22 NOVEMBER 1968

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The Spectator

In the shadow o • h Library ks this issue of the SPBCTATOR went to press, he finance ministers of the major nations the world were still closeted together at onn in an attempt...

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Next time lucky ?

The Spectator

At first glance it is tempting now to conclude that the only purpose of the 'Fearless' con- frontation was, after all, to dish the Tory party conference. The only clear result...

PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK

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Pressure on the franc increased as Frenchmen swarmed across the borders to buy German marks, in spite of official denials that Germany would revalue. The Group of Ten finance...

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Take away this pudding

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POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH In a week when Mr Enoch Powell has earned a further public rebuke from his leader, one must plainly return to the Tories. Nothing very ex-...

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Couve and the avalanche

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FRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris, Wednesday-:--General de Gaulle has found it easier to retain the votes of his fellow countrymen than their banknotes. Since the May 'troubles' around...

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Tough—or bluff?

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DEFENCE LAURENCE MARTIN After last week's meeting of NATO defence ministers, Mr Healey told a press conference that the 'rot had been stopped.' Having used precisely the same...

All right for some

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SANCTIONS JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE The economic realities behind the failure of Mr George Thomson's latest mission to Rhodesia did not intrude in any unseemly man- ner into the...

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Enoch declares war

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POLITICIANS ANGUS MAUDE, MP Whether or not Mr Enoch Powell intends it —and it must be assumed that he does—he is now in a state of open war with the leaders of the Conservative...

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SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

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J. W. M. THOMPSON As Graham Greene said in his excellent tele- vision programme on Sunday. the thrill of Russian roulette diminishes with familiarity. When he tried it as a...

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Playing the disaster game

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PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN Whenever I must drive long distances alone, I have recourse to fantasy. Sometimes this is topical in kind. The other day I amused my- self from...

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Official rebel

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OXFORD POETRY CHAIR TIBOR SZAMUELY The election of a Professor of Poetry at Oxford is always an occasion of some interest. This time, however, it has become a positively stag-...

Between friends

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THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY I have no doubt at all that I would be an expert in current affairs if only I could understand what is going on. I don't know why I don't, although it may...

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Scrambled eggs

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CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN The annual general meeting of 'registered pro- ducers' under the egg marketing scheme is due to be held in Knightsbridge on 3 December. Given...

Greene pastures

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TELEVISION STUART HOOD Television finds certain subjects notoriously intractable. One of them is music; another is literature. In the case of music a solution has been found in...

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Tribune of the people

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TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN 1 see that the bold attempt to storm the Bastille, not so much of the Paris lycies as of the French family system which still treasures the bachot,...

A hundred years ago

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From the 'Spectator', 21 November 1868—Mr. Disraeli was returned on Thursday, and made a speech to his constituents, in which he almost ad- mitted a complete defeat. It was an...

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Diabolical rebel BOOKS

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JOHN HOLLOWAY At 6.30 a.m. on Monday 9 December, the 360th anniversary of Milton's birth (this 'almost cer- tainly' took place in a second-floor bedroom in Bread Street,...

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Damnably discreet

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IAIN MACLEOD, MP Action This Day edited by Sir John Wheeler- Bennett (Macmillan 45s) I wish I could give full praise to this book. It is about Churchill. It is written by six...

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NOVELS

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Random returns MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH The Ticket That Exploded William Burroughs (Calder and Boyars 42s) Raman's Notebooks Stephen Gilbert (Michael Joseph 25s) New Orleans...

Improper answers

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JOHN BARRON A few years ago everyone was writing a Turkey book. Now Crete and Mycenae are all the rage. The coffee-tables -ate groaning, and the bookcases too, for works of...

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Thirty years on

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JOHN HIGGINS On a hot August day in 1940 I was lying at full stretch, stomach down, in a remote Cornish orchard. It was a good afternoon because the post had brought a batch of...

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Shooting tsars

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TIBOR SZAMUELY The history of Russia is the history of her tsars, wrote Karamzin, the first great Russian historian. Today, one and a half centuries later, this claim can still...

Life & hard times

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LORD EGREMONT King Louis Philippe said to Disraeli that he attributed the great success of the British nation to talking about politics after dinner. Of course, he didn't know...

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Shorter notices

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The Strange Story of False Teeth John Wood- forde (Routledge and Kegan Paul 30s). From the gilded snappers of the Etruscans ('Dental craftsmanship of this order was- not to re-...

Pleasure domes -

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STEPHEN GARDINER Studies in Art, Architecture and Design Nikolaus Pevsner (Thames and Hudson 2 vols 90s each) - As the architectural background we have known and enjoyed in the...

