supported by Her Majesty's Opposi- tion, stands host at Marlborough House to twenty-three Commonwealth heads of Government and four substitutes. Most of the public discussion...

An Israeli commando unit destroyed a dozen planes at Beirut's airport in reprisal for the El Al Boeing which was attacked by Arabs in Athens. The reprisal looked like costing...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH New Year is the time when 'the Past is like a funeral gone by, the Future comes like an, un- welcome guest,' to quote my cousin, Edmund...

MIDDLE EAST LAURENCE MARTIN The novel Israeli reprisal at Beirut has many grave implications. From the military point of view it serves chiefly as an illustration of how the...

FRANCE MARC ULL3IANN Paris—It could be said that for Americans the twentieth century lasted thirty-five years, from the Roosevelt inauguration in 1933 in the depth of the Great...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON New York—Professor Eric Goldman, the Princeton historian, has started to publish recol- lections of his two years as President John- son's legate to...

1969 ALEC DOUGLAS-HOME, MP As we look ahead and try to probe the secrets of 1969 the only certainty is that there is too much anger in human society for anyone to enjoy peace...

NIGEL LAWSON I'm not surprised that Mr George Woodcock has told Mrs Barbara Castle that the Govern- ment's proposals for the reform of trade union law are 'unworkable.' It was,...

From the 'Spectator', 2 January 1869—Sir Richard Mayne, Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, died on Sunday, at the age of 73. When only 33 years old, and a rising...

PERSONAL COL UMN SIMON RAVEN In order to avoid loss of temper, let us base this discussion on propositions so simple and self-evident that nobody, whatever his back- ground or...

1938 CABINET PAPERS ROBERT BLAKE Robert Blake is Provost of Queen's College, Oxford. One of the few good things that the present government has done (apart from belatedly...

THE LAW R. A. CLINE About half way through the 'fifties, when this column sprang fully armed from the then editor's head, law reform was not the thing to write about. To...

EDUCATION STUART MACLURE I cannot help feeling that the extremity of the universities' reaction to the NB report tells more about the nervous and edgy state the universities...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD Dear Huw, May I begin by saying how gratifying it is to see someone step into the most senior post . in BBC Television who is himself a professional,...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY I want you all to sit up straight, pay attention, and try to answer this question. Why was last Sunday an important day for newspapers? That's right....

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Hireling of counter-revolution, The neo-fascist Bernard Levin, Refused to use his concert ticket— Sin that for vengeance cries to Heaven. A fruitless...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN It is perhaps a sign of national torpor that the revolt of the senior half of the university popu- lation against Mr Aubrey Jones and the Prices and...

SACHEVERELL SITWELL The themes of these three books,* the first of them Sicilian, the second and third Bavarian, by and large, now receive serious treatment for the first time...

THOMAS BRAUN if History of Sparta 950-192 W. G. Forrest (Hutchinson paper 1 Is 6d, cloth 25s) States that deny political freedom to their citizens normally let them keep their...

AUBERON WAUGH What's It Like Out? and Other Stories Penelope Gilliatt (Seeker and Warburg 30s) Surely no mise-en-scene has ever been more conducive to boredom, or productive...

OLIVER WARNER The Private War of Seaman Stumpf edited by Daniel Horn (Frewin 42s) From a commentator's point of view, Jutland was a fruitful battle. Tactically, it was full of...

Smooth work RONALD HINGLEY The Russian political police made a fittingly bizarre debut in the sixteenth century with the establishment by Ivan the Terrible of his notorious...

DENNIS J. DUNCANSON China in Crisis edited by Ping-ti Ho and Tang Tsou (University of Chicago Press 3 vols 90s each) China Readings edited by Franz Schurmann and Orville Schell...

JOHN KELLY The Greek Patristic View of Nature D. S. Wallace-Hadrill (Manchester University Press 35s) There is a muddled idea, which is nevertheless widely accepted, that...

ROY STRONG Sadly this year's Winter Exhibition, 200 Years of the Royal Academy, will go down in history as a great opportunity missed. If it is remem- bered at all in the...

BRIDGET RILEY Bryan Robertson, who left the Whitechapel Gallery this week, became its -director in 1952. One cannot help feeling that this is the end of an era, and one must...

