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Defence and the constitution
The Spectator$ Every Government has its little local diffi- ulties. But Mr Wilson would be ill-advised to augh off the abstention by some four dozen abour members in this week's defence de-...
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British Museum blues
The Spectator`Yesterday ! What does that mean? Yester- day?' That means that bloody awful day, long ago, before this bloody awful day.' So Samuel Beckett, summing up prophetically for the...
Time for a change
The SpectatorThis week's issue of the SPECTATOR has been redesigned, with the expert help of Geoffrey Cannon, from cover to cover. On the front we have reverted to the traditional format for...
Portrait of the week
The SpectatorMR WILSON had a Dutch treat, returning from The Hague 'very considerably encouraged' about Britain's prospects in the Common Market: many others were pessimistic, however, and...
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Mr Wilson and the press
The SpectatorPOLITICAL COMMENTARY ALAN WATKINS Shortly after the vacancy in the Pollok con- stituency became known, a Labour Member concluded that the seat would not be held unless the new...
Two voices
The SpectatorCHRISTOPHER HOLLIS 'Let us speak with a united voice' (Mr Harold Wilson). Two voices are there—one from Brother Brown, Crying to the skies he'll bring the bacon home Wrapped...
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One D'd thing after another
The SpectatorTHE PRESS DONALD McLACHLAN Again, what possessed Mr Wilson's adviser to suggest thV the committee I have just men- tioned, which itself sends round D Notices point- ing out...
A HUNDRED YEARS AGO
The SpectatorFrom the 'Spectator.' 2 March 1867 An unusually overcrowded House even in these times of overcrowded houses, waited impatiently for Mr. Disraeli's detailed plan of Reform on...
India for the Indians
The SpectatorDICK WILSON The loss of some eighty parliamentary seats by Mrs Indira Gandhi's Congress party has sent ripples of alarm around the capitals of the west. Things, however, are...
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Election notebook
The SpectatorFRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris—The General told them : 'It would do you good, gentlemen, to face the sound of gun- fire.' So now we have his ministers, many of them drawn from...
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Malta's rose-petal war
The SpectatorPHILIP GOODHART, MP 'We've got a house down in Hampshire,' the young British army officer said as we walked through the streets of Valetta, 'but we've rented it and I don't...
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Principle in Opposition
The SpectatorA TRACT FOR THE TORIES-3 NIGEL LA WSON In the two preceding articles I have argued that, at a time when, for better or worse, the state of the economy dominates all other...
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The Barnsb'iry scandal
The SpectatorLONDON PATRICK HUTBER The name Barnsbury is not well known to the public at large. It is an area of mainly 19th century housing east of the Caledonian Road, covering 342 acres...
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SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
The SpectatorJ. W. M. THOMPSON Henry 'Moore is so unquestionably the giant among British artists of his time that it seems merely natural for his proposed gift to the nation of a collection...
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Prison or hospital?
The SpectatorMEDICINE JOHN ROWAN WILSON A woman with a history of unstable behaviour was found guilty of attacking her neighbour with an iron bar. Psychiatric examination showed her to be...
Termites at work
The SpectatorTELEVISION STUART IIOOD The advertisements have gone out. The fran- chises in Independent Television are open once more. Between now and their reallocation both the old...
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The purpose of education
The SpectatorPERSONAL COLUMN ANTHONY BURGESS I was a teacher before I was a writer; I was even a trainer of teachers. The pedagogue, which some prefer to call the pedant, is still in me. I...
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A nest of singing birds
The SpectatorBOOKS PATRICK ANDERSON I cannot imagine that anyone today, looking back across the two world wars for the origins of the modem movement in our literature, would seize upon...
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Family man
The SpectatorRONALD HINGLEY Lenin and the Russian Revolution by Harold Shukman (Batsford 35s) Lenin and the Bolsheviks by Adam B. Ulam (Seeker and Warburg 63s) The fiftieth anniversary of...
Last command
The SpectatorDAVID KNOWLES Bosworth Field by A. L. Rowse (Macmillan 45s) Mediaevalists must often regret that the only century of their period within the ken of the modernist is the...
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Buchenwald
The SpectatorWILLIAM BUCHAN For many years after the war, in Britain and America at least, there ran a continuous trickle of prison books. The bulk of these were POW stories, tales of...
NEW NOVELS
The SpectatorGood companions MARTIN SEYMOUR-SMITH It's an Old Country by J. B. Priestley (Heine- mann 25s) The Girls by Nicola Thorne (Heinemann 21s) The Prim Windows by John Chancellor...
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Small world, large book
The SpectatorJOHN HOLLOWAY Anecdotes of Books and Men collected by Joseph Spence edited by James M. Osborn two volumes (OUP £7 10s) Joseph Spence was an amiable, rather colour- less man, a...
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Dark masterpiece
The SpectatorANTHONY FLEW Essays on Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' edited by I. M. Copi and R. W. Beard (Routledge and Kegan Paul 50s) Probably this is a book which few, other than its most...
The view from Oceania
The SpectatorDESMOND DONNELLY Half Way to 1984 by Lord Gladwyn (Columbia University Press 29s) Lord Gladwyn's thesis is that both in time since George Orwell wrote 1984 and in the gradual...
