A fortnight ago this journal attacked the ithameful wickedness of the present Govern- rn ent in aiding and arming the Nigerian trees to crush Biafra and its terrified Ibo pe...

The Government is unpopular enough with its trade union supporters at the present time as it is, largely (although not wholly) as a result of its insistence on a statutory...

War persisted on the usual fronts; Vietnam, Nigeria, France, the universities, the Liberal party. In America last week's victim, Robert Kennedy, was buried beside his brother,...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON 'WAUGH Deepest summer is the normal time for writing about the Liberal party. When Parliament is in the middle of its long recess, when news...

AMERICA MURRAY KEMPTON New York—Senator Kennedy's death has broken our politics. Vice-President Humphrey is now certainly the nominee, but then he was always nearly so. What...

SOUTH AFRICA ELSPETII HUXLEY South Africa is like a pantomime donkey whose front legs, the government's policy, plod in one direction while its hindlegs, economic realities,...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Male public opinion in Afghanistan is reported to be in protest against the King's proposed introduction of votes for women. King Zahir of Afghanistan...

FRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris—The eighteen-year-old student whose death sparked off Monday's riots was one of a party who went from Paris to support the strikers at Flins, the...

J. W. M. THOMPSON Randolph Churchill's obituarists have made much of the extent to which he was over- shadowed by his father: perhaps too much. His peculiar virtues and...

PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN A few years ago there was a whole clutch of films about male homosexuality. Each of them was advertised as a 'deeply sensitive, responsible [etc,...

STUDENT POWER PATRICK COSGRAVE Very recently, a serious and intelligent young don from New Zealand asked me whether I thought the student revolt and the alienation of the young...

SPORT CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS I am not sure that it is not rather a good thing that Test match cricketers are not as good as they were. One remembers those terribly depres- sing...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY In a week like this, when the dark doors of death seemed wider open than usual. and mil- lions of words have been written about the latest entrant, there...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN In the late but still warm autumn of 1966 I was taking the first main meal of the day with three Italian friends—journalist, politician,...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON There is a deep-rooted tendency in human nature to believe that if medical treatment is nasty it is likely to do you more good. The use of general...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN Princeton, NJ—Veil, what do you think of our great country today?' The interrogator was a sardonic, handsome Irish-American colleague - and I could only...

HENRY TUBE People who,' in Martin Green's evocative words, 'are thinking strenuously about literature and culture today' are apt, so ungrateful and wayward is your artist, to...

BRIAN BOND Wellington as Military Commander Michael Glover (Batsford 63s) Wellington said of his battles against the French marshals in the Peninsula : 'They planned their...

PETER VANSITTART This novel is prefixed with Jung's 'An honest admission of modernity means voluntarily de- claring oneself bankrupt.' For a novelist the theme has advantages....

PATRICK ANDERSON The Letters of Rupert Brooke edited by Sir Geoffrey Keynes (Faber 105s) The best of our war poets was curiously unim- pressed by the events of August 1914....

CLEMENT FREUD The history of children's books is loosely bound up with the history of children. When the ideal child was seen and not heard it was naturally not written for....

BRYAN ROBERTSON The crew of the 'Swallow,' John, Susan, Titty, Roger, and their equally intrepid friends, Nancy and Peggy of the 'Amazon,' are part of the private mythology of...

JOHN GIELGUD The House of Arden E. Nesbit (Dent 21s) Lewis Carroll, E. Nesbit and Howard Pyle Roger Lancelyn Green, Arthur Bell and Elizabeth Nesbitt (Bodley Head 25s) I have...

COLIN MacINNES English Fairy Tales collected by Joseph Jacobs (Bodley Head 42s) The Black Monkey John Hampden (Deutsch 21s) Hindoo Fairy ' Legends collected by Mary Frere...

ROY STRONG Elizabeth I compiled by John Langdon-Davies (Cape Jackdaw Publications 11s 6d) I have been crazy about Queen Elizabeth I ever since the age of sixteen, when I had my...

BOOKGUIDE Dick Bruna leads the field (two to five) for the elegance of his drawings and the succinct cun- ning of his texts: / can read (Methuen 9s 6d) is a primer, at once...

Childhood in Egypt Anne Viccars Barber (Bles 21s). The charm of Mrs Barber's auto- biography rests in its minute scale: illustra- tions show her, half a century ago, self-...

set on a craggy lighthouse island off the Tasmanian coast. A tight little community of beacon-keepers dis- plays all the uncomfortable symptoms of Pinter's isolation syndrome...

People from the Past (Denis Dobson 18s each) presents history in terms of isolated and often bizarrely chosen biographies. Of the latest trio, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm is by far...