MUSIC MICHAEL NYMAN My Christmas was spent, ears boggling, mind splitting, in the company of Deutsche Gramo- phon's celebratory six record set, Avant G til rte (104988-93,...

THEATRE Desperate Dan HILARY SPURLING Queen Passionella and the Sleeping Beauty (Saville) The Young Visiters (Piccadilly) Among the many pleasures of what has been. in my...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT It is not my intention to make but to review some prophecies. The Stock Exchange tipsters had a field day in the Sunday press and on Monday the jobbers were...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL My first task this New Year is to sell my holding of War Loan at a loss of about £100. I have attended every false dawn in the gilt- edged market since the...

Market report The financial press was largely responsible for Monday's stock market in the sense that share tips for 1969 attracted quite a lot of business. What are the...

Jock' in this case is Auberon Waugh. This does not necessarily mean that Mr Waugh is wrong and those of us who see the much-publicised secession and rebellion as a cruel and...

LETTERS From Michael Foot, MP, Ian R. Wilson, James Donaldson, Oji Umozurike, Quintin Hogg, MP. B. Topping, John Radcli f f, H. D. Sills, Gordon Evans, Dennis Ward. M. B....

quoted, even by politicians with a background of liberal democracy, to support a military solution to the complicated Biafran /Nigerian conflict. Indeed, the purposes of the OAU...

Nigeria should accept all the blame for the war? lf, as Mr Waugh claims, . . everybody has the right to determine their own nation- hood' . . . then surely Wales or Scotland has...

that Mr Heath's speeches are lacking in moral concern for society. I listened to his Blackpool speech and to his address to the Kent Young Conservatives at Folkestone. In spite...

what the Tories need is not an intellectual dogma to contrast with that of the left, but a contrasting morality. Religion, I understand him to argue, has `so generally...

Sir: Patrick Cosgrave writes (20 December): 'Religion has so generally declined that its cen- trality can hardly any longer be asserted.' In other words, because people no...

Sir: Are you not adopting not a Christian but a sectarian view of divorce in your leading article 'Towards a Bigamy Bill?' (20 December). Only a Roman Catholic could describe a...

Sir: I should answer Sir Denis Brogan's questions to me in your issue of 13 December. He asks whether there have been any Ulster Cabinet ministers who were not members of the...

Sir: The recent attacks on Yevtushenko are worrying: first, because it is sad to see a good man slandered; secondly, because they show how frighteningly out of touch with Soviet...

Sir: Ian MacGregor states (in your issue of 20 December) that 'a university golden age' never existed. May I offer a few shreds of factual evidence? Disorderly conduct among...

Sir: Mr Tibor Szamuely makes it clear (13 December) that his stimulating contribution at the Year's outset when asked by his students for an article on the subject, was to...

lack of moral concern; he claims that 'it cannot be said that capitalism ever did anything for any nation,' and, alas, he maintains that 'there are no right policies, only right...

Sir : As a 'pomiferous' fellow living near Mr John Wells's constituency and having been con- nected with the fruit-growing industry for over twenty years, I would like to...

Sir: In a 'double-blind control experiment' (John Rowan Wilson, 27 December) it is not only the 'assessor who is ignorant as to which patient is which. The patients equally do...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS From The Wilsonian Idyll, by Angus Windsor- Frost Junior, to be published in the early part of 2069 by Weidenfeld and Weidenfeld at Nf55. Looking back...

COMPETITION Competitors are invited to use the ten following words taken from the opening passages of a well-known work of literature, in the order given, to construct part of...

Trevor Grove reports : In order to select the champion of champions for 1968, previous prizewinners (and only they) were invited either to compose a New Year's resolution, in...

PHILIDOR Black White 5 men 9 men C. Mansfield (British Chess Magazine, 1915). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 419 (Searley): K - K...

Across 1 Challenged title-holder (8) 5 Here, classically, is a drink good for spasms (6) 9 'Fine words butter no ' (8) 10 Gently' does it, cook ! (6) 12 Job's disputant has...

Solution to Crossword no. 1358. Across: 1 Warbler 5 Malabar 9 Vandals 10 Railing 11 Signet-ring 12 Mere 13 Cod 14 Sweetbreads 17 Mis- guidedly 19 Tod 20 Asps 22 Tranquillp26...