de aulle and Mr Wilson was arranged origin- y at the British Prime Minister's request, discuss the objections to British entry into e Common Market listed by the President...

Mr Brown's statement of the Government's policy towards South Arabia in the Commons on Monday can, be read is two ways-. It can be taken to mean, as the jubilant Conserva- tives...

The 121 per cent increase in the old age pen- sion which the Government has now officially promised for October can scarcely be accused of erring on the side of generosity. Some...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS It is reported that the Syrian government is proposing to ask for financial assistance to enable it to pay for its Russian-supplied arms. The Syrian came...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY ALAN WATKINS How does the Government propose to win the election? Step forward, Leonard James Callaghan. It is a political truism that in any...

RHODESIA JOCK BRUCE-GARDYNE, MP Economic warfare, like the military variety, can presumably be held , to justify its own code of secrecy; and in both participants are in-...

ANGLO-FRENCH SUMMIT GEORGES BROUSSINE Paris. — The courtesies showered by General de Gaulle on Mr Wilson. the choice of the ravish- ing royal resting-place of the Grand...

CONSTITUENCIES • GEOFFREY D. M. BLOCK Quietly at work, stirring up eddies locally, but often not reported nationally, the machinery for revising constituency boundaries has...

as From the 'Spectator,' 22 June 1867—Lord Amber- ley's Bill authorizing -lectures on Sunday with money taken at the doors was on Wednesday defeated, the main argument against...

J. W. M. THOMPSON It was nice timing to bring out an all-party proposal to abolish the theatre censorship just when Parliament was up to its ears in D Notices and official...

THE PRESS DONALD McLACHLAN The press, too, has its secrets. A few weeks ago I wrote to newspaper managements asking them to let me know how many coloured people they employed....

TELEVISION AIME MELLORS WIGG Those with a well-developed sense of the ridiculous will have richly enjoyed last Satur- day's Times first leader 'Lord Hill's f11 tn. patronage.'...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON I suppose one of the most horrible nightmares which can afflict any of us is that of being incarcerated in a mental hospital when we are in fact...

RADCLIFFE REVEALED AUBERON WAUGH Strip-cartoon rights in the Radcliffe Report are at present vested, like most of the good things in life, in the Crown, but the first action of...

PERSONAL COLUMN KENNETH ALLSOP On that June day in 1936 I had spent an amus- ing hour at the International Surrealist Exhi- bition at the New Burlington Galleries, and...

SALVATORE QUASIMODO Translated from the Italian by Giuliano Dego I read to you an ancient poet's sweet verses and the words born among vineyards and tents, on the riverbanks...

DAVID REES It was one of George Orwell's wishes that no biography of him should be written, but of course there have been several critical studies in recent years by, amongst...

HARRY G. JOHNSON The Age of Keynes Robert Lekachman (Allen Lane The Penguin Press 42s) 'As fundamental a revolutionary as Freud or Marx Keynes rewrote the language of eco-...

MARTIN TURNELL Lyrical and Critical Albert Camus selected and translated by Philip Thody (Hamish Hamil- ton 30s) The latest work of Camus to be translated into English is a...

WILLIAM BUCHAN Growing up nowadays may sometimes be fraught with purpose, sometimes exciting, pos- sibly even psychedelic but, from where most of us sit, it seldom looks like...

Asian-American Relations John Hohenberg (Pall Mall Press 64s) Press in peril D. W. BROGAN Most public-spirited citizens know that the fourth estate is in a bad way. If they...

Meditations NEVILLE BRAYBROOKE The Music School John Updike (Deutsch 25s) The Day That We Got Drunk on Cake William Trevor (Bodley Head 21s) Towards the End of the Morning...

Same tame James PENELOPE HOUSTON The Jokers (Leicester Square Theatre, `U') It is odd that perhaps the two most distinctive among recent thriller writers should both be...

CHARLES REID When in vacant, pensive or slothful mood, I sometimes crave for opera plots so basic that you can get a fairly clear idea what's happen- ing at first go, even if...

Poor Will HILARY SPURLING As You Like It (Stratford-upon-Avon) A s You Like 11 (Vaudeville) Ghosts (Aldwych) A discouraging week in the theatre, at least for those of us not...

ART BRYAN ROBERTSON The twelve new works by Ben Nicholson dis- played with some smaller drawings, or drawn- paintings, at the Marlborough New London Gallery add up to one of...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT I suppose most people now recognise that our economy is moving swiftly towards a new form of socialism. While the leaders of the Labour party have accepted...

CUSTOS The behaviour of the stock markets during the Middle East crisis has been truly British, in other words, non-panicky. The gilt-edged market has, of course, been weak on...

Sir: Regarding Tibor Szamuely's article (9 June). I would like to point out to him that the right- wingers in the West are also the most ardent admirers and supporters of Ian...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN Why do they come, these visitors to Britain? London is bursting with them now, posing in front of the mounted guards in Whitehall or taking the...

LETTERS From Wm F. Buckley Jr, Christopher I. K. Tallack. Eric Taylor, Boris Kalcev, Humphrey Wynn, T. H. Berrill, FRCS, Anthony Eisingc•r, Mrs I. S. Mason, Elspeth...

Sir: If all that Mr Ivor Powell (9 June) says is to be believed, things in Egypt are in a pretty desperate case and it would be much better if Nasser, or any other leader, tried...

every- thing written by Mr.Szamuely regarding Israel and the left (9 June) butthink that the argument can be carried even further. After long reflection on this matter, I have...

ought to be drawn, one should go further than Tibor Szamuely (9 June). Czechoslovakia, not 'a small nation' but a conglomerate state, was created after the First. World War. It...

Sir: I nearly %Tote to you about Leslie Adrian's article under this somewhat emotive title, and the pathetic nonsense from an anonymous corres- pondent in this week's 'letters'...

who wrote following Leslie Adrian's 'Sentence of death' article. There is much to attack in the state of medicine, but both these writers seem to have the wrong end of the...

Sir: The thing that distinguishes Auberon Waugh's miserably boring and stale rehash of Snow deni- grations is its furtive indirectness. The violent vituperation which, according...

readers (Letters, 16 June) that the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children can be contacted at my address (like ALRA, it has no office). purely the one-guinea...

JOHN WELLS I have no idea why it is, but whenever I see even a photograph in someone else's newspaper of a schoolteachers' conference I inevitably feel myself bowled over by a...

Sir: I found Mr Goodhart's letter on abortion (9 June) so extraordinary that I had to read it twice to make sure I had not misunderstood it. He tells us that he finds the...

Sir: According to Professor Plumb (26 May), most adults suffer from a 'semantic blockage in their thinking about drugs. Yet what semantic blockage leads him to class tea, coffee...

the meaning of the equation E=mc' is in itself a justification for regarding Snow's Rede lecture on the 'Two Cultures' as a valuable con- tribution to human thought?

PHILIDOR L. lskra (1st Pekoe, Soveiski Voin, 1966). White to play and mate in three moves; solution next week. - Solution to no. 339 (Subrahmanyam). B-Kt 7, threat Q XP. 1 . ....

Across 1 -One can't go fifty-fifty with her ! (6, 4) 6 Saint and sailor make•a sharp attack (4) 10 All in the dark about the thing (5) 11 Produces the cane, perhaps, to mark...