25 APRIL 1969

Page 1

Government by ukase

The Spectator

That said, it is important that the Con- s er vatives should at the same time make it e qually clear that what Mrs Castle has in niuld is a thoroughly odious Bill which l e ads...

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Miss Devlin's week

The Spectator

On Tuesday, in the most remarkable maiden speech which the House of Commons has heard since the war, Miss Bernadette Devlin clearly indicated the goal of the Ulster civil rights...

Winter returns to Prague

The Spectator

Just fifteen months have passed since the removal of Mr Novotny from the first secre- taryship of the Czechoslovak communist party marked the opening of eastern Europe's finest...

PORTRAIT OF THE WEEK

The Spectator

Miss Bernadette Devlin, civil rights victor at the Mid-Ulster by-election, took her seat in time for an emergency debate on the Home Secretary's decision to allow British troops...

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Lloyd George knew her father

The Spectator

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGII The Prime Minister may well have breathed a sigh of relief that a diversion in Ulster should have blown up again over the weekend. If so, he...

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Can Nurse pull it off?

The Spectator

FRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris—Until last weekend the electors of France treated the referendum campaign on General de Gaulle's proposals for regional de- volution with one vast...

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Keeping an eye on the colonels

The Spectator

ROME PETER TUMIATI Rome—Italy's strongest defences against pos- sible authoritarian attempts to seize power are the inbuilt lack of secretiveness of the Italian temperament,...

One tongue, one state

The Spectator

INDIA KULDIP NAYAR New Delhi—Fifty years ago a report on Indian constitutional reforms said territorial changes during British rule were not dictated by rational or scientific...

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Time and motion

The Spectator

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS The universe is slowing down rapidly and even- tually planets, stars, galaxies and cosmic dust will contract into a vast fireball—Dr Alan Sand- age,...

Towards a nuclear Europe

The Spectator

SECURITY IN THE 'SEVENTIES LAURENCE MARTIN Laurence Martin is Professor of War Studies in the University of London and defence correspondent of the SPECTATOR. The western...

Page 7

Guinea-pig ethics

The Spectator

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON An important editorial in a recent issue of the Lancet has raised for discussion one of the basic, perennial problems of modern medicine. It poses a...

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SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK

The Spectator

J. W. M. THOMPSON. Biafra has been written off prematurely before now but the latest news does suggest that the Federal forces may soon be in nominal control of the whole...

Page 9

A spectator's protest

The Spectator

PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN I.et me take, as a convenient starting-point, the rumpus about Basil d'Oliveira. I am not concerned here to discuss the details of this dismal...

Page 10

Multi-coloured

The Spectator

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY These days I seem to be dreaming an awful lot. Sometimes the dreams are related to recent events, sometimes they aren't, but always they have one thing in...

Agnostic's Jesus

The Spectator

TELEVISION STUART HOOD Certain discussions on television are doomed from the start. There was an example last Sunday when Robert Robinson and a panel of seven—a headmistress, a...

Page 11

The Chester-Belloc's better half

The Spectator

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN The publication of a new edition of Chester- ton's Autobiography is beginning to produce a reassessment of his place in English literature. Of course,...

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Are aristocrats people? BOOKS

The Spectator

LAIN MONCREIFFE OF THAT ILK Andrew Sinclair complains in The Last of the Best : The Aristocracy of Europe in the Twentieth Century (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 50s) that our...

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The book of Enoch

The Spectator

SAMUEL BRITTAN According to a story going the rounds in the United States, Professor Milton Friedman, that country's leading free market economist, has remarked, 'What has...

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Treading water

The Spectator

CHARLES STUART One of the features of modern historical scholarship is the tendency to knock down current views with the unacknowledged help of the forgotten work of the day...

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Origins of Ussuri

The Spectator

MICHAEL KASER In more than a century, one book=a politi- cally bowdlerised university thesis, locally published in the Soviet Far East—and a half- dozen articles are all that...

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The Day They Kidnapped Queen Victoria H. K. Fleming (Leslie

The Spectator

Frewin 28s) NEW THRILLERS Vintage draught PETER PARLEY The Day They Kidnapped Queen Victoria H. K. Fleming (Leslie Frewin 28s) Mr Campion's Farthing Youngman Carter...

Policeman's lot C. I. WOODHOUSE

The Spectator

The Police: A Study in Manpower J. P. Martin and Gail Wilson (Heinemann Educa- tional 84s) The view that a policeman's lot is not a happy one was first expressed in terms by W....

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In the pink

The Spectator

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH Recollections of Writers Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke introduction by Robert Git- tings (Centaur Press: Regency Library 126). Recollections of Writers,...

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Shorter notice

The Spectator

Hunting Tigers Under Glass Mordecai Richler (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 35s). M4 Richter's concern is mainly with Canadian, Jewish, or Canadian-JeWish topics. Despite numerous on-...

The new American vigilantes ARTS

The Spectator

BRYAN ROBERTSON In a short story by Arthur C. Clarke which sets out one of the ideas he developed later in 2001, a mysterious pyramid-like object is discovered on the moon with...

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- Dumb show

The Spectator

OPERA JOHN HIGGINS Introducing his opera Hamlet to the Friends of Covent Garden some ten days ago, Humphrey Searle remarked that he had been considering setting a Shakespeare...

THEATRE

The Spectator

The plot thickens HILARY SPURLING Cat Among the Pigeons! (Prince of Wales) George Dandin (Theatre de la Cite at the Aldwych) Anne of Green Gables (New) Developments in the...

