recent months this journal has, at fferent times, expressed the hope that e re would be a Conservative victory t the next British general election and a cial Democrat victory in...

Among our rich relations AUBERON WAUGH Washington = All conversation in the mightiest capital city of the world last week centred around the film of our Royal Family's life,...

After the purge A CORRESPONDENT Most people in Prague seem to agree that last week's purge of the Czechoslovak party central committee will not be the last. For one thing,...

Exits and entrances Malcolm RUTHERFORD Bonn—West German elections have come superficially to mirror those of Britain so closely that it is probably more intelligible to drop...

Squatters feel the wind AUBERON WAUGH Brighton—`Confused and muted' were th two words chosen by Mrs Barbara Castle to describe the debate on industrial relatior which preceded...

London: arithmetic of devastation DAVID WIGGINS rdens and beyond the most beautiful £2,000 million. Two hundred and five years later, and really the council's last offensive....

J. W. M. THOMPSON It seems fair to say that the future shape of local government, after a series of weighty reports from royal commissions and suchlike bodies, is now more...

Is there a junkie in the house? DONALD McLACHLAN Until a short time ago I did not know, because I thought I did not need to know, that the youngster who has taken an overdose...

Two cheers BILL GRUNDY 'Modified rapture!' as some Gilbertian character once said. I refer to the fact that Mr Rupert Murdoch's bid for the Sun might come off. The unions are...

Pooled ignorance A. E. DYSON This week the Advisory Centre for Educa- tion issued its counterblast to the 'Black Paper' on education. It claims that despite certain defects,...

Boned wonders JOHN ROWAN WILSON I once knew a man who had chronic back- ache. He had had every kind of treatment over a period of years, but it did him no good. He was bent...

Chancellor of the Exchequer, we are told, is devoting part of his vacation to active exercise on the velocipede or bicycle, It is a very characteristic amusement. The velocipede...

Report from the heartland DENIS BROGAN Des Moines, Iowa—One effect of being in the very heart of 'the heartland', is to be forced to reflect on the remoteness of Britain. The...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS Many public schoolboys during the holidays would like to be taken for secondary modern boys.—O. Van Oss, Headmaster of Charter- house. Labour will reject...

QUINTIN HOGG, MP During the 1930s many young men with a public school background joined the Labour party. Indeed, but for a wise and persuasive father, I might perfectly well...

JOHN McMANNERS wire Theodore Besterman (Longmans 85s) In March 1755, Voltaire thought that he ad at last found a home. Two years earlier e had fled from the vampire patronage...

PATRICK ANDERSON An Impersonation of Angels: A Biography of lean Cocteau Frederick Brown (Longman 60s) `I am a lie who tells the truth.' Aphoristic and paradoxical, this...

DENNIS J. DUNCANSON The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West Joseph Needham (Allen and Unwin 63s) Dr Needham's second volume, collecting to- gether his...

Maurice CAPITANCHIK Joyce Cary: A Biography Malcolm Foster (Michael Joseph 70s) Two of the photographs in this biography show Joyce Cary as a fierce young officer of the...

GEOFFREY ASHE The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi Robert Payne (Bodley Head 84s) The Trial of Mr Gandhi Francis Watson (Macmillan 63s) This week marks the hundredth...

The Siege of Leningrad Harrison E. Salis- bury (Seeker and Warburg 84s). The writing is on occasion melodramatic and some of the anecdotes are impossibly silly, but this will...

Unfading Beauty CLEMENT CRISP I would like to think that you can't keep a good ballet down—though the loss of such treats as Macmillan's Le Bailer de la Fee. Norman Morrice's...

ROBERT CUSHMAN As I understand it the main function of the Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company is to provide its predominantly undergraduate membership with a few weeks in...

Gone West TREVOR GROVE lidnight Cowboy (London Pavilion, 'X') he Undefeated (Odeon, Leicester Square, at golden legend of the old America—'Go 'est, young man'—still seems to...

Set ways PAUL GRINKE The Victoria and Albert Museum have given four of their print and drawing galleries to an exhibition of Claud Lovat Fraser's graphic work which will run...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT This is a time for masterly inactivity in the security markets. Tremendous decisions are about to be taken on the political and mone- tary fronts and we...

JOHN BULL Should newspapers, one of the few remaining sources of independent investment advice. enter the unit trust business? The question arises because the International...

From Mrs Pamela Matthews, Sir Richard Hayward, Simon Raven, Leonard Cottrell. Dr I. W. L. Robinson, David Rumford, Major M. G. P. Stourton, 0. Dickinson, H. 1. Elsley, Alan...

Sir: Sir Mortimer Wheeler (20 September has dealt admirably with 'Atlantis' and ha expressed some strong reservations abou the theory of the destruction of Minoa Crete by an...

Sir: As a paediatrician interested in child psychiatry I read with horror Christopher Booker's 'Personal column' (27 September). Today's British television is outstanding....

Sir: I feel sure' that many Conservat readers of your leading article (20 Septe ber) would find an echo in their ho when they reached the penultimate senten so apt to their own...

Sir: How nice to be right—or is it? No sooner has your correspondent Martin Wallace (20 September) put forward the likelihood that the average Unionist's reaction to the Cameron...

Sir: In your leading article (27 September) Mr Ennals, Minister of State (Social Security) at the Department of Health and Social Security is misreported. Mr Ennals did not say...

Sir: In reply to D. A. N. Jones's plausible letter (27 September): 1. Exactly where and by whom the incurable are cared for can make little difference to my argument (20...

Sir: How ingenuous does Mr Stuart Montgomery (Letters, 13 September) take the readers of the SPECTATOR to be—even those who read poetry? Concerning Mr Finlay's book, published...

Sir: Mr Miles Copeland III (Letters, 13 September) points out several incorrect or misleading comments in Mr Tibor Szamuely's review of Mr Miles Copeland ll's new book, The Game...

The naked psephologist JOHN WELLS Best-selling author Dr Desmond 'Fatty' Butler, of the Nuffield Free Money Distribu- tion Centre at Oxford, is probably as well known for his...

r: The whole of the 'easily accessible' formation on A. Solzhenitsyn's play The ore-Girl and the Innocent which Mr onald Hingley so angrily provides in his eview (20 September)...

Sir: I think the SPECTATOR has some responsibility for checking the simple facts before publishing letters. I refer to the letter of Anthony Gaddum (20 September). Unemployment...

No. 573 : Dream island Reports that a London hippy leader is looking for 1,000 likeminded followers to put up £20 each for the purchase of St Patrick's Island, two miles off...

Across I About to turn left take note (6) 4 Courageous Orson's opposite number getting nothing, turns sour (8) 8 For beat music that ensnares (4-4) 10 Make colourful underwear?...

PHILIDOR J. G. Grevatt (3rd Prize, British Chess Problem Society, 1966). White to play and mate in three moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 458 (Bettmann): Q-K3!,...