.CINEMA Fungoid farce PENELOPE. HOUSTON Any film which ends with a maddened vicar, a social worker, a deflated tycoon, two seaside postcard stand-ins for the working class,...

HILARY SPURLING The works of Fernando Arrabal—sadistic, necrophiliac, hopefully obscene, a compound, in short, of every cliché in the business—aim at 'that complicated reaction...

OPERA EDWARD BOYLE The Glyndeboume production of Eugene Onegin is a notable success, and I commend it strongly to all lovers not , only of Tchaikovsky but of nineteenth'...

ART PAUL GRINKE One of the several organisations now nurtured in the capacious though draughty bosom of 12 Carlton Terrace is the Designers and Art Directors Association. Every...

PHILIDOR Black White 5 men 7 men V. I. Melnichenko (1st Prize, USSR Central Chess Club Bulletin, 1967). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. t Solution to...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Central bankers must be the most boring people in the world to engage in conversation. Priestley once said to me that journalists were the worst because they...

CHRISTOPHER FILDES Courtaulds' £20 million new issue will be with us shortly, with the £30 million for Rolls-Royce - one place -behind it in the queue. Sir Frank Kearton has...

BUSINESS VIEWPOINT JOHN GARNETT John Garnett is director of The Industrial Society. The main business problem today is not the development of technical or financial resources,...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL Cambridge Instrument, with a gain of 30 per cent in two months, is a star ,turn for my speculative portfolio. In mid-April I bought 300 shares at 38s 9d :...

ADVERTISING ROGER PEMBERTON Those who regard the phrase 'consumer society' as a semi-sneer promoted by the kill- joys will be chastened by a new report from Social Surveys...

CUSTOS The 450 mark on the Financial Times index has again proved to be a floor for share prices. This week has seen the markets generally in more cheerful mood, with another...

Sir : With all respect to Miss Mitford—I am depressed that a serious political publication should publish her 'French revolution diary' in the form that it has. Many of my...

LETTERS From: T. C. H. Retallack, Joan Henry, Jack Dixon, Larry Adler, H. D. Sills, S. G. Dixon, Sir George Young, 'Schoolmaster,' B. J. Hurren, Nicholas de Lange, John...

Sir: I really must protest that Dr Smith of California should brand me as 'starry-eyed' (Letters, 7 June). Whereas I would be surprised if Dr Smith has spent five minutes in...

Sir: Dr Mishan fails to draw the logical con- clusion from his own very sensible reasoning (Letters, 31 May and 7 June). Of course what is done can be undone. Errors can be put...

Sir : Stuart Maclure, in his article 'University challenge' in your 31 May issue, speaks of students' uncertainty of the future after graduation, particularly those studying...

Sir: Our Government supplies arms to the Federation of Nigeria to assist them in pre- venting secession by a state which would but live in peace. It penalises Southern Rhodesia,...

have found some cake and would like Miss Mitford's permission to eat it.

Sir : Whilst any teacher welcomes the trend towards greater kindness and permissiveness in the classroom, one wishes that the Lady Plowdens of this world would occasionally be...

primarily for Love in a Cold Climate—that paean in praise of youth and freshness, that lively assault on the stuffiness of the wealthy bourgeoisie—must have been saddened by her...

Sir : Mr Tibor Szamuely, in his review of my book Reap the Whirlwind, reproaches me for not saying 'a word . . . about communist in- filtration of Ghana or Dr Nkrumah's...

Sir : Two letters reached me from Greece this morning. One, with a local postmark, bears (in Greek) the slogan 'A GREECE OF CHRISTIAN GREEKS,' which, having caused reactions...

Sir: Mr Davenport's most interesting dis- closures (7 June) of the financial position of the Football League clubs and his conclusion that television could contribute more to...

Sir: Mr Haddock (Letters, 24 May) has done about the amount of homework I anticipated and tells us what we know already without addressing himself to the main issue. Dame Irene...

From the 'Spectator'. 13 l a me 1868—Prince Michael of Servia was shot down on the 10th of June by three men armed with revolvers, and has since, it may be presumed, died,...

COMPETITION Nancy Mitford's revolution diary, published in this paper on 31 May and 7 June, suggested one way of sitting out France's three weeks of insurrection and anarchy....

AFTERTHOUGHT` JOHN WELLS Over the years the deathless strains and snatches of Sigmund Rhomboid's music have seeped into the cultural heritage of western civilisation like warm...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were asked to review the work of their dentist, dustman, stockbroker or anyone else whose work is not normally subject to public scrutiny. J....

Across 1 Bedtime bell for Ariel (8) 5 How improved harvest return might be referred to in conversation? (4, 2) 9 French mathematician expresses inward measure of the good...