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The fragile society
The SpectatorWhen politics is about cricket it is a sign that the English are taking their politics seriously. And, certainly, the issues sur- rounding the forthcoming South African tour...
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POLITICAL COMMENTARY
The SpectatorThe state of the politics industry JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE, MP Mr Pearl, the Leader of the House of Com- mons, has announced that the Commission on Industry and Manpower (successor...
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GOVERNMENT
The SpectatorThe alternative to Croslandia W. A. WEST Professor West is at the Faculty of Urban and Regional Studies at Reading University. To say that the reform of local government is...
A PM speaks
The SpectatorCHRISTOPHER HOLLIS The Tories, when they come to power, Will gladly seize their finest hour To slash the workers' wages, And in a rage of frenzied hate They will destroy the...
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THE ENVIRONMENT
The SpectatorAfter the ballyhoo STANLEY JOHNSON Well, they have come and gone. For four days Strasbourg was host to princes, plan- ners and parliamentarians. Whole tracts of life-giving,...
TRANSPORT
The SpectatorLines blocked TERENCE BENDIXSON Next time you are at a railway station and a goods train rattles past with a thud, thud, thud and a squeal have a good look at it. Those brown...
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YUGOSLAVIA
The SpectatorEnter Tito's policeman TIBOR SZAMUELY Next week a signal honour will befall these islands: we are to be visited, for the first time since the war, by a Yugoslav Prime...
A hundred years ago From the 'Spectator', 19 February 1870 â The
The SpectatorLords are sighing for work. The Government, taught by the fate of the Scotch Education Bill of last year, which was introduced first in the Lords, and consequently cut to...
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VIEWPOINT
The SpectatorOverheard in Beirut GEORGE GALE Journalists suffer from an incurable (because it is essential) disease of their occupation : they are compulsive dramatists. They see plots,...
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SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
The SpectatorJ. W. M. THOMPSON For some reason the historians of the last war don't seem to have gone very deeply into the fact, a remarkable one in view of what happened in the 1914-18...
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PERSONAL COLUMN
The SpectatorThe measure of all things CHRISTOPHER BOOKER So strongly did Lord Clark's thirteen tele- vision lectures on the history of western civilisation (and their subsequent...
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CONSUMING INTEREST
The SpectatorFed up LESLIE ADRIAN That part of Germany where Herr Brandt's writ now runs is a land flowing, literally, with milk and honey. But, in flat con- tradiction of the voice that...
MEDICINE
The SpectatorOld wives' tales JOHN ROWAN WILSON 'If you don't - wear your wellies you'll go blind', says the nanny to the boy in Alan Bennett's play Forty Years On. It is a line that...
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TABLE TALK
The SpectatorNation, race and the right DENIS BROGAN I have just been reading the first two books* in a new series, 'Roots of the Right', edited by Mr George Steiner. The venture is cer-...
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BOOKS Who was then the gentleman?
The SpectatorG. D. RAMSAY Why did one group of Englishmen take to arms against another group not much more than three hundred years ago? Until recent times, there was general acceptance of...
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Old mole
The SpectatorTREVOR GROVE Play Power Richard Neville (Cape 38s) The Politics of Ecstasy Timothy Leary (MacGibbon and Kee 36s) Mr Richard Neville, spoofer extraordinary, editor of Oz and...
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NEW NOVELS
The SpectatorIn retreat BARRY COLE Real People Alison Lurie (Heinemann 25s) Middle Ground Ursula Zilins4 (Longman 30s) What I'm Going to Do, I Think L. Woiwode (Weidenfeld and Nicolson...
Mighty work
The SpectatorMICHAEL BORRIE English Historical Documents: Vol IV 1327- 1485 edited by A. R. Myers (Eyre and Spot- tiswoode 10 gns) The score is nine down and three to go as this monumental...
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Outside in
The SpectatorFRANK NORMAN The Frying-Pan Tony Parker (Hutchinson 45s) Grendon Underwood is Britain's only psy- chiatric prison. Without doubt, it represents the only ray of hope in the...
Rational numbers
The SpectatorCLARENCE BROWN We Yevgeny Zamyatin translated by Bernard Guilbert Guerney (Cape 35s) Written in Petrograd in 1920. this fantasy of a future totalitarian state has never been...
