it begins to look as if Mr Nigel Birch was wrong after all: and that even in Anguilla the Prime Minister has failed to find an Opponent of his own size. Farce has already given...

The Lords were probably right to reject the Voluntary Euthanasia Bill at its first appearance on Tuesday. Opinion has moved closer to some such measure, but it is un- likely...

President Ayub Khan, faced with near-anarchy throughout Pakistan and the increasing threat of East Pakistan's secession, resigned in favour of General Yahya Kahn,...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY AUBERON WAUGH Perhaps the healthiest result of the Anguillan fiasco is that nobody will ever again attach much credence to information which emanates from...

AMERICA WILLIAM JANEWAY New York—The people of this city can stop crying 'wolf.' It's out in the open now : New York is bankrupt. Harlem Hospital, one of twenty-odd municipal...

PAKISTAN NASIM AHMED Nasinz Ahmed is the chief overseas correspon- dent of the leading Pakistan newspaper 'Dawn.' The people who see Tuesday's military take- over in Pakistan...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS I rather like the Prince of Wales I wish they'd give the boy a break. It can't be any special fun, Being all the time his mother's son. Yet, though the...

SPACE PETER J. SMITH Keeping up with American and Russian space achievements these days is a full-time occupa- tion. Following the tortuous path of European space policy is...

ENVIRONMENT W. A. WEST Professor W. A. West is at the Faculty of Urban and Regional Studies at Reading University. At last planners are beginning to realise the limitations of...

SLANSKY CASE TIBOR SZAMUELY Rudolf Slansky, the secretary general of the Czechoslovak communist party, together with ten other leading communists, was hanged on 2 December...

GEORGE HUTCHINSON Any reduction in the size of the overblown Foreign Service is to be welcomed—but there is always a right way of doing things. The thirty-odd senior members...

PERSONAL COLUMN MICHAEL LLEWELLYN SMITH I have been trying to remember how many separate things I had to do last winter in order to dispatch two large trunks of books and...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD Bring a group of television producers—I am using the word in its widest sense to cover not only producers and directors of programmes but programme heads...

MEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON My dog got diarrhoea and I took him to the vet. He gave me some antibiotic tablets and asked me what I was feeding him on. I told him six ounces of...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY Whenever I have enough money to buy some shares, prices are always right at the top. When- ever I need to sell some to survive, you can bet that just...

From the 'Spectator,' 27 March 1869—A curious breach-of-promise case was tried lately in Ohio at the Warren County Court, in which the defence of the man against whom the action...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN It is one of the advantages of retiring from academic teaching that, though one is not nearly as free as one had hoped, one's conscience is easier about...

MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH There is a cult of Wyndham Lewis, and there- fore a mystery. Each enthusiast seems to con- centrate upon a single aspect of this astonish- ingly versatile...

T. B. MILLAR Few people if any in Britain know as much as Sir Robert Thompson about communist revolu- tionary warfare in South-east Asia. His earlier book, Defeating Communist...

HUMPHRY BERKELEY The Body Politic Ian Gilmour (Hutchinson 70s) When, over a year ago, I argued in my book The Power of the Prime Minister that the execu- tive was far too...

Been here before BARRY COLE The Big Stuffed Hand of Friendship Norman Newton (Peter Owen 35s) The Haven Lawrence H. Tattersall (Seeker and Warburg 30s) The Remains of a Father...

GEORGE EWART EVANS Fenland Memories Arthur Randell edited by Enid Porter (Routledge and Kegan Paul 21s) The Fens is one of the most interesting parts of East Anglia because it...

(cue 60s) Schism & after PATRICK COLLINSON Sir Steven Runciman's recent book on. the Orthodox Church under the Ottomans, The Great Church in Captivity (cue 1968), left the...

DAVID KNOWLES The eve of the Reformation, that half-century between Bosworth Field and the crucial Crom- wellian decade of 1529-39, has long been a happy hunting-ground for...

Love ana Drollery: a Selection oi Amatory, Merry and Satirical Verse of the Seventeenth Century edited by John Wardroper (Routledge and Kegan Paul 45s). Mr Wardroper's is a...

BRYAN ROBERTSON The big Cartier-Bresson show at the Victoria and Albert Museum is so overwhelmingly exact in its attitudes and responses to life that any other exhibition in...

BALLET CLEMENT CRISP The Dutch National Ballet is currently paying its first visit to these shores, with appearances in Sunderland and Norwich, and a London season mentioned...

