Etablished 1828 99 Gower Street, London WC1E 6AE Telephone: 01-387 3221 Telegrams Spectator, London Editor: George Gale Associate Editor: Michael Wynn Jones Literary Editor:...

The swift succession of public diplomatic events which have succeeded the overt Chinese friendliness in the matter of visit- ing Western ping-pong teams and which indicate much...

Tolerance towards black violence has become nowadays so respectable that anything that is black is automatically whitewashed by unthinking men and women. We've had that silly...

I used to have a certain amount of respect for the Quakers, and the two great chocolate and cocoa families of Rowntree and Cad- bury have in their time produced some con-...

You could not hope to find a more courteous and self-effacing man than Bohuslav Kratovil, who writes this week on the sup- pressed report of the Czech Political Trials...

I thought, to ask the Americans to drop into or onto their space station next time they pass by. The sole Russian con- dition—that they should leave the place clean for the next...

When he worked for the Liberals, Pratap Chitnis was an engaging fellow, helpful, not obviously a fool and not obviously a cam- paigning hothead either. Like others who had...

Pretty Miss Penny Jackson accused the FBI of stealing her brother's burial money out of his coffin. When someone from Peace News criticised the behaviour of the Black Panther...

But they would certainly understand about Frelimo and would realise that it is a violent insurrectionary movement devoted to the practice of war as an instrument of revolu-...

party in an article in the Times last Saturday. It was entitle 'The Harsh Vul g arity of Modern Toryism' and the main thesis was that the Conservative party, which had once been...

Help off the hook BY 'AN ECONOMIST' Since the Finance Bill, published earlier this week, proved to contain few surprises, the debate in the House on this year's historic...

The dirigiste professor JOHN BIFFEN MP Professor Clegg has published his ideas on running an incomes policy at a highly topical moment.* Printing House Square has been...

Wednesday 14 April: ASLEF called off the rail- ' way work-to-rule, but the NUR rejected British Rail's pay offer. to announced a £67m take- over bid for _an American chemicals...

Industrial justice at work NORMAN FOWLER, MP According to the unions who organised it the one-day strike on I March against the Industrial Relations Bill was an undoubted...

Difficulties and discovery LORD BUTLER On page 703 a tribute is paid to me and my utterances are described as Delphic. I shall therefore have a high standard to live up to in...

Resignations and recovery ENOCH POWELL 'I prepared my letter of resignation (of which I have the draft in my records) and waited for the crucial cabinet which must decide my...

Spectator The Spectator, 99 Gower Street, London w.o.i Please supply the Spectator for one year 01 two years 0m three years 0 I NMI MN MIN MIN MN MI Cheque enclosed NAME...

Communism's dark backwoods B. G. KRATOVIL In April 1968 the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist party under Dubcek's leadership appointed a commission to make...

Robert Blake on a historian's historian Reviews by Barbara Hardy, Henry Cecil and John Casey Auberon Waugh on new fiction Shirley Letwin: Spencer and Adam Smith In the middle...

This fascinating and instructive book tells the story of judges' mistakes (and achievements) for a thousand years up to the present day. It is told with humour, com- passion and...

The Impact of Labour 1920-1924 Maurice Cowling (cup 0.40) Mr Maurice Cowling is an austere and un-t compromising historian who does not cater for popular tastes or fashionable...

It is a land he knows. White sunlight Specifies each shrub and stone— And as he moves his vacant sight Restores him to the ways he's grown:] He is enclosed in reveries No will...

Near the beginning and the end of her book, Margaret Tillett meditates on a passage from the Vie de Henry Bruleur in which Beyle/ Stendhal/Bruleur, at fifty-two, says he is...

Mr Brata prefaces his second novel with one of those tortured little apologies which writers still imagine to possess some magic power against libel actions. The problem is...

Roles and Values: An Introduction to So . riot Ethics R. S. Downie (Methuen £1.60) It i rare for an analytical philosopher to try to show on purely a priori grounds that one...

10 Trier 11 Leasehold 12 Hogmanay 13 Apollo 15 Sail 16 Silk 17 Kapok, 20 Usher 21 Etna 22 Enid 24 Resume 2 0 Villager 29 Lamellate 30 Carob 31 Guns 3 2 Constricts. Down : 1...

No. 647: 0 splendid ship . Set by Billy Bones: The impressive spectacle of huge oil tankers apparently queueing up to collide, run aground or just fall apart all along our...

A prize of £3 will be awarded for the first correct solution opened on 3 May. Address solutions: Crossword 1478, The Spectator, 99 Gower Street, London WC1E 6AE. Across 1...