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Rat's bane
The SpectatorPHILIP ZIEGLER A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles J. F. D. Shrewsbury (cut. 160s) Bubonic plague is one of the world's great killers. Pasteurella Pest is, its...
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ARTS Voice of America
The SpectatorPENELOPE HOUSTON One of the more awful of the cinema's recent sights has been the ageing film-maker in faint pursuit of the hippies, wheezing along panting `do your own thing'...
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⢠ART
The SpectatorNorman beaches FRANCIS HOYLANI) At the New Grafton Gallery until 28 February are a number of smallish paintings showing places familiar from the work of various nineteenth...
THEATRE
The SpectatorThings that hurt HILARY SPURLING Jonathan Miller's production of King Lear, mightily praised when it opened at Not- tingham in- October, trod the boards of the Old Vic last...
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BALLET
The SpectatorSea change CLEMENT CRISP Just when I began to fear that the Royal Ballet had given up new choreography as a bad thingâand heaven knows that much of the choreography we see...
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Second bite
The SpectatorJOHN BULL A great deal of heat is being generated about the second mortgage businessâand about mortgage brokers. I start with Mr Andrew Breach, chairman of the Bristol and...
The City and the Common Market
The SpectatorNICHOLAS DAVENPORT Having been warned by this journal amongst others that the White Paper on the Com mon Market was npt 'an economic assess- ment', as it purported to be, but a...
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Mr Heath's striptease
The SpectatorSir: May I comment on Auberon Waugh's dissection of the Codex Croydoniensis (14 February)? Most interesting of all were his remarks on the belated decision to give pensions to...
LETTERS
The SpectatorFrom Anthony Thwaite, Lionel Bloch, Geoffrey Kennard, George Chowdharay- Best, Dr E. 1. Mishan, L. E. Weidberg, R. L. Travers, F. .1. A. Cruso, Carola Oman, Harold Braham,...
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The Duke's tubes
The SpectatorSir: I wonder what gave your correspond- ents, Mrs Brown and Messrs McCarthy and Grant (Letters, 24 January and 1 February), the idea that I was an advocate of BST? My letter...
Pride of place
The SpectatorSir: I have seldom disagreed more with any article than I do with Mr Simon Raven's under the above title (7 February). Having given up work some six years ago and done nothing...
Scots myths
The SpectatorSir: What canting nonsense is this (Letters, 7 February)? By all means let the Scotch call themselves Scots or Scottish if they want to. But why should English people be nagged...
The demo-mobsters
The SpectatorSir: Pace Randolph Vigne (Letters, 14 February), I would say that George Gale's description of Peter Hain as a 'character- istic child of our time' (7 February) is a...
Negro violence
The SpectatorSir: Father Huddleston has asserted in a letter to the Times (20 January), that Negro violence is due 'to 'racial attitudes which for generations have been contemptuous of the...
Disturbed but not put out
The SpectatorSir: Mr P. J. Barnwell, in his letter in your issue of 14 February, says, 'Is not your re- viewer Carola Oman rather hard on Countess Bertrand when she dubs her "this silly...
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Great Concorde brainwash
The SpectatorSir: I regret that in my piece last week (14 February) an error remained uncorrected in the final copy. The £10 million a month said to be drawn from the taxpayer by the...
AFTERTHOUGHT
The SpectatorLOOK! this has gone far enough Sid Freud is seventy-three and lives with a midget. 'I used to work in a freak show way back. I used to keep Little Herbert here in a cardboard...
COMPETITION
The SpectatorNo. 593: Package tour Mr Richard Crossman has recently been quoted as saying that in his view it would be 'quite unjustifiable to guarantee an abor, tion as part of a package...
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Crossword 1418
The SpectatorAcross 1 Rhinemaiden having a water-wave, of course! (6) 4 The old city turns it on in Surrey (8) 9 Immature ghosts! (6) 10 Smacks for a Liberal appearing in party rosettes?...
Chess 479
The SpectatorPHILIDOR D. Hjelle (1st Prize equal, Montreal) White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 478 (Fossum) l6/2B2p2/...