It must now be accepted that the sanc- tions programme cannot succeed unless Dr Verwoerd wants it to. And whatever the Prime Minister may say at Lancaster House next week, it...

Prince Rainier has expressed a hope that a more intellectual type of resident might be attracted to settle in Monaco. Mr Onassis thinks that it should be preserved as a refuge...

By NORMAN ST JOHN-STEVAS, MP . F 0R the Tories opportunity is now not so much knocking as hammering on the door, much sooner than even the most optimistic ex- pected. The...

By STEPHEN MOODY M R WILSON made his last visit to the Trades Union Congress as the man born to be king. This time he might almost be wearing a crown of thorns. Almost, but not...

THE COMMONWEALTH By MALCOLM RUTHERFORD T HE Commonwealth can survive the next few weeks after all. There is still, on the Rhodesian question, enough room for British...

From KONRAD AHLERS HAMBURG p onlickum Germany is in a mess. Since Chancellor Erhard's great victory in the elec- tion of September last year one crisis has fol- lowed...

AMERICA From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK T o see the Beatles is to confront a gallery of eminent women of the nineteenth century: women of character, to be sure, who got them-...

F OR me Edinburgh is the most personal and romantic of cities. I was born and spent part of my childhood in the house of my grandfather, who was Professor of International Law...

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN tn.: Ah! The press is with us tonight, I see. Why don't you chaps stand up to the unions in your own industry? • : That is the proprietors'...

THE AGE OF MAJORITY By BRYAN WILSON I N the prevailing war of the generations, a truce to re-fix the age of majority had to come sooner or later. The Latey Committee consider-...

BAOR By SIMON CLEMENTS MBE future of the British Army of the Rhine I is ooe of the most obscure mysteries in British politics today. Ever since the last Defence Review the...

THAT £50 ALLOWANCE By J. H. HUIZINGA A FTER thirty years in this country there are still moments when its natives baffle me. Such a moment occurred towards the end of July...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS It was a very peaceful morning, with the poplars standing in the still air and a faint mist over the meadows, and the booming of the church bell in...

shoot first and ask questions afterwards. This results in more killings, sometimes of the innocent, than would result here from the restoration of a death penalty for murdering...

ion IL r]2 7 1 0 From: David Ashton, Leonard Cottrell, R. Marcetic, Ian C. Bradley, T. F. H. Hudson, N. Hopkin, Geoffrey W. Fielding, Frank Hauser, C. E. Walton, Ray Waller....

a little encouraging for Yugoslav democrats to read the truthful and accurate article by Mr Szamuely about M. Mihajlov. Here is a journalist who obviously knows what he is...

member of that club). may I be allowed to comment on John Rowan Wilson's article 'Coping with Depression' in last week's SPECTATOR? That in a single year fifteen out of every...

SIR.—Mr Ludovic Kennedy ('A Spectator's Note- book,' August 19) has crushed one argument against the arming of the British police. But there are other more important arguments...

SIR,—Thank you for printing Mr Tibor Szamuely's reply to Miss Olga Franklin's letter criticising his article on 'S*x Behind the Curtain.' His concluding statement that the...

permission or acknowledgment from Mr Belloc's copyright poem, which he takes it on himself to describe as 'almost forgotten.' It was reprinted in our pocket edition of Belloc's...

that Alan Jenkins, despite his high-speed book-gutting tech- nique acquired at grammar school, should regard Jimmy Porter as an idler who failed '0' levels. Jimmy did go to...

SIR,—Hilary Spurling's notice (August 26) of Public and Confidential, the play by Benn Levy, could easily have come from the popular daily press in the 'fif- ties, when a group...

the publication of the Command Paper setting out the Government's plan for a University of the Air have I been so de- pressed as by the news that our new Postmaster- General—who...

dumb idea if the Ministry of Transport, or whoever is in charge, managed to eliminate the yellow or amber phase of traffic lights as the lights switch from red to green. Your...

Mr John Knapp writes that, in his letter last week, where he referred to 'the statistics of the abnormal 1950-55 period which were so much bandied about . in support of our...

Square T HE duty of any consumers' guide being first to the customer, it may be worth repeating Leslie Adrian's useful warning that 'new,' the juju word for plays, doesn't...

ART On the first floor, the big black wall with inter- related, triangular, silver metal structures animat- ing its surface devised by Mary Martin is a triumph of discreet,...

September 1. 1866. CURRENT LITERATURE Your Duty and Mine. By James Erasmus Philipps, Vicar of Warminster. (Rivingtons.)— An exposition, chiefly for parochial use, of the...

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL By CHARLES REID A RATHER rackety Mahler Eighth (the so-called Symphony of a Thousand) at Edinburgh last weekend, and two productions by the Wiirttemberg...

13 K By MORDECAI RICHLER trim Germans are an abomination to me. I'm I glad Dresden was bombed for no useful military purpose. The Russians couldn't withhold and mistreat German...

'Ws a peculiarly damnable case—that he's so impossible for intercourse and yet so possible for circulation'—thus James, with penetrating succinctness, summed up the wretched...

THE anatomy of heroines is indefinable and odd, since they seem to lack anything in common except something that, seen across a distance of years, comes to look like heroism. In...

The Big Tomato. By Raleigh Trevelyan. (Longmans, 25s.) The Octopus Papers. By Burt Blechman. (Peter Owen, 25s.) Girl With a Zebra. By Perdita Buchan. (Chatto and Windus, 18s.) A...

MOST of the people in Wolfe's fascinating gallery served with him in the cause of the Bol- shevik Revolution and then, for various reasons, became disenchanted vivandieres. Yet...

Government and Opposition. A Quarterly of Comparative Politics. Vol. I, Nos. 1-4. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson: single issues, 13s. 6d.; annual subscription, 45s.) IN a revealing...

Cheyenne Autumn. By Mari Sandoz. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 50s.) Tim American Indian was one man to himself; to the European Americans, he was two men. Either he was the Hobbesian...

IN his study of sixteenth-century administration on the Anglo-Scottish Borders, Dr Rae gives us the benefit of much research and detailed know- ledge. But let none be deterred...

tErKE MICAH nE con By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT W HAT has happened to our advanced capitalist system? Its nerve centre, as we all know, is the security market, where the capital...

By CUSTOS W rm the rain on Tuesday came an early flood of selling on the stock markets- prompted by the panicky fall on Wall Street- but at long last the managers of insurance...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN A NON-TECHNICAL neigh- bour of mine recently tried to hire a television receiver that she, being elderly, could move easily from room to...

ACROSS.-z Stumps. 4 Croppers. 9 Entail. so Flooding. 12. Distrait. 53 Messes. is Rout. i6 Stalactite. 19 Referendum. 20 Star. 23 Granny. 25 Settlers. 27 Outrider. 28 Skeins. 29...

ACROSS i. Trollope's estate is for an accoutred earl presu- mably (6) 4. Where Cook's hot temper should be contained? (5-3) to. The Kildare manner (7) One in funds might...

ENDRAPEN By MOIRA BURGESS G LASGOW is like any other city, only more so. It is as dirty as London and changing 'as rapidly as Birmingham and as violent as Glasgow packs its...

No. 298. J. SAVODRNIN (1st Prize, Europe Echecs 1964) mum to play and mate in two moves ; solution next week. Solution to No. 29'7 (Loshinski) : Kt (B x) — Kt 3, threat zit...