Batsford 30s) My Testimony belongs to the vast...

JAMES POPE-HENNESSY Queen Alexandra Georgina Battiscombe (Constable 50s) The task which Mrs Battiscombe set herself in writing this fair-minded and workmanlike biography of...

PETER VANSITTART From a Biography of Myself Robert Hen- riques (Seeker and Warburg 50s) Journey from the North Storm Jameson (Collins-Harvill 45s) Through Dooms of LOIT Dorothy...

At ease Maurice CAPITANCHIK A Single Summer with L.B. Derek Marlowe (Cape 30s) Big Bob Georges Simenon (Hamish Hamil- ton 18s) The Studhorse Man Robert Kroetsch (Macdonald...

JOHN FLETCHER The Long Sonata of the Dead Michael Robinson (Hart-Davis 65s) am beginning to lose count of the books written on Beckett ; there were over thirty at the last...

JOHN HOLLOWAY Coleridge and the Pantheist Tradition Thomas McFarland (ouP 70s) The Friend edited by Barbara E. Rooke (Routledge and Kegan Paul 2 vols £7 10s) Coleridge and the...

Monkey business JOHN HIGGINS Both the London opera companies have so far managed to steer a course clear of Hans Werner Henze. From time to time there have been powerful...

Description of Moscow and Muscovy Sigmund von Herberstein (Dent 28s). Baron Sigmund von Herberstein was German Ambassador to Moscow in 1517- 18: in his retirement he wrote the...

Upstream BRYAN ROBERTSON The insistence on fashion in art, with its automatic disposal of whatever precedes the new wave, claims many victims. It can also cause such...

Poor health ROBERT CUSHMAN The National Health (Old Vic) The Stafford Cripps ward, in Peter Nichols's The National Health, is a decaying relic from which the beds are...

Needlework PENELOPE HOUSTON a Vole Lactee (Cameo-Poly, 'A'). hank God, I am still an atheist . .' No rims would be offered for guessing who • id that, whose mind works on a...

Our Autumn Financial Survey is this year divided into two parts. The first half is concerned with exports and the balance of payments in general. In it Harold Lever puts...

E.M.B. The latest figures show an upward trend: Now in the Autumn of our disbelief The fiscal pontiffs cook their special b And serve it hidden in a grape-vine I

MARTIN JACOMB lucomb is a director of the t.hant bankers Klein won, Benson, sdale. at k the City doing to help the balance paNments position and what else ought 0 be doing?...

WILLIAM JANE WAY Will the world economy continue to afford the same convivial context that has, over the past year, allowed Britain to earn her way into the black? For the...

D. COMINO Demetrius Comino is chairman of Dexion Ltd. Why is Britain in trouble? Why are we not doing as well as, if not better than, half a dozen other countries one could...

KENNETH KEITH Sir Kenneth Keith is chairman of the merchant bankers Hill, Samuel and the City's representative on the NEDC. It was, of course, predictable that the...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT If I were an industrialist engaging my time and money in private enterprise I would retard the new super-ministry of industry incorrectly called the Ministry...

Arnold Weinstock is managing director of GEC-English Electric-AEI. Shortly after the conclusion, a year ago, of this gigantic and bitterly-contested merger Mr Weinstock sent an...

Markets take the strain JOHN BULL The stock market is beginning to to the politicians again. If we are already in an election year, we soon be. So one of the questions of the...

Sir : When I saw on your cover that Mr Mug- geridge was to review the work of his disciple, Mr Christopher Booker, I silently resolved to skip that particular page. But such is...

Sir : Nobody would challenge the 1a5( graph in the Rev Allan Hawkin s (18 October). This paragraph inch' statement of the purpose of the CI which the Church of England has '...

Sir: How was it, Sir Robert Birley asks in his review of the new English edition of Mein Kampf (11 October), that people failed to recognise the paranoiac? Perhaps, he thinks,...

Sir : Mr Robert Skidelsky is not untie wards The Masters of Power (18 Octo but he does not seem to have read it carefully. If a 'thesis', in the sense i he uses the word,...

Sir: George Gale (Viewpoint', 11 October) reports Dr Matthias Defregger, - the suspended auxiliary Bishop of Munich, as having said : `. . . I have carried a heavy burden, which...

From Susan Banks, Thomas W. 'Gadd, Christopher Leach, Thomas Spiers, C. C. Aronsfeld, Brian Crozier, the Rev. M. E. Bennett, E. S. James, Nigel Gowland, Darid Burg, P. N. G....

Sir : The Camden Festival Poetry Awards this year total £250. Entry forms (please enclose sAE) from 12 Eldon Grove, London, Nw3.

Mr J. F. Wilkinson (Letters, 11 ber) evades the issue when he seeks xcuse the comment that 'hundreds were on both sides' in the Nigerian acres of 1966 and claims that the BBC...

Sir: Mr Hingley (Letters, 11 October) chides me and my English co-translator with the fact that 'love-girl' is hardly an English expression. Can I tactfully point out to Mr...

Home in the west JOHN WELLS I am not ashamed to admit that there were moments during my ordeal when I felt myself edging towards the brink of insanity. After the long weary...

PHILIDOR G. F. Anderson (1st Prize, Observer, 1961). to play and mate in two moves; solution nett Solution to no. 461 (Joseph): B-RI, no 1 ... R-B5; 2 K-Kt 4. 1 . . . R-Q5; 2 1...

No. 576: Synopsis Set by I. M. Crooks: A recent issue of the Radio Times had the following, defini- tive summary of The Canterbury Tales on its cover 'They met in a pub. Got...

Across 1 Weighty saleslady's aplomb? (12) 9 Abundance of heavenly bodies (9) 10 Girl at the traffic lights is booked (5) 11 Talking bird? (6) 12 Aerial horns (8) 13 Among...