2 DECEMBER 1978

Page 3

The case for a public proctor

The Spectator

The adversary system is basic to English law. Two sides, p r osecution and defence, battle it out, with magistrate, J U dge and jury acting as referees. The ethic of this system...

Page 4

Political commentary

The Spectator

The gold watch syndrome by Ferdinand Mount Somebody must be wrong. In the past couple of weeks I have not met or heard of a single manager or journalist on a newspaper other...

Page 5

Notebook

The Spectator

A be t t he time of writing, it is still impossible to ti absolutely certain whether or not Times _ e ‘ A 'sPapers will suspend publication this weekend. But to judge only from...

Page 6

Another voice

The Spectator

Studies in contempt Auberon Waugh Minehead, Somerset Reporting restrictions on the Thorpe committal proceedings may have been lifted at the surprise request of Mr George...

Page 7

The bishop's private army

The Spectator

Richard West Enkeldoorn, Rhodesia r,he diplomatic mission of Cledwyn rl, ughes, Labour former minister, is awaited ilere in Rhodesia with quite controllable excitement and some...

Page 8

A hundred years ago

The Spectator

The Art world has been interested this week in a libel case. Mr Ruskin does not like those formless sketches, looking like pictures seen through darkness or fog, which Mr...

Page 9

Dracula leaves his castle

The Spectator

Nicholas von Hoffman Like a spider coming out from a crack in the rocks, Richard Milhous Nixon has emerged from his San Clemente exile to discover if he still has an important...

Page 10

Amnesia in Germany

The Spectator

Edward Marston Berlin Profumo and Thorpe, Lambton and Jellicoe. These names, familiar to us, came strangely off the tongue of a young Berliner. She was comparing British and...

Page 11

No chance for the Czechs

The Spectator

Peter Kemp Prague After the train from Vienna to Prague leaves the Austrian frontier station at Gmund it crosses a small iron bridge to the C zech town of Cesky Velenice....

Page 13

Upstairs, Downstairs at The Times

The Spectator

Christopher Booker As I watched last week's brilliant, infinitely depressing Panorama film on the battles behind the scenes in Grays Inn Road as the great Times Newspapers...

Page 14

Our national discontents

The Spectator

Hugh Thomas Recently in Venezuela, during a discussion about the future of democracy, I ventured one or two remarks suggesting that the stability of democracy in its ancient...

Page 16

Enemies of promise, 1978

The Spectator

Alistair Horne I suppose the occasions in an author's lifetime when he finds a platform to sound off on what he really believes are not all that plentiful. Last week I had one...

Page 17

miirom m ,

The Spectator

In the City Insider trading Nicholas Davenport Another puritan revolution seems to be coming upon us — a natural reaction perhaps to current public scandals. I detect it in...

Page 18

Censorship

The Spectator

Sir: By printing a letter (18 November) calling my friend Hans Keller a twat you would probably have been found guilty of obscenity until 1960, when the acquittal of Lady...

All Greek

The Spectator

Sir: What's all this nonsense about Socrates being around in 500 BC (Nicholas Mosley in your issue of 18 November)? His date of birth is usually given as 469 BC and his period...

Daylight saving

The Spectator

Sir: If for the sake of energy conservation we must change our habits, and assuming the correctness of Mr Hodgson's tenet that man's jobs are done most efficiently from dawn to...

News values

The Spectator

Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft (25 November) is perfectly entitled to criticise the decision to lead the 8 a.m. Radio 4 News with the story that commercial television had bought...

a : bbi le e x s an A der Chancellor was vvis. e indeed to retreat from

The Spectator

his offending .tax i ' driver (Spectator, 25 November). N ot long ago, I hailed a taxi with its fc' r Hire' sign on. The driver told me that he was travelling in the opposite...

Page 19

Christmas Books I

The Spectator

Street of adventures Alan Watkins The Sunday Times Bedside Book Edited by George Darby (Deutsch £5.50) The Best of Private Eye 1978: The Wholly Libel (Private Eye with Deutsch...

Page 20

Why is there no nothing .

The Spectator

Auberon Waugh On Difficulty and Other Essays George Steiner (Oxford £5.50) Heldagger George Steiner (Fontana £1.25) George Steiner is not like other men. His prodigiously...

Page 22

Russian reverse

The Spectator

Anthony Nutting Sphinx and Commissar Mohamed Heikai (Collins £6.95) Mohamed Heikal and his helper Edward Hodgkin, a former Foreign Editor of The Times, are to be congratulated...

Page 24

On Whistler

The Spectator

Benny Green James McNeill Whistler Hilary Tao' (Studio Vista £15) The Man Whistler Hesketh Pears° (Macdonald £5.95) The . Young Whistler Gordon Fleming (Allen & Unwin £11.95)...

Page 25

Pleasuredomes

The Spectator

George Hutchinson The Chinese Garden Maggie Keswick (Academy Editions .£15.00) Chinese gardens are very different from our own. They are 'wild' rather than symmetrical in the...

Page 26

Skin game

The Spectator

Elisabeth Whipp Beauty and Medicine R. AronBrunetiere, translated from the French by Joanna Kilmartin (Cape £4.95) Since Adam delved and Eve span, Woman has tried to look her...

Grand scale

The Spectator

Francis King The Virgin in the Garden A.S.13Yatt (Chatto & Windus £5.95) From time to time a novel appears that cries out for evaluation, not by a reviesve 1 , 5 r like myself,...

Page 28

Arts

The Spectator

Delight in the ugly truth John McEwen It is unlikely to have escaped your attention that 'London-Berlin ; The Seventies meet the Twenties', a series of cultural events arran...

Theatre

The Spectator

Real life Peter Jenkins Look Out . . . Here comes trouble ( 018rePrayer for My Daughter (Royal Court) house) Mod el Merma (Riverside Studios) When realism returns to the stage...

Page 29

Cinema

The Spectator

Symposium Ted Whitehead Germany in Autumn (Scala) The films I reviewed last week anticipate Germany in Autumn with a neatness that is almost alarming. Phil Mulloy's In the...

Page 30

Television

The Spectator

Pseudette Richard lngrams I don't know whether it's the Christmas commercials, which always bring on a feeling of suicidal despondency, but I have been particularly aware...

opera

The Spectator

Sitting comfortably Rodney Milnes The Marriage of Figaro (Coliseum) Maybe one reason that Jonathan Miller': very good new production for the Engl is ': National Opera has not...

Page 31

Country life

The Spectator

Beastly farms Patrick Marnham ThatAnimal Farm is not usually considered a manual of agricultural practice may surprise no one. There were after all working horses on the...

Page 32

High life

The Spectator

Chic to chic Taki New York 'There's something exciting, wonderful and glamorous going on in New York right now. We've never seen anything like it. A review of it should be a...

Low life

The Spectator

Just deserts Jeffrey Bernard One of the less disgusting and more harmless of my infantile fantasies is the recurring one about making an appearance — or is it a sounding? — on...

Page 33

Last word

The Spectator

Arts counsel Geoffrey Wheatcroft N ovember brings the season of mists (actually, this year it brought nothing of the kind, but the sweetest of St Martin's summers before the...