rr HE spate of prison escapes during the 1 past few days is bound to increase the emphasis placed upon what the Mount- batten report has to say about the defects in the physical...

The world's great age begins anew, As it was all arranged, And Friends of Progress guarantee _That nothing need be changed. Responsive to the general will, We set the people...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY By ALAN WATKINS (with acknowledgments to the late Isaac Bickerstaff) JANUARY. In this Month Mr H. Wilson offers Mr I. Smith of Afrique the Controul of...

By BRIAN READING Section 2(1)(a) of the 1911 Act states that any public servant who: . communicates the code word, pass word, sketch, plan, model, article, note, document or...

Edited by NIGEL LAWSON T ills is probably the last time I shall be speak- ing to you on television in 1966: a year which I warned at the outset would be one of make or break...

RELIGION By DESMOND FISHER If any one incident could be said to have pre- cipitated his momentous decision to leave the Church, this was it. But, in fact, no single event or...

THE PRESS By DONALD McLACHLAN J OINED now by Mr Jeremy Wallington, his assistant editor, who was dismissed from the Daily Mail on the Tuesday before Christmas, Mr Mike...

I PRAY—with no great confidence that Mr Harrison Salisbury's eye-witness despatches in the New York Times, coming so soon after the abrupt cessation of the Christmas truce in...

AMERICA From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK M R John Bartlow Martin has published a memoir of his nineteen months as Presi- dent Kennedy's Ambassador to the 1962-63 Dominican...

CONSUMERS' GUIDE TO THE PROFESSIONS-2 By R. A. CLINE S OLICITORS have a fairly gruelling training which equips them for an infinite variety of legal situations; their clients'...

OBSCENITY By BRUCE DOUGLAS-MANN W HAT do we want our censorship laws to achieve2 Of the innumerable answers which could be given, it is unlikely that many would consider the...

December 29, 1866 Count von Bismarck made rather an impor- tant speech in the Berlin Chamber on the 21st inst. The subject was Schleswig-Holstein, and the Premier admitted that...

AFTERTHOUGHT By JOHN WELLS STILL reeling from Mr Christopher Booker's aston- ishing assault on the mini- skirt in a recent number of the Weekend Telegraph, I made my spiritual...

teach it much about offerin g the other cheek to critics, whether from within or with- out. Of course much of the criticism is justified and it may be that all is fair in love...

- L -1 L_ J L _.1 ....= - -E - - Lr JL From : Rev R. F. Dossetor, Rev C. G. 14/ ilson, 1. M. Cobban, Charles Chenevix Trench, the Countess of Lauderdale, T. C. Skeffington-...

May I recommend to him a New Year parable? It is that of the Pharisee and the Publican. 'God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are . . . even as this Anglican.'

than it ought to be) to the sort of attack made upon it by Auberon Waugh. Nevertheless, his article is a reminder of how thankful we should be that the C of E with all its many...

SIR,-1 really cannot allow the jibe and quite untrue statement made by Alan Watkins in his comment on my letter this week that 'I have been out of active politics so long that I...

Mr Waugh rightly says he can be accused of arrogance. 'I would rejoice to see the Orthodox back. in the fold.' Yes, indeed—there can be no genuine unity and peace in...

SIR,--A most pernicious lobby is at work in London—and the SPECTATOR seems to be one of its leaders. This lobby argues not just that the Commonwealth is a useless institution,...

16). Why have you taken so long to put into print what many right-thinking people have known for years? GERARD COUGHLAN 7 Ranby Avenue, Blackley, Manchester

sm,--It is fervently to be hoped that Mr Donald McLachlan's chilling article of December 16 will get a good deal more than passing attention. It is too bad that those who...

TELEVISION By STUART HOOD ETWEEN them, the BBC and the independent p companies are one of the richest sources of patronage in this country. Every producer, whether of drama,...

Come Back Mae Goin' to Town. (National Film Theatre, Decem- ber 31). — Deadlier Than The Male. (Leicester Square Theatre, `X' Certificate).— Gambit. (Odeon, Leicester Square,...

PALACES camera teams must be falling over each other in the Grand Corridor at Windsor these days with two films on the Queen's palaces appearing with less than a fortnight...

ART IN PARIS By BRYAN ROBERTSON Primavera or Uccello's Rout of San Romano. -.... Facing you on entering the gallery are the por- traits of Taira No Shigemori and Mongaku...

By C. B. COX N AUSEATING Billy Bunter escapades in the world of Merlin and Sir Lancelot or a twentieth-century heroic romance rivalling Spen- ser and Ariosto—readers of...

Soldiering for Peace. By Major-General Carl von Horn. (Cassell, 50s.) IN the bad old days, before the invention of peace-keeping organisations, nations used to fight wars. These...

CONRAD was notoriously evasive about his own life and went out of his way to conceal many of the crises and crucial inner upheavals that marked his private progress from...

Through leaning boughs I see the veil of heaven, Through leaf-ears fluted from ancestral playing To inward darkness, to the windblown tree, Marvel of time, caught in a living...

By JOHN HOLLOWAY INCE one of our favourite intellectual opastimes is the assiduous laying of Long- Dead Spectres, and we never lack conscientious persons to warn us off...

Facts and Fantasies Will o' the Wisp. By Pierre Drieu la Rochelle. (Calder and Boyars, 27s. 6d.) Pornografia. By Witold Gombrowicz. (Calder and Boyars, 30s.) For Love Alone. By...

The Case of the Spurious Spinster, by Erle Stanley Gardner (Heinemann, 18s.). The inde- fatigable Perry Mason is briefed by an attrac- tive secretary to the manager of a mining...

By JOHN BULL W ORKING out the financial consequences of the Independent Television Authority's de- cision to reorganise the television companies' franchises cannot at this...

NE 100KOMIf TH By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT W HERE there is movement there is always money to be made out of the stock markets but it has been a very difficult year for anyone who...

CONSUMING INTEREST By LESLIE ADRIAN READ any good pictures lately? If you think I'm joking, look at the pre- Christmas issue of Bunty. Shelley White, head girl, has been...

Immortal. so Osiris. is London. 23 Undercut. 13 Hell Fire Club. r8 Balancing act. 25 Overrate. 24 Parcae. 26 Biala. 27 Trumpets. 28 Bngild. 29 Sheraton. DOWN.--I Trifle. 2...

No. 315 J. HANNELIUS (2nd Prize, Die Schwalbe 1) WHITE to 950 play and mate in two moves: solution next week. Solution to No. 314 ('Bonus Socius' MS): z K - K 6, K - R 2; 2 K -...

ACROSS z. 'Hurrah . . it is a frost! the dahlias are dead' (—) (7, 5) 9. Is it of the period of Midas? (6, 3) zo. Of what use is an old-fashioned weeper? (5) II. Disliking...