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Odds against Mr Wilson and Jack Jones
The SpectatorMr Jack Jones's undeniable triumph at Blackpool was undoubtedly considerable comfort to the Prime Minister, whose total conviction is that he can defeat inflation only if his...
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Causes in Portugal
The SpectatorSir: Whenever a political cause becomes the object of popular enthusiasm, that cause tends to become obscured by idealism. One can readily understand Conservative enthusiasm...
Sir: In The Spectator correspondence (August 30) there is an
The Spectatoramazing call to arms from Michael Calvert, addressed to "young men of affluence in Britain today who are bored and lack belief in their leaders and government" urging them to...
Sir: Isn't Brigadier Calvert's suggestion (August 30) . , if followed on
The Spectatorany large scale, likely to encourage civil war, rather than the orderly establishment of social democracy: One thinks of Spain — of Chile — of Vietnam — and of Cambodia!)....
The Spectator
The SpectatorSir: May 1 contribute three ayes,and one no after reading the Letters to the Editor (August 23) on how to improve the Spectator. 1. I agree with Lord Shinwell, who calls for...
Sir: Most of The Spectator readers will comprise opinion leaders,
The Spectatordivers activists, the politically committed, with a very few truly detached intellectually. All publications such as yours, must inevitably expose a distinctive identity over...
Sir: Doesn't Mr M. J. Feaver know (August 30) that
The SpectatorThe Spectator's magic is in priding itself on its courage to change its mind? Don't we read it for the pleasure of disagreeing and for knowing that our grumbles will be taken in...
Sir: If you really want to improve the Spectator you
The Spectatorcould start by printing it in black upon white instead of grey upon grey. A more easily legible type-face and the return of Auberon Waugh from his present exile would be two...
Sales and losses
The SpectatorSir: I would like to draw your attention to Robert Ashley's article (August 30) headed "Losing sales in a 'growth' market", in which he implies that it is "better to go for...
Manipulated fetuses
The SpectatorFrom Lord Houghton of Sower - by' Sir: The six aborted fetuses in the propaganda advertisement you publish from LIFE (August 30) first appeared in The Spectator four years ago,...
Tax protest
The SpectatorSir: With the recent introduction of Capital Transfer Tax I have been reluctantly compelled to resign from the Revenue; I would appreciate your letting me say why through your...
Rights and realities
The SpectatorSir: Having no interest in Mr Wilson's , views on even the weather, I did not listen to his broadcast. But against a background of government borrowings of £25 million a day I...
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Second language
The SpectatorSir: Surely Patrick Crabtree is being misleading when he asserts (August 16) that "Esperanto is used as a second language in most countries of the world." A second language, in...
Consultants and GPs
The SpectatorFrom Dr K. Liddell Sir: John Linklater in his recent article (August 23) very properly draws attention to the sagging NHS hospital service and woos the general practitioners by...
Ethiopia and South Africa
The SpectatorFrom Professor C. A. W. Manning Sir: This week's press tributes to the former Emperor of Ethiopia have duly highlighted that historic occasion when the venerable African...
Bygone world
The SpectatorSir: It is not fashionable these days to say anything favourable about what used to be the (British) Empire. Perhaps I ought to start by explaining that one of the reasons why I...
Gaiety
The SpectatorSir: Interesting that defenders of the Americanism 'gay' for the homosexual racket (August 30) claim justification by citing its minor connotations of vice and social...
In praise of Buchan
The SpectatorSir: John 'Buchan used, I believe, to work for The Spectator. He deserves a better centenary tribute than that accorded to him by Mr Benny Green. I was not even born in 1940 —...
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Political Commentary
The SpectatorBourbon on the rocks Patrick Cosgrave In Scotland last week Mr Heath and Mrs Thatcher clashed yet again. There was, it is clear, no more than fortune in the fact that both of...
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A Spectator's Notebook
The SpectatorThe National Enterprise Board, we are assured, is intended to be a lifeline for our wretched economy. When it was first mooted, we were warned that the NEB would be given...
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Privacy
The SpectatorGetting people taped Hugh Macpherson A couple of years ago doctors in Sussex received a pamphlet from the Health Department of the county council which might well have come...
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Portugal
The SpectatorThe conservative alternative Robert Moss The removal of General Vasco Goncalves at the end of last week is the best bit of news from Portugal this year, but it is not...
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Ulster
The SpectatorAnother last chance? Rawle Knox Whatever your feelings of disgust, fury, or boredom (or even simple interest) about Northern Ireland, you must have noticed that the same...
TUCissity
The SpectatorThe TUC! The TUC! Has been a busy little bee, Working for resolutions hard By votes upon a Union card Believing wages should be free Of any controls stAtutory, But having to...
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Italy
The SpectatorThe kidnappers of Calabria Patricia Clough The crime was so cruel that many people, in this fundamentally humane country, want the death penalty returned, retroactively. A...
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American Letter
The SpectatorDisintegration in Boston Al Capp With 600 National Guardsmen drafted into the City, Boston this week prepares for violence on the first anniversary of compulsory school...
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Spectator peregrinations
The SpectatorHaving had warning of the Sotheby's silverdealers' walk-out shock — they object to the new 10 per cent buyers' premium — I went to see it for myself. By the time I got there the...