Charles Seaton reports: Asked to comment on the opening of a 'dolphinarium' in London's Oxford Street, most competitors were on the side of the dolphins and the English...

Birthday remembrances ROBIN YOUNG Twenty-first birthdays still excuse senti- ment and self-indulgence. Accordingly the London Festival Ballet, celebrating the attainment of...

The red and the black CHRISTOPHER HUDSON \ Soldier Blue (x' Lei- cester Square Odeon) What's more, the opening massacre is a clean and military affair. The Indians don't...

British fun Patrick SKENE CATLING If the enc's entry for this year's 'Golden Rose of Montreux' doesn't win it, we shall know once and for all that a Rose isn't a Rose isn't a...

Old Laing signs KENNETH HURREN The piece has to do with' a middle-aged man named James Blanch, regarded by society as a species of nut, who is pleading before a tribunal for...

Critics in the pillory TONY PALMER So. The knives are out. I have good news for Kenneth Hurren, the well-known satirist and lesser known critic, who chides me for my re- marks...

Sir: It is true, as Mr Cosgrave pointed out (3 April) that Mr Hazlehurst's Politicians at War Is, based on an inadequate range or primary material if offered as an account of...

Sir: One of the arguments put for- ward against vasectomy as a method of birth control for younger husbands, is that, as it must be regarded as an irreversible oper- ation, it...

Sir: In his interesting article on Berlin, Mr Frank Whitford refers to 'the astonishingly high suicide rate' there now. This is nothing new. Writing of the extraordinary times...

Sir: There is more to democracy than H. K. Barrett (Letters, 17 April) may suppose. It is not enough to persuade a few hundred MPS that they know what the people want, if they...

The last of the Tsars I Sir: We woolly-haired, simian- ; typed American journalists, who ; are so many light-years behind that ;super-precious wing of the British I literary...

Sir: Your comments and those of Mr Henry Fairlie lost a good deal of their impact by considering the case of Lt Calley in isolation from the remainder of the week's news. The...

so soon, but perhaps you, and my friend of earlier days, John Wain, and even Kate Millett herself, might be in- terested to see some verses on 'Sexual Politics' published in my...

Sir: I am making a study of Browning's only son—Robert Wiedmann Barrett Browning, known as Pen. I should be most grateful to any of your readers for information—about his period...

Sir: I had never realised that the famous passage from Ecclesiastes: 'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh,...

Sir: Who are the 'middle men'? I mean those in relatively senior positions in public bodies, colleges, educational institutions and similar bodies. Why worry about them?...

Sir: Your correspondent, June Blane, has ably enumerated the pernicious influences at work in the media in the current attempt to in- augurate a kind of trendy utopia. Chief...

to be: all critics arc fallible and dictatorial; foreign critics can help make or break a production; English critics are ignored. The article shows why. Tony Palmer says...

Young Ash Leaf gracefully slaughtered her male rivals in the Scottish 'National', among them her stable companion, The Spaniard, and so with the wrong horse from the right...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT News of the proposed merger between two giant companies—Burmah Oil and Con- tinental Oil—has not only been exciting the market in oil shares but those...

Until the Budget the hazard of short-term gains tax added to risk, since profits taken too soon, however big, were not always enough to pay back principal and interest (not...

Not being able to get the Morning Star I was forced to glance at the new tiresome Guardian on Monday. There was a piece by Ian Woodward interviewing a pretty young woman, Josie...

Sotheby's had an unremarkable sale of Modern British Drawings, Paintings and Sculpture on 7 April. I was glad to see the name of Horsman, M., against the purchase of a Philip...

Company promoter, Christopher 'Sell 'em' Selmes, twenty-two, stock and share man and head of the Drakes holding company, learned his trade from Mr Pat Matthews, who started by...

The charging of personal bank interest against personal taxation was disallowed (except so far as it might have been con- nected with house or land purchase) by the socialists...

It is only when confronted by a tourist that I realise how sadly I have neglected my London lore. Tourists, I know, are pro- fessional sightseers, and professional sight- seers,...

in brilliant, bedraggled primary school colours, as if the child couldn't wait for one to dry before slapping on the next. The Spurs — goalie leaps high for joy in the murk of a...

CAROL WRIGHT Western Europeans like to find an old paint- peeled fishing village and vamp it into a smart little resort. The fishermen move their community aside, become...

Misconceptions about wine are curious. There's a vague notion, for example, that in the countries where it is made, it's always being made, and everywhere, so that any day now...

England CAMBRIDGESHIRE Garden House Hotel**** CAMBRIDGE Cambridge 55491 Royal Cambridge Hotel . "'" CAMBRIDGE Cambridge 51631 CORNWALL Meudon Hotel* *** NEAR FALMOUTH Mawnan...