Established 1828 99 Gower Street, London WC1 Telephone: 01-387 3221 Telegrams: Spectator, London Editor: George Gale Associate Editor: Michael Wynn Jones Literary Editor:...

The way some people, more especially some politicians, economists and com- mentators, go on, the public might well be forgiven for concluding that 'growth' in the economy was a...

Where have all the radicals gone? HUGH MACPHERSON There have been quite a few examples recently of chaps breaking the rules of the Westminster club. Often this can do nothing...

Geoffrey Rippon, naturally and sensibly enough, is making the best of a bad job, trying to make good news out of what is becoming very bad news. He smiles all around, as if he...

We print in our Review of Books two dis- cussions of Chomsky and his works. What seems to emerge is that not only has Chomsky's politics nothing to do with his undoubted...

Special courses (complete with resident devil's advocate) have been run by the Tories' Central Office to accustom their chosen marketeers to apologise well on tele- vision. New...

I have been very greatly reassured to learn, from, as they say, some of the very best sources, that my suspicious fears that the crucial Cabinet decision on the Common Market...

Noam Chomsky at forty-two is undoubtedly one of the wonders of the age. Everywhere he goes he pronounces and everywhere he pronounces the (student) young flock to listen. They...

Des Wilson had a fab do 'last week to mark his departure as Director of Shelter, the charity for the homeless. The Guardian's Peter Jenkins went to Shelter's office in the...

Prime Minister's question time SALLY VINCENT When the ex-sergeant major with the golden necklace told me I was not allowed to wear my overcoat in the Gallery on account of it...

Axe, please, Mr Barber By an Economist It is not often that political promises have been quite so rapidly belied by political performance as by the Chancellor of the Exchequer...

Wednesday 27 January: to everyone's surprise 4,000 BOAC engineering employees voted to aban- don their work-to-rule: firemen too called off theirs after the Government announced...

Nine characters in search of a plot JOHN GRAHAM Washington, DC There is no close season for ambition. Although Richard Nixon has been President for only two years, although he...

No man has a right to imperil his political party and its objectives for the sake of a woman That was what Lloyd George told Miss Frances Stevenson, his secretary and mistress...

Beware of dangling goodies NEIL MARTEN, MP `One readily recognises that the British have • three qualities; humour, tenacity and realism. I sometimes think that we are still a...

Phnom Penh blues RAWLE KNOX Nobody seemed very surprised when war came explosively to Phnom Penh last week; no one sounded much as though he cared. us Defence Secretary Laird...

The fate of Nebuchadnezzar DENIS BROGAN 'Stoning the Prophets is ancient news Like Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Jews' Chesterton's unkind lines have been much in my mind in...

Michael Oakeshott on Marx on Hegel J. Enoch Powell on Americans in South-East Asia Other reviews by Charles Wilson, Hugh Kearney, Angus Maude, John Dunn, Allan Beattie and...

To the distant observer a puzzling f:ature of American history in the last ten years has been the absence of ordinary political opposition to the Vietnam war and the other vast...

An Essay on the Principle of Population and A Summary View of the Principle of Popula- tion T. R. Malthus edited by Antony Flew Pelican 7s) Malthus was an amiable man,...

Why magic? Or rather why do so many his- torians now find such matters important and interesting enough to write books about them? The answer lies in part in a reaction against...

In 1843, at the age of twenty-four or so, Karl Marx wrote down in a large notebook his thoughts about some passages of a work known to us as Hegel's Philosophy of Right. What he...

Steering the Economy Samuel Brittan (Penguin 12s) Down with the .Poor is a symposium, largely by writers who have accepted the general philosophy associated with the Institute...

The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organisation of an Islamic Brotherhood Donal B. Cruise O'Brien (Clarendon Press 70s) Among the most bizarre efforts at...

Mr Colvin's book consists of extracts from recently-released official papers, used to illus- trate a view of British foreign policy in the pre-war period. The documentary...

No prize is offered this week. The solution will appear in next week's issue, Across 1 Just like Arthur's lady armourer (10) 6 Bartok in favourite biblical disguise (4) 10 I...

Queen 10 Memento 11 Drawing 12 Rude 13 Enticement 16 Leaden 17 Aconite 20 Fevercl 21 Crabby 24 Spy-glasses 25 Wisp 27 Outdoor 29 Crochet 30 Tyneside 31 Monday. Down : 1...

Punctuation Trevor Bowen (Lonsdale 35s) Mr Barry Cole's letter in the Christmas issue of the SPECTATOR proving conclusively that there is still an enormous readership for...

H ARTS • LETTERS • MONEY•LEISURE OPERA Nouvelle Wagner RODNEY MILNES The most significant fact about the new production of Twilight of the Gods by Sadler's Wells Opera at the...