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Not being done

The Spectator

MUSIC MICHAEL NYMAN John Cage's most recent (1966) thinking on concerts runs as follows: 'I doubt whether we can find a higher goal, namely that art and our involvement in it...

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After the Budget : a survey MONEY SPECIAL

The Spectator

Tax increases worked out at some 30s a head for every family in the country per week. Yet despite all this the progress made on the balance of payments was deeply...

Some 'starters' please, Mr Jenkins

The Spectator

CHARLES VILLIERS Charles Villiers is managing director of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation. A look at the Budget must obviously start from the economic problems it...

The worst of both worlds

The Spectator

REGINALD MAUDLING, MP This and the next two articles in our post- Budget financial survey analyse, from three different standpoints, the Budget • itself. The survey then turns...

Page 24

Making sense of tax reform

The Spectator

J. D. SLATER Jim Slater is chairman of Slater Walker Secrities. The 1969 Budget seems to me to have been based upon incorrect principles and to contain several errors of...

Page 26

Life offices at bay

The Spectator

INSURANCE NICHOLAS DAVENPORT . Life assurance continued its calm secular up- ward trend last year—the net investments of the life funds increased by over £800 million and of...

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Future in balance

The Spectator

BANKING ANDREAS WHITTAM SMITH The clearing banks have become the least popu- lar units in British business. They have shocked their private customers by withdrawing from...

Slow but sure

The Spectator

SAVINGS JOHN BULL Anybody who wants to earn a return on spare cash without risking the equity or gilt-edged markets (both highly uncertain at the moment) should be able to find...

ffolkes's tycoons-16

The Spectator

Page 30

A City diary

The Spectator

CHRISTOPHER FILDES The bottom, every now and again, falls out of copper on—hitherto groundless—fears that peace may break out in Vietnam. In the same way, the City now glances...

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Budget, Nixon-style

The Spectator

FINANCE USA WILLIAM JANEWAY President Nixon has presented his budget to Congress and it reveals that his economic strategy is floating in limbo. It could .not be otherwise,...

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Who spent what

The Spectator

ADVERTISING ROGER PEMBERTON How much advertising is devised to turn . luxuries into necessities, creating new demand rather than supplying a competitive answer to existing...

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The whole Hog

The Spectator

LETTERS From Melvin J. Lasky, Jim Powell, R. A. F. Howroyd, L. E. Weidberg, S. J. Noble, George Whitehouse, R. G. Wood, Rupert Jackson, George Scott-Moncrielj, G. Reichardt....

Bowled out

The Spectator

Sir: In his excellent article on the d'Oliveira affair (18 April), Christopher Hollis seemed rather too hasty in attacking Mr Allen and Mr Gilligan for withholding the...

Sir: As this is a subject of some historical im-

The Spectator

portance, I hope you will allow me a rejoinder to Tibor Szamuely (Letters, 18 April). First, I of course accept his factual correc- tions regarding items in Khrushchev's...

The rules of the game

The Spectator

Sir: Mr Weidberg (Letters, 11 April) is surely correct in saying that it is simply torture that elicits confessions by hardened Bolsheviks in Russian trials. The following...

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Vrai naif

The Spectator

Sir: 'One of the most notable things about his poetry as a whole is its signal failure to cele- brate or give any account of human love . . . poetically a sort of emotional...

Surfeit of oysters

The Spectator

Sir: I had a mind to read a work of fiction en- titled Portnoy's Complaint but crossed it off my modest little order for my bookseller after reading the battery of ecstatic...

Voice from the past

The Spectator

Sir: J. W. M. Thompson, in 'Spectator's note- book' (18 April) regrets that no English school- boy can now expect to hear the grating voice of the corncrake in England's...

When is a nation not a nation ?

The Spectator

Sir: If Mr Horton (Letters, 11 April) is going to continue to spread allegations, without evi- dence, about the criminal nature of Biafran actions and intentions, singling out...

Sir : Mr Bown has now turned to that last,

The Spectator

favourite resort of vanquished correspondents —the plea that I misrepresented his argument. Yet he still clings blindly and obdurately to the assumptions which I challenged and,...

Sweet girl graduates

The Spectator

Sir: Mr F. A. Bown (Letters, 4 and 18 April) shows in his attitude to student conduct a dis- turbingly bigoted conviction in his own moral rectitude, and in the consequent...

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Jenkinsky

The Spectator

AFTERTHOUGHT TIBOR SZAMUELY Our Government maintains it is socialist. 'The Labour party is a Socialist party or it is nothing,' as Ramsay MacDonald used to say (or perhaps it...

A hundred years ago

The Spectator

From the 'Spectator,' 24 April 1869—Herr Twesten, on April 16, brought forward a motion in the North- German Parliament in favour of replacing the Chancellor, who, as...

No. 550: Potpourri

The Spectator

COMPETITION A reviewer in last week's Times Literary Sup- plement complained that over the past six months one fifth of the novels he had reviewed had been - concerned with...

No. 548: The winners Trevor Grove reports: As from Sunday

The Spectator

13 April all Greek newspapers were ordered to devote one page of their weekend editions to the re" printing, over the next two and a half years, of a selection of modern Greek...

Page 37

Chess no. 436

The Spectator

PHILIDOR White Black 11 men 8 men C. Mansfield (Brisbane Daily Mail. 1921). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 435 (Smith): Kt - Kt 7,...

Crossword no.1375

The Spectator

Across 1 Where the Little Flowers grew (6) 4 Top skaters get a treat (3-5) 10 This is no puzzle to them (7) II Sicilian cat family (7) 12 Helpful bouquet for the lovelorn (6-4)...