Shrews and Shrewdom GEORGE BRINSMEAD : Peron's Purge REX WARNER George Sand J. P. W. MALLALIEU : The May Races

Signor de Gasperi's Christian Democrats have emerged from the Italian elections much weakened but still the strongest single party. The centre coalition which they lead has just...

What is more, it is doubtful whether .the Government's strength is dependent in an important degree on the fillip to national unity which has been given by the splendours of the...

N o. 6520 FRIDAY, JUNE 12, 1953 PRICE 7d.

It is generally agreed that federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland should bring many material benefits in time to the inhabitants, black and white, of the three territories....

Union after union has made its ill-tempered contribution to the protest against the three members of the General Council of the T.U.C. who have accepted places on the Iron and...

There was some hope that Stalin's death would be followed by greater freedom for Russia's closest satellites and greater humanity in Russia's domestic policies. The events in...

For his European frontiers, on the other hand, Mr. Malenkov has a different recipe. One moment he refuses to discuss an Austrian treaty. The next, by allowing free access to the...

The B.B.C.'s brilliant handling of the Coronation on tele- vision was not in itself any sort of argument that the B.B.C. should continue to enjoy its monopoly. Nor was the...

In its report on rearmament the Select Committee on Estimates stresses, as might be expected, the familiar advan- tages of specialisation in the production of military aircraft...

an English Minister with the Goschen formula, and one felt on Tuesday when Parliament reassembled that the flourishing of this famous bludgeon was a symbol of the determination...

0 NE of the most serious casualties of the cold war has been the practice of constructive, as opposed to defensive, diplomacy