Westminster corridors
The SpectatorThere is nothing which lies more within the province of a Spectator than Publick Shows; and as among these there are none which can pretend to vie with those Entertainments that...
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W 'ill
The SpectatorWaspe The disappearance of John Osborne's new play, Watch It Come Down, from this year's National Theatre schedules (it was announced last November) should not be taken to mean...
Book marks
The SpectatorFollowing my sorry story last week of David A. Jasen, author of the "authorised" biography of the late P. G. Wodehouse, I hear news of another disillusioned gentleman of the...
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Ian Robinson on Leavis, the spirit unappeased
The SpectatorDying of the malady of accelerating scientism tackling problems of epistemology". Leavis's and industrialism, we need to recognise that human beings are spiritual beings, and...
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The old story
The SpectatorJames Cameron Diary of a Chilean Concentration Camp Hernan Valdes (Gollancz £4.00) The story is dismally familiar: the tale of our times. The location varies, the uniforms...
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Bedazzled
The SpectatorPatrick Campbell Amazing Grace E. S. Turner (Michael Joseph E5.95) Once did I see a great duke before me, dukeing it up, and it was a sight I shall never forget. The second...
Big tease
The SpectatorJoyce Grenfell Nancy Mitford: A Memoir Harold Acton (Hamish Hamilton £5.25) In the memoir of his friend, Harold Acton writes that occasionally with Nancy Mitford "one was...
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On the blandwagon
The SpectatorRichard Shone Virginia Woolf and her World John Lehmann (Thames and Hudson £3.50) In his autobiography, John Lehmann gave an intimate account of his relations with Virginia...
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Catching up
The SpectatorPeter Jenkins The European Revenge Robert Heller and Norris Willett (Barrie and Jenkins £4.95) It was in 1967 that Jean-Jacques Servan: Schreiber popularised in a best-seller,...
Materialist
The SpectatorWilliam Sargant Astride the Two Cultures, Arthur Koestler at Seventy edited by Harold Harris (Hutchinson 0.50) Most of the reviews of this book are likely to be written by...
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Fiction
The SpectatorThe end of the line Richard Luckett Hearing Secret Harmonies Anthony Powell (Heinemann £3.10) The run that began in December 1921 when Kenneth Widmerpool — clad in "a sweater...
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On heat
The SpectatorPeter Ackroyd Guerillas V. S. Naipaul (Andre Deutsch £3.25) Mr Naipaul's new novel opens with the view of a city, the centre of an 'emerging' Caribbean island; it straddles...
Talking of books
The Spectatorin anger Benny Green There is an acid test for judging collected cinema or theatre reviews, and that is to sample those accounts of films and plays you never saw, and see...
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Education
The SpectatorThe voice of the teacher Paul Griffin From a school staff room, all the Black Paper ritual seems a distant echo in an ebony tower. Above the hum of controversy — heads crying...
Press
The SpectatorOur Hartley Robert Ashley I have, in one guise or another, had my differences with Lord Shawcross before now. But this week I wish to express my complete agreement with him....
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Science
The SpectatorTrained incapacity Bernard Dixon Science is supposed to rest on scrupulously careful observation, on the rigorous scrutiny of material as it really is and events as they...
Crime and cpnsequences
The SpectatorBail lain Scarlet Bail is one of those extraordinary subjects about which a very small proportion of the population and a scarcely larger proportion of the magistracy know...
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Religion
The SpectatorSearch out the truth Martin Sullivan The sin against the Holy Ghost, Which Christ said he was unforgivable, has puzzled many good people because the Authorised Version refers...
Country Life
The SpectatorDisused railway lines Denis Wood Of recent years I have often found myself at Hampstead Norreys near Newbury, with a Labrador and a Great Dane to exercise. By far the best...
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Cinema
The SpectatorA humble package Kenneth Robinson Rollerball. Director: Norman Jewison. Stars: James Caan, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn, Ralph Richardson 'AA" Odeon, Leicester Square...
Theatre
The SpectatorPast imperfect Kenneth Ruffen Teeth 'n' Smiles by David Hare, with music by Nick Bicat, lyrics by Tony Mal (Royal Court) The piece is set in the year 1969. While it is...
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Opera
The SpectatorMirror, mirror... Rodney Mums How enjoyable can good satire afford to be? It is no good preaching to the converted in dingy cellars: satire must deliver a frontal attack on...
Art
The SpectatorMaster builder John McEvien The Arts Council is to be commended on presenting three outstanding architectural exhibitions in the last three years: the Inigo Jones...
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Musi c
The SpectatorLucerne Festival John Bridcut That London is the musical capital of the world is now such a cliché that it is refreshing to find a pocket-sized city like Lucerne throbbing...
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At the IMF—reflation or doom
The SpectatorNicholas Davenport Attendance at a dull international monetary conference, which I have always carefully avoided, can often be enlivened by the sound of hollow laughter coming...
Skinflint's City Notes
The SpectatorThere is an ironic justice in Sir-John Hunt, the powerful eminence grise of Whitehall and secretary to the Cabinet, being made to look foolish over the Crossman Diaries. He has...
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A fool and his money
The SpectatorThe £8,500 cut-off Bernard Hollowood Homer was clearly fed up with our prolonged analysis of the failure of the England batsmen's technique against Lillee, Thomson and Walker...