Senior officials of the BBC are fond of pointing out that the Corporation is widely regarded abroad as providing the best broadcasting service in the world. This may well be...

POLITICAL COMMENTARY A UBERON WAUGH A commonplace of politics in the last eighteen months has been the supposition that the Labour party is something capable of total...

FOREIGN FOCUS • CRABRO 'Foreign focus' is a new regular feature by an expert on foreign affairs. Some time next month about one million of the most primitive people in the...

ITALY PAUL COOPER Rome—A year and a half ago the Italian Socialist and Social Democrat parties joined forces. The new allies lost over a million votes at the general election...

FRANCE MARC ULLMANN Paris—Following the outcome of Sunday's first ballot in the French Presidential elec- tions, M Georges Pompidou is established as clear favourite to win the...

J. W. M. THOMPSON Recent political history is littered with attempts to form new parties. They have never come to anything, and there doesn't seem any overpowering reason why...

ANTHONY BURGESS I write this from Malta, which has been identified by some with the island of Ogygia, where Ulysses was detained for seven years by the goddess Calypso (if...

CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS 0 Herbert, in thy days of old Ye aye would rule the roost in style, And if a fib or two was told Ye told it fairly with a smile. How blithely wad ye bide the...

to my critics RELIGION LUDOVIC KENNEDY I am gratified at the vigorous response to my article, 'A lesson in communication' (9 May). Some of the correspondents question my...

OXFORD LETTER MERCURIUS OXONIENSIS GOOD BROTHER LONDINIENSIS, I have not troubled you with my papers these last weeks, lest I should seem to insult your broils by boasting of...

THE PRESS BILL GRUNDY My heart's in the Highlands, I'm glad to say, and I have absolutely no intention of re- vealing its exact whereabouts to anybody, and least of all to that...

TELEVISION STUART HOOD A crucial moment in the history of television news in this country was the escape from the conventions of radio. Not surprisingly it was ITN, which had...

From the 'Spectator.' 5 June /869—Lord Elcho took up his true position as a Tory,—though he persists in calling himself independent,—in seconding the motion to reject the Irish...

CONSUMING INTEREST LESLIE ADRIAN The wild flowers of the Wienerwald, blue and pink and purple, already cried out to be picked if not to be picnicked among, and the car parks at...

TABLE TALK DENIS BROGAN The death of Sir Osbert Sitwell removes a very impressive specimen of the Englishman in Italy—a role which he inherited from his father, Sir George, who...

J. W. M. THOMPSON One November day in 1874, when the Reverend Francis Kilvert had spent a happy morning walking across the country- side to view a beech forest in its autumn...

HILARY SPURLING Virginia Fairweather has handled Laurence Oliviers relations with the press on and off for the past twenty years, in some of the trickiest, most intimate, often...

(Heinemann 63s) Surveying life OLIVER WARNER At the beginning of the nineteenth century, sir John Thomas Stanley was living at Alderley Park in Cheshire with his wife and...

Lesson books BARRY COLE The Dance of Genghis Cohn Romain Gary (Cape 30s) To the Slaughterhouse Jean Giono trans- lated by Norman Glass (Peter Owen 35s) Wages of Virtue Stanley...

Good clean crime CYRIL RAY Bandersnatch Desmond Lowden (Eyre and Spottiswoode 25s) Papa La-Has John Dickson Carr (Hamish Hamilton 25s) Lady on Fire James Michael Ullman (Cas-...

STUART HOOD A Warsaw Diary Michael Zylberberg (Vallentine, Mitchell 35s) In 1942 there were half a million Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Of these the very large indigenous Jewish...

GEORGE EWART EVANS Cambridgeshire Customs and Folklore Enid Porter (Routledge and Kegan Paul 105s) One of the biggest disadvantages of collec- tions of county folklore is that...

The Gourmet's London Robin McDouall (MacGibbon and Kee 30s). One hundred and fifty well-chosen recipes from fifty not always so well-chosen London restaurant , with comments on...

OPERA JOHN HIGGINS The Bay of Naples is much in the fashion this summer. Vlado Habunek produces Cosi fan awe for the Holland Festival later this month. At the beginning of July...