MUSIC MICHAEL NYMAN The Sixth Symphony was a crisis work for Mahler. We are told by Alma Mahler that 'none of his works moved him so deeply at its first hearing as this. When...

Prince Charming PENELOPE HOUSTON Stolen Kisses (Academy One, 'X') The Assassination Bureau (Paramount, 'A') Escalation (Berkeley, 'X') It is none too easy to realise that we...

MONEY NICHOLAS DAVENPORT An aggrieved correspondent, living in East Malaysia, writes: 'Millions of Asiatics hoard gold. It can never in your lifetime or mine be supplanted by...

CUSTOS The terms of the Monsanto USA bid for the minority holdings in one of its British sub- sidiaries, Monsanto Chemicals, are of wide interest. The consideration is a...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL The Nixon administration's attack on 'con- glomerate' companies, which reached a peak earlier this week with the Justice Department's move against...

Sir: One can well appreciate that as Stuart. Maclure (14 March) moves into the far from enviable editorial chair of the Times Educa- tional Supplement he is bound to have to...

led to believe that we gave Nigeria in- dependence, on generous terms, at their wish. If that is so we may wonder why the British government now appears to feel mainly respon-...

Sir: It seems to me that society must be sicker than I thought if people like John Rowan Wil- son (14 March) can glibly cast aside all our problems as being 'phoney,' while...

LETTERS From Marie Vaughan, T. C. Skeffington-Lodge, W. L. Outwin, Dr W. S. C. Copeman, G. I. lkokwu, Roger Franklin, I. H. Huizinga. T. E. B. Howarth, Sam Wolf, Jonothan...

months and has taken greater civilian than mili- tary toll. Nigeria says she is fighting to keep the country 'one.' But can she be taken seriously when in fact her war of 'total...

Sir: Thank you for your leading article on Biafra (14 March). But I am sorry you did not name and condemn Sir Alec Douglas-Home and other Conservative politicians for supporting...

Sir: Part of one of the enjoyable days of my by-election effort down here was spent in meet- ing and talking with—not talking at—your political commentator (21 March). We got on...

for his article on the 'sick society' (14 March). How that needed saying!

Sir: An erroneous note was added (I under- stand on information supplied by the publishers) to my review (21 February) of the republica- tion of Henry James's The _American...

Sir : In view of the forthcoming investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle, it may be worth pointing out that Edward I did not present his infant son to the Welsh...

Sir : In April Raymond Postgate is retiring from the editorship of the Good Food Guide, which he founded twenty years ago. More than any other man, he has been responsible for...

Sir : England is a lovely word! (Letters, 21 March.) It is poetry, not geography. The fiery Scots and the lyrical Welsh ought to recognise this more clearly than the other...

Sir : I am writing a biography of the late G. P. Gooch, ots, for which Mr Bernard Gooch is kindly putting his father's papers at my disposal. I should be very grateful for any...

Sir: In his article (21 March) Joseph Chapman refers to 'East Germany.' The territory he is discussing is the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany. It is incorrect to call it 'East...

Sir: Living closer to the centre of the Wen, I should report that nature's counter-attack is further along than J. W. M. Thompson ('Spectator's notebook,' 14 March) may realise,...

Sir: I am delighted to learn (Letters, 14 March) that Mr Hughes is neither English, American, nor an academic. I had feared he was an Ameri- can academic, like me, because his...

Sir : Mr Waldron (Letters, 21 March) lays him- self open to the charge of smear in suggesting that the Radicals' idiocy is inherited rather than acquired : his tactics beg the...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS The following excerpt is taken from the third volume of Mr Harold Macmillan's memoirs, 'The Dancing Years' (Vestpocket Papermac, 10 gns). In 1945 the...

Trevor Grove reports: Competitors were in- vited to compose some 'few precepts' (after Polonius) for the guidance of ambitious off- spring—as from Herbert Marcuse, Prince...

COMPETITION 'Famous last words' are attributed to many historical figures—e.g. 'I shall hear in Heaven' (Beethoven), 'It has all been very in- teresting' (Lady Mary Wortley...

PHILIDOR T. S. Krishnamurthy and C. G. S. Narayanan (The Problernist, September 1968). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 431 (Monreal and...

Across 1 Flowery vessels in the dairy (10) 6 Indian coinage muddle assumes Homeric property (4) 10 Dial it back for the time on 51; there's a restriction (5) 11 Up came the tide...