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Rodney Ackland ARTS

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HILARY SPURLING `It's only the hairs on a gooseberry That stop it from being a grape,' as the pantomime dame said in Rodney Ack- land's Strange Orchestra. This time last year,...

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Mock Tudor

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BALLET CLEMENT CRISP Looking backwards is a besetting sin with British ballet, reflecting a deep-rooted con- servatism in public taste; at Covent Garden last week the Royal...

We never close

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MUSIC MICHAEL NYMAN Music is alive and flourishing in considerable opulence in London; there's an unprecedented 'we never close' atmosphere about at the moment, performances...

Make me an offer

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CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Oh, ring-a-ring-a-roses, Ring for the dealers' prize And see the bidding closes Before the prices rise. They buy by nods and winking— The dodge the dealer...

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The money crisis

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NICHOLAS DAVENPORT It was ironic that at the moment when the finan- cial scribes were busy celebrating the first anni- versary of devaluation, putting as good or as bad a face...

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Striking rich

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PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL In the few weeks which have elapsed since I bought British Petroleum for my second, specu- lative, portfolio the shares have shot up from 103s 6d to 128s, a...

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ffolkes's business types

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Market report

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CUSTOS The gilt-edged market has been in complete dis- array this week. Selling has been substantial and prices have plunged to record depths. In chronological order, what has...

Biafra and human rights

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LETTERS From Major-General H. T. Alexander, Godlre s . C. Okeke, W. H. Irvine. Lord Monson. Dr Enid Starkie,_ Frank Teer, Samuel Bri' tan, Arthur Shenfield, D. H. Cameron, R. G...

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Who gets the chair ?

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Sir: Hugh Trevor-Roper (Letters, 15 Novem- ber) states: 'Miss Starkie claims that her high- pressure methods once gave us W. H. Auden as Professor of Poetry' (Letters, 8...

Sir: Your leader 'Biafra and human rights' should be sent

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to the 'experts' in Whitehall to read, because about two centuries ago, English humanists like William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson and Granville Sharp were pleading for the...

Enter the new fascists

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Sir: In attempting to refute your description of student militants as the 'new fascists,' Mr Nicolas Walter (Letters, 8 November) cites in their favour their alleged approval of...

A new theory of by-elections

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Sir: I should like to make some observations on Mr Lawson's new theory of by-elections (8 November): 1. Nobody disputes that swing is a crude measurement. It ignores factors...

Black scorpion

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Sir: It is a pity that John Wells does not find himself in reality at the business end of Colonel Adekunle's 'machine gun' (probably his sub- automatic personal weapon) instead...

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Sir: While your suggestion (15 November) fat replacing the House

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of Lords by a senate and making the House of Commons the electoral college responsible for electing senators Will undoubtedly prevent excessive power being vested in the Prime...

Familiar stranger

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Sir : Your two American correspondents (15 November) display a very smart hand at distor- tion in their dire predictions of Mr Nixon's difficulties and failures to come. Murray...

A modest proposal

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Sir: As you rightly say (15 November), now that the hereditary peerage is to be stripped of all legislative status, the argument for creating life peers collapses. And in the...

Sir : Mr Lawson's 'theory of by-elections' (8 November) shows

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the misleading nature of con- ventional swing calculations and suggests a way of allowing for the effects of abstention. But his theory has no bearing whatever upon the result...

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Fears of revolution

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AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS Scotland Yard is believed, writes Bill 'I'm a believer Rees-Mogg, Sensation and Scare Monger Extraordinary to the Palace of White- hall, to be standing...

The evil that men do

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Sir: Please may I make it clear that the mis- spelling of `Vorkuta' in my last week's review of Solzhenitsyn (and in the context of my own complaints against someone else's...

For he is a major-general

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Sir: In your issue of 15 November, Mr Auberon Waugh told us that Mr Jenkins, like Gilbert's Major-General, 'is teeming with a lot of news about binomial theory [sic].' As a...

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No. 528: Parody

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COMPETITION The great Pope v Pill contest continues to smoulder fitfully: against this Vesuvian back- drop competitors are invited to compose a papal encyclical on tax evasion,...

Crossword no.1353

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Across 1 Honey soft is ripe (6) 4 Disguised as ss 'Argo' in the weed (8) 9 'Unmov'd tho' witlings sneer and — rail' (Johnson) (6) 10 The bane of Mrs Mopp at Jodrell Bank? (4-4)...

Chess no. 414

The Spectator

PHILIDOR White 6 men 9 men V. Velikoslayski (1st Prize, USSR, 1957). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 413 (Schiffmann): B – Kt 2,...

No. 526: The winners

The Spectator

Trevor Grove reports: Armed with a mere ten words chosen from the opening lines of a well- known play, competitors were asked to con- struct round them part of the script for a...