Christie done - it CHRISTOPHER HUDSON Richard Fleischer is a moralistic director. In The Boston Strangler he retold the story of the psychopathic murders as simply as pos-...

Critics' cotillion KENNETH HURREN It is a coy old tradition that critics don't knock other critics' plays. I'm not sure whether this is a way of taking out insur- ance in...

Shock treatments EVAN ANTHONY Most of my fellow appraisers have had their say by now about the Vienna Secession exhibition at the Royal Academy; they have been rightly...

All systems 'Go' Patrick SKENE CATLING In the electronic boudoir, all systems were `Go,' and once again I was struck last week by the superhuman impartiality of television....

Sir: Congratulations to John Biffen on his article (30 January), especial- ly the section about the Common Market. It seems quite incredible that we are making this great effort...

Sir: Mr Kenney charges me with ignoring the evidence of the papy- rus fragments which, he implies, invalidate my statement that `no Gospel text can be traced, directly or...

The right of reply Sir: You have seen fit to give a great deal of space to a complaint by Mr Kingsley Amis that I refused to print a letter (which he quotes in full) on the...

be entirely submerged under the flood of scholarly derision likely to be provoked by some alarmingly basic howlers. May I list a selec- tion, with comment: ' . . . we have no...

Sir: I was very interested to read the replies to Skinflint's article on Employment Agencies (23 Janu- ary). I myself gave up using agencies years ago when I found that time...

Amis's com- plaint in 'Personal Column' (30 January). It is an abuse of the power of the press if people find themselves attacked or their views distorted and are unable to get...

Sir: Peter Quince's remarks (30 January) on the sounds and silences of nature were interesting to read. It always strikes me that the two senses of hearing and touch receive...

Sir: A sidelight on the Tireless Tory Titan's fight for British in- dependence from She Common- wealth. One wonders whether Mr Heath has provoked the continu- ing row over arms...

views on the existence of Christ, but I do know something of English grammar and if the Professor's letter (30 January) is indicative of the validity of his article, then Christ...

feel obliged to query some of the remarks in Professor Trevor- Roper's review of Dr Dodd's Life of Jesus (23 January). In his second paragraph the Pro- fessor writes: 'The...

enlightened dis- missal of the Gospels in your pages; another to see an irrev- erent image of the Crucified on your front cover. There must still be a number of His followers...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT That bold convert to Keynesianism, Presi- dent Nixon, has just presented Congress with a budget having an estimated deficit of $11,600 million. He called it...

An American actor, a Mr Sam Wanamaker, 3 s interested in going into profitable property development though the name his game goes Under is Art. We are told this through a deluge...

Good simple-minded people of the left, like Tony Miles, new editor of the Daily Mirror, and Paul Foot of Private Eye, are boiling mad, so 1 am told, with the government de-...

Mr Rupert Murdoch was writing to a share- holder in October saying he doubted if the 1TA would let him buy any more shares than the 7-1 per cent from the GEC but the latest news...

Some horrible people at the Confederation of British Industry are telling their member companies to fight strikers by withholding tax refunds from strikers. This is filthily...

I congratulate the Government for its refusal to cough up £2 million or so of our money to buy the Velasquez picture of his mulatto friend and its consequent refusal thereby to...

No one admires Bernard Levin more than 1, or more than any reader of the SPECTATOR who remembers the venomous sense of in- jury and grievance, and yet the tolerance, of his...

Two expensive losses at Kempton having devoured my entire profits bar £1, 1 stand in urgent need of a nice, juicy outsider to enliven the account this •weekend, although no...

If you say 'Austria' to someone and ask them what gastronomic associations come to their mind, the answer may well be Wiener schnitzel or .Sachertorte. It was therefore clever...

There is a nice little thatched cottage up for sale in the village, and the other day I came across a couple of prospective buyers ex- amining the property. They had a...

Spectator Mil MN NM MEI NM NMI NMI ill The Spectator, 99 Gower Street, London W.C.1 Please supply the Spectator for one year 11 1 two years 11] Cheque enclosed three years 0...

Anyone emerging from Broadcasting House at dusk on a winter evening has a fair chance of being reproached by the appari- tion of his own athletic past. This visitation takes the...

be: Short story category: Kingsley Amis, novelist, poet and essayist, the film of whose book Take a Girl Like You is currently on general release. Descriptive reporting: Brian...

An annual prize of £500 will be awarded by the SPECTATOR to whoever In the opinion of the Judges, submits the best piece of original, unpublished, new writing of not less than...

The universal praise accorded to Barbara Loden's film Wanda, now showing at the Academy Cinema in London, raises some curious questicins about the growth of the underground...

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