East African Asians and South African arms There is clearly going to be a lot of fuss about the supply of arms by this country to South Africa, a good deal more fuss than was...

In the first stage of Chancellor Barber's acts, the we was abolished, along with the Consumers' Council, free school milk, and subsidies for London commuters. Aiming at a net...

PETER PATERSON The kind of reform to be most suspicious about is the one that seems to please every- body, which is why one should be permitted a certain scepticism over Mr...

There is one reform which would fit in well with the Government's view of itself, and that reform would be to remove from de- partments of government the immunity they largely...

LIONEL GELBER The free world has been slow to defect how, as Russia adopts policies of detente on the European continent and may even curb the apocalyptic race in nuclear...

AMERICA All change JOHN GRAHAM Washington One of the engaging things about American politics is how the practice is constantly making a monkey out of the theory. There are...

Human rights in Israel `ISRAEL AMOS' On 7 February 1946. a conference of Jewish jurists was held in Tel Aviv to protest against the British Government. The subject matter was...

Gunning for an Irish peace R MAI; KNOX Dublin uhlin's great gun-running trial, the rarest s for public house discourse since the Kil- ggan distillery scandal, was no turning...

By 'a Conservative' The vigour with which Mr Heath is assault. - ing the public is, by his or by any standar remarkable. Repeated statements of bock new and ancestral...

Cat among the pigeons SALLY VINCENT Trafalgar Square, Sunday The little girl on her own is sweet. 'Nom' says her banner, she must have made it herself. `Nigro Tory Arms Deal',...

From the 'Spectator,' 29 October /870 — The last relic of the Army of France capitulated on the 27th inst. It-appears from a telegram sent to the Daily News that General...

To the sexual barricades JOHN SPARROW Recently, revolutionaries in the demo- cracies of the West have become disillu- sioned about the potentialities of political action. The...

Death by merger Sir: May I correct two serious errors in Dr Peter Smith's account (24 October) of the New Scientist- Science Journal merger? First, we do not have a 'press...

Sir: In her interesting article on Botswana (10 October) Miss Mortimer called Sir Seretse Khama 'the first African leader to marry a white woman . . which is in- accurate. Sir...

Sir: It is a pity that Dr Rowse should have gone out of his way to be so offensive in his article to those who hold different views from his own as this has the inevit- able...

Sir: Peter Quince may be in- terested in the Israeli system of 'communal taxis'. These run on tha regular bus routes, charging a few pence more than the buses. Usually they wait...

10th October) that the lavatory bowl is what one washes one's hands in after using the w.c. (sc, water-closet)? G. Corderoy Oxford & Cambridge University Club, Pall Mall, swl...

Sir: Greatly daring, I venture to take issue with my friend, up to this moment and I hope after, and my former colleague Enoch Powell on the subject of the appointment of John...

Sir: Following embattled Canada': agreement with China on mutual recognition and an early exchange of ambassadors, China now has diplomatic relations with fifty-one out of the...

Sir: One of your readers has w ritten to me regarding my sug- gestion in the SPECTATOR two weeks ago that The Listener had shown bias in 1968 in not reproducing a talk part of...

Sir: May I comment on the letter in which Mr Edgar P. Young criticises Ronald Hingley's review of Strik-Strikfeldt's Against Stalin and Hitler. Mr Young accuses Dr Hingley of...

Sir: In warning of a swindle over the Common Market the 'Spec- tator's Notebook' likens the British electorate to a body of share- holders faced by a conspiracy to defraud them....

Sir: How right David Williams is about risks. When people asked why I be- came incumbent of a Lake Dis- trict Parish twenty years ago, aged sixty, I answered that it was the...

Sir: I find myself strangely per- turbed by Mr John Yates's letter ('Laura Norder'. SPECTATOR 17 October). While obviously sad- dened by the degeneration of our language, he...

Sir: As one of the working class so charmingly patronised by Mr Peregrine Worsthorne may I make two points: I. I dislike Blackpool intensely, but then I need go only for...

Sir: Two points of correction re- garding Constantine Fitzgibbon's interesting piece on Whittaker Chambers (26 September). The Odyssey of a Friend was published by Putnam. not...

Sir: Congratulations on your Edi- torial. I agree that it is time we left the Irish alone to play their tribal games in peace. I thought the fol- lowing quotation might be of...

Sir: May I remind 'A Conservative' who reviewed Right Turn of George Meredith's definition of cynicism as 'intellectual dandyism'. The ordinary people of this coun- try, who are...

Sir: Dutschke's case is not one deserving consideration on grounds of political asylum. Whatever grievances the students of today may have they do not justify riot- ing, damage,...

Sir: The attitude of the Banks to their customers has long been at variance with their advertising campaigns. Barclays' advertising boys may well see the £50,000 which they...

Sir: As one member of the audience who, without having known exactly what to expect from this 'programme of reinter- pretations' nevertheless stayed to enjoy the Scratch...

Sir: Since 3 October when I re- vealed in your columns that I accumulate pencil ends too short to use with comfort, too long to throw away without feelings of guilt, and asked...

No. 628: Pour rire Set by Stephen Corrin: In a dis , cussion on 'The Future' a speaker on the French radio declared re- cently that he would like to see the establishment by...

