In the preamble to Mr Crossman's highly complex sixty-four-page White Paper on the Government's proposed new state pensions scheme, the Secretary of State for Health and Social...

Once again the London School of Economics is in the news. On page 144 of this issue of the SPECTATOR Professor Geoffrey Barra- dough advances a startling new theory to account...

Captain O'Neill has now lost three senior colleagues from his government in three months, yet for the moment he emerges the stronger for their departure. He has estab- lished...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH A feature of political life nowadays is that whereas when a Labour man speaks in public nobody believes him, whenever a Conservative speaks...

BIA,FRA MARGERY PERHAM Dame Margery Perham, Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and the official biographer of Lord Lugard, is a leading authority on African affairs. Last...

Fourteen people, nine of them Jews, accused of spying for Israel were publicly hanged in Iraq, and everybody expressed concern. It was thought that a further sixty people were...

FRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris--`0n 19 December 1965 I was re-elected President of the Republic for seven years by the French people. I have a duty, and the inten- tion, to fulfil...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPFON New York—Democratic presidents announce themselves in language designed to stir, Repub- licans in tones designed to soothe. President Eisenhower was a...

THE LAW It. A. CLINE Both Parliament and the press are at the moment much exercised about the division of matrimonial property when a divorce has occurred. But a more insidious...

J. W. M. THOMPSON The controversy over the Tate Gallery's plans for rebuilding has its ironies. As everyone now knows, it is proposed that the front of the Tate, with its...

PERSONAL COLUMN DAVID MARTIN Dr Martin is a Reader in the Department of Sociology at the LSE. This article is an abridged version of a chapter in a book which he is editing,...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY I never thought to find delight in something called the Institute of Practitioners in Advertis- ing's Duplication Tables. But I have, and I owe it to Mr...

Front the 'Spectator', 30 January I869—Mr Lowe made two speeches at a Liberal banquet at Gloucester on Wednesday. The first we have analyzed elsewhere, the second, made when...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD I suppose that, next to Wilder, Barlow is one of the most firmly established, most fully realised fictional characters to appear on our screens. After a...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN Jimmy has just appeared in the doorway, pre- cariously holding between his teeth a small earthenware bowl. He deposits this at my feet and wags...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Fond, impious Man, presume not thou to scan That Marplan Plan that is more mar than plan. For, lo, our reverent ieaders there can score Tots of a sixty-five...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN I have just got the new paperback edition of Mr Britling Sees it Through, which I had not read for at least forty years, and I started to read it with...

JOEL HURSTFIELD The kings and queens of England were passing out of fashion in history lessons at about the time that I was leaving school. This was based, I think, on two...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH The Poetry of Christopher Smart Moira Dearnley (Routledge and Kegan Paul 50s) Christopher Smart was once thought of as a one-poem CA Song to David') poet...

GILES PLAYFAIR Life Zeno (Macmillan 30s) If the men undergoing 'training and treatment' in 'D' Hall, Wormwood Scrubs, learned noth- ing else while George. Blake was in...

Jerome at work BARRY COLE The Face of Another Kobo Abe translated by E. Dale Saunders (Weidenfeld and Nicol- son 32s 6d) Terra Arnow J. M. G. Le Clezio translated by Barbara...

HENRY TUBE Count d'Orgel Raymond Radiguet translated by Violet Schiff (Calder and Boyars 30s) Raymond Radiguet died in 1923 at the age of twenty, leaving two faultless novels...

GEOFFREY BARRACLOUGII Looking back from the present it is not diffi- cult to see that 1951 was a turning-point in British postwar history. It marked, we all know, the return of...

STEPHEN GARDINER The curtain has gone up on the proposals for the Tate at last. And, in the meantime, Lady Dartmouth, who heads the Historic Buildings Committee at the mc, has...

Battles and balls PENELOPE HOUSTON War and Peace (Curzon, 'A') Rosemary's Baby (Paramount, 'X') Where Eagles Dare (Empire, 'A') One thing the Americans and Russians have in...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Quite what it is that starts the critical adrenalin flowing in the presence of good new choreo- graphy I do not know, but the occasions are rare and...

OPERA EDWARD BOYLE The new production of Die Meistersinger at Covent Garden is thoroughly workmanlike and well prepared, though not quite of a quality which leaves one feeling...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Knowing something of the actuarial complica- tions of group pension schemes, I was amazed to find how easily one could read Mr Cross- man's White Paper on...

CUSTOS The Board of Trade's decision to refer the pro- posed mergers between Unilever and Allied Breweries and between Rank and De La Roe to the Monopolies Commission could...

LETTERS From Paul J. Johnston, John Alexander- Sinclair, J. R. L. Cuningham, Senator Nelson Elder, Sir Denis Brogan, Professor A. D. Bain. Christopher W helen, Tibor Szatnuely,...

Sir: May I correct a grave error of fact in your footnote to Mr Silkin's letter (24 January)? Her Majesty's Government in the UK has signed and Parliament has ratified the...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Charles Forte has found a new formula for making big money and, after a period in the doldrums (even a cut dividend), his company, Forte's (Holdings), is...

infallible' etc. I was on this occasion obeying the famous counsel of President Routh of Magdalen College, Oxford, and verifying my quotations, which I do not always do. I did...

Sir: In his column of 17 January, Martin Seymour-Smith refers to Professor Plumb's ad- miring comments on Cozzens (10 January), a writer not given to literary or political in-...

colleague, Sir Denis Brogan, attacking the Uni- versity of Stirling (24 January). I do not wish to debate after the event the allocation of re- sources to education which led to...

Sir: Cornelius O'Leary's report from Ulster (24 January) can hardly pass without comment especially as some of his observations are highly contentious. The earlier part of My...

Sir: Mr Cornelius O'Leary, in attempting in your issue of 17 January to whittle away the reasonable and soundly factual letter of Mr Chichester-Clark (3 January) on the subject...

Sir: Mr Keith Kyle, in his review of my book The New Europeans (17 January), gives examples of my alleged inaccuracy. In the first, he confidently says it is not true that Jean...

Sir: I cannot persuade myself to believe that C. C. Wrigley was objective when he reviewed Renascent Africa in your issue of 17 January. This was a book I wrote over thirty...

Sir: I am at present working on a serious historical study of fashion and its relationship to fetishism for Nelson's Natural History of Society series. In particular, I am...

Sir: Mr Harrison Salisbury is certainly right in one respect (Letters, 17 January): for some- one who, like myself, 'spent his childhood and early manhood in the Soviet Union....

Sir: There is an obvious and absurd slip, due to my bad proof-reading, in my review of Dr Kramnick's book on Bolingbroke (24 January). The Act of Settlement was passed, of...

COMPETITION Set by Joyce Johnson: In Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, the characters Rosen- crantz and Guildenstern are shown conversing between themselves during the...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS Reactions in Moscow to the suicide last week of Jan Palach, writes our Soviet Commonwealth Correspondent Krawlin Legum, have ranged from outright...

Sir: It has been suggested that a society should be formed to further the understanding and appreciation of the life and works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. May I through your...

Trevor Grove reports: The National Society of Non-Smokers recently asked the mic to show characters in plays refusing cigarettes. Com- petitors were invited to help the BBC by...

Across 1 The sound of infantile back-chat? (6) 4 Saw angry wound (8) 9 Sundry pearlers (6) 10 Balham academician transmogrified into castle in Spain (8) 12 She takes a turn with...

PHILID OR J. Beszczynski (2nd Prize, Shachmaty, 1957). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 423 (Zabunov): B – Kt 3, threat Kt – B 4. 1 . ....