STEPHEN GARDINER They are cutting down trees in Rotten Row. The reasons given are plausible enough: the old trees take the goodness out of the soil and spoil the prospects for...

ART PAUL GRINliE After a long perambulation round America, the Chatsworth collection of stage and costume designs by Inigo Jones has reached the Victoria and Albert Museum,...

BRYAN ROBERTSON At the New London Gallery, John Piper ca n be found in full force with a large sho%% of new oil paintings and gouaches. The exhibition is not too big from the...

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT It is not for me to come to the aid of the bankers. In fact, I have already ventured to suggest that the Chancellor might well impose an excess profits tax...

PORTFOLIO JOHN BULL The National Institute's latest Economic Review, which records the further post- ponement of balance of payments surplus, got stock markets off to a bad...

Sir: I should like the opportunity to point out that the one interpretation Mr Thomp- son manages to draw from my marriage statement happens to be erroneous ('Specta - tor's...

LETTERS From Hugh Brogan, Lord Weymouth, the Rev Gordon Wilson, Maurice B. Reckitt, A. C. Little, Tibor Szamuely, Lieut-Col A. N. Skinner, Nweke Agbata, T. C. Skeffing-...

how much he agrees with the gr ea t er part of Angus Maude's article (30 May). But there is one paragraph therein which I would venture to challenge because it seems to me to...

Sir: Mr S. L. Muhanji's letter (30 May) does not explain the attitude of the Kenya government on the Biafra tragedy. No one is against Kenya getting loans and experts from East...

Sir: Your contributor, J. W. M. Thompson ('Spectator's notebook', 16 May), quotes Sir Kenneth Clark as saying that photography has destroyed 'straightforward, naturalistic...

Sir: Ludovic Kennedy (9 May) has taken three-quarters of a page to spell out what is obvious, I should have thought, to most churchgoers as to the meaning of Matthew ii, 5 and 6...

Sir: Mr Roger Franklin confidently ex- plains (Letters, 23 May) why no nation— whether Czechoslovaks or ourselves— should attempt to resist aggression, or even threaten to...

Sir: How timely is Angus Maude's re- minder to the church that it is not how but what we communicate that matters (30 May), and that religion is primarily a matter of faith, not...

Sir: I would have thought it was for the Prime Minister, and not Bill Grundy, to decide whether or not my support for him and the Government is 'embarrassing'. My attitude since...

Sir: Mr Weidberg's trust in his power (Letters, 23 May) to clear up the meaning of 'obverse' was touching. At least, he was right and your correction of him rude and wrong. The...

Oscar Wilde (9 MaY ) is by Algernon Charles Swinburne. Penguin Book of Victorian Verse, page 295. Mary Phillips 26 Bancroft, Hitchin, Herts

in his letter to the editor, claims that Sir Denis Brogan 'snipes snidely' at M Guy Mollet as a 'Prot- estant schoolmaster' and says that such 'sniping' occurs with 'consistent...

30 May) from my persecutors! (Surely some of your readers must agree with me?) As Mr Wilde was mostly preoccupied with justifying his rather petty criticisms of an incidental...

Sir: One must of course feel sympathy for J. W. M. Thompson (Spectator's note- book', 30 May) in the loss of his 'delicious roadside flower show'. But if, as seems likely, the...

Sir: While I would endorse Bill Grundy's plea (23 May) for more news and fewer stunts in the popular press, I would like this to be at the expense of—e.g.—the intermin- able...

Trevor Grove reports: John Aubrey, alive, well and performing nightly at the Criterion theatre (where, it appears, he has just broken all previous records for non-stop...

AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS Tafygytts! (Spontaneous cheering and applause from soberly-dressed, middle-aged majority of the audience in conspicuously short haircuts and highly...

COMPETITION Readers of the Sunday Times have for the last two weeks been treated to excerpts from the amazing non-revelations of Sir Laurence Olivier's former press represen-...

Across 1 Exponent of grass-roots politics? (7) 5 Frame for heavenly waggoner and little sister (7) 9 Freed to procrastinate (5) 10 Organised—as in Gascony? (9) 11 Shade...

PHILIDOR Black White 8 men 12 men C. W. Sheppard (1st Prize, Good Companions, 1921). White to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to no. 441 (ten Cate):...