SIMON RAVEN The Cambridge Mind: Ninety Years of the 'Cambridge Review' 1879-1969 edited by Eric Homberger, William Janeway and Simon Schama (Cape 80s) First let me state where...

ANGUS MAUDE The Measure of the Years Sir Robert Menzies (Cassell 45s) Sir Robert Menzies has stuck firmly to his intention not to write anything remotely resembling an...

.KENNETII MINOGUE Sociological Theory and Philosophical Analysis edited by Dorothy Emmet and Alasdair MacIntyre (Macmillan 20s) Post-Robbins euphoria still dominates the...

JOHN PARRY W. H. Auden Dennis Davison (Evans 10s) The critic as pedant, obfuscator, classifier: the poet as 'man speaking to men': these are the two basic assumptions in the...

E. J. KENNEY The Girl in Blue P. G. Wodehouse (Barrie and Jenkins 26s) The Girl in Blue is a Gainsborough miniature, a piece not of femininity but of property—and there is an...

H. G. JOHNSON Power and Money: The Politics of Interne. tional Economics and the Economies of International Politics Charles P. Kindleberger (Macmillan 70s) Despite its...

MICHAEL BENTLEY Conscience and Politics: The British Government and the Conscientious Objector to Military Service 1916-1919 John Rae (out. 70s) Argument about what the...

PATRICK COSGRAVE Rich Man, Poor Man Irwin Shaw (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 40s) A Domestic Animal Francis King (Long- man 30s) The Vivisector Patrick White (Cape 40s) There are...

AUBERON WAUGH Fireflies Shiva Naipaul (Andre Deutsch £2 2s) Newbury has only one bookseller, unless you count W. H. Smith. He is called Mr Nicholas Scarf, and his shop, in the...

Barbarians of Siena TIMOTHY BEAUAIONT Siena is a beautiful city; but it will be a long time before 1 want to see it again. The Patio is one of the most ancient and gorgeous...

The loutish gentlemen of Rugby JACK CROSS This year the Rugby world celebrates the in- augural meeting of the Rugby Football Union, on 26 January 1871, in the Pall Mall...

PENELOPE HOUSTON Infallible old showmen like Hitchcock have always guessed that the last thing to attract the audience in a political thriller is the politics. For Hitchcock,...

GILLIAN WIDDICOMBE To continue a theme from last week : the London Symphony Orchestra is waiting. But not only for a stronger lead from Previn. Their unspoken problem at the...

Corkers EVAN ANTHONY It was one of those weeks for soul-searching. I had been lectured by a waspish sceptic who contended that the position of art in the market-place was...

Grey matter Patrick Skene CATLING One of the distressing hazards of being a public person is television feed-back. By that I mean the larger-than-life--or at any rate...

Cross-bred sound DUNCAN FALLOWELL Performance (Warner Brothers 40s 8c1), in the murky suburbia of film soundtracks, is a skyscraper among bungalows. With wide-ranging...

The loved one RODNEY MILNES I could smack Joan Sutherland. In her time she has driven me to two churlish actions strange in one so mild: walking out of the opera house in...

Superdance CLEMENT CRISP Anyone can tell you what is wrong with ballet but it takes a work like Dances at a Gathering to tell you what is superlatively right about it. Jerome...

Include me out KENNETH HUR R EN My feelings about experimental theatre have come to be much the same as my feelings about experimental medicine: it is com- forting to know...

Disaster area JOHN HIGGINS The Sadler's Wells Semele has already gone down as an ill-fated production, and with justification. The strike of stagehands caused the first night...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT If this column keeps harking back to the infernal inflation problem it is not because I am obsessed with it—of course I am and any one dealing with applied...

There is no garden luxury I would rather have if I were rich, than a walk of pleached limes. It belongs ith such affluent pleasures as ancient cedars set in spreading lawns. or...

To those in business to whom the appalling problems of the economy and roaring in- flation seem paramount, Enoch Powell's skilful piece in last week's SPECFATOR attack- ing the...

Politicians accepting Mr Powell's argu- ments, whose legitimacy is most easily chal- lenged, develop the strongest impulse to convert. If it is right that a movement is...

hat latterday chain letter, the holding com- pany, changes its name to conglomerate and now in turn to investment trust or even banker. Without a theme, like Sir Winston...

The danger to the parsons, widows, orphans and long suffering unit holders is that the trust becomes locked into relatively large holdings in small preyed-upon com- panies whose...

Some poor man I see has been sentenced for stealing from his employers because he alleged he was being blackmailed by fraudu- lent carbon paper salesmen. The carbon paper...

It was in 1877 that E. S. Dallas, in Kettner's Book of the Table, noted 'a curious weakness in the national taste—a chariness of oil and love of vinegar,' and commented, 'In...

I have now established, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the most masochistic form of angling presently available in Europe is trying to catch broadbill swordfish off the...

Last week I went to a meeting of the Seventy-six Group, an underground organisation whose aim is the destruction of television as it is structured in Britain today. The Group,...

DAEDALUS A prize of three guineas will he awarded for the first correct solution opened on 9 November. Address solutions: Crossword 1453, 'The Spectator,' 99 Gower Street,...