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Inhospitable Shaws ARTS
The SpectatorHILARY SPURLING It is a marvel to me how the monstrous dumb- show which passes for acting in our opera houses can be accepted year in, year out, without a blush or murmur from...
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Malevolence
The SpectatorBALLET CLEMENT CRISP The benevolence called for at the Royal Ballet's annual gala is intended for dancers who have fallen on hard times, though not the sort of hard times that...
Our man in Paris
The SpectatorART BRYAN ROBERTSON One of the meanest and most insular prejudices of the English, given our better qualities, is to cast a disapproving stare at any native painter, writer,...
CINEMA
The SpectatorBerlin wall games PENELOPE HOUSTON It has taken the Germans a long time, as well as one of Western Europe's more complicated cinema aid schemes, to find a new generation of...
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Verdi rides again
The SpectatorOPERA CHARLES -REID Two more operatic 'digs: With the repertory so thin above ground, where would we be but for willing spades and rubble-raisers? Laid bare at Camden Festival...
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Budget finance revealed MONEY
The SpectatorNICHOLAS DAVENPORT It was not my intention so much to frighten the poor taxpayer about the mounting cost of government expenditure as to suggest that the local authorities who...
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Trouble at t'mill
The SpectatorJOHN BULL Despite all the schemes, private and public, since the war, the Lancashire textile trade is 'in deep trouble again. Last week Viyella closed down three mills...
Market notes
The SpectatorCUSTOS Equity shares have once again demonstrated that they are still in a 'bear' market. They have had a substantial recovery after the Financial Times Index fell from 374 to...
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Hell for leather
The SpectatorCONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN The man who thought Corfam was a kind of Cockney Oxfam may be forgiven. Du Pont's 'poromeric' leather-substitute is, after all, the result of...
Sources of anti-Semitism
The SpectatorLETTERS From William Greenberg, Professor Sir Denis Brogan, Norman St John-Stevas, MP, W. H. Geer, Michael Manser, Desmond R. FitzPat- rick, Lawrie Wynne, Martin Seymour-Smith,...
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An alternative economic policy
The SpectatorSir: Having waited in eager suspense for the second instalment of Mr Lawson's cliffhanger on an alternative economic policy for the Tories, I must confess to a certain...
Danger: (black) men at work
The SpectatorSir: I was interested to read Mi Lester's comments on job discrimination (24 February) as my work in a busy employment exchange brings me into con- tact with large numbers of...
The great Shakespeare hoax
The SpectatorSir: Commander Pares is wrong in saying that I 'admit' that his 'theory' that Bacon wrote Shake- speare is worth taking time to refute. What I said was that the newer theory...
Afterthought
The SpectatorSir: If you ask me. John Wells has got breasts on the brain. Lawrie Wynne GatheNn. 1.1anfair TH, Abergele, North Wales
Sir: 'Why then may not we too revert to Classical
The Spectatoror Gothic when we so choose?' asked Sir Anthony Wagner in your issue of 24 February. The reason is, I think, that when an architect reverts to his 'second language,' his syntax...
The fall of Adam
The SpectatorSir: I have no wish to enter into the Adam Clayton Powell controversy although I think perhaps Mr Murray Kempton does whitewash the Rev and Hon Mr Powell a little bit. However,...
How to choose an architect Sir: The falsity of revivalist
The Spectatorbuilding is no fal- lacy of the 1960s, it is an economic and functional fact. The preponderance of 20th century building types has no historical precedent. Motor-car factories,...
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Britain's non-role east of Suez
The SpectatorSir: The SPECTATOR of 3 February, containing Mr Enoch Powell's 'Britain's Non-Role East of Suez,' only reached me yesterday. I read the article with an interest (although I...
AFTERTHOUGHT
The SpectatorJOHN WELLS It has always seemed to me rather curious that the idea of dying should generally be regarded as so intrinsically comic. Sudden and violent death is probably the...
Stopping the rot SIR: May I reply to Mr Samson
The Spectator(Letters, 10 Feb- ruary) who imputes to me a censure of dentists! Not so, sir. I well know that dentists labour to teach the young the rules for good teeth. But, Mr Samson...
Cement history
The SpectatorSIR: I am writing a book about the early history of the cement industry. If any readers have un- published information relating to cement manu- facture during the nineteenth...
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Solution to Crossword no. 126/ Azross. I Cantilever 6 Slow
The Spectator10 Vivat 11 Hierarchy 12 Corncobs 13 Stella 15 Boom !6 Slot 17 Ernie 20 Reeve 21 Owns 22 Axis 24 Darwin 26 Folksong N Nonpareil 30 Tykes 31 Each 32 Fairy rings. Down. 1 Civic 2...
Chess
The SpectatorPHILIDOR Black White 14 men 8 men No. 324. J Hartong (1st Prize, The Problemist, 1927). White to play and mate in two moves; solu- tion next week. Solution to No. 323...
Crossword no. 1263
The SpectatorAcross I Take a hansom to a Welsh lake for a solution of the mystery (7) 5 Red-coated counter-revolutionary (7) 9 The surprised look of a cat-lover (3-4) 10 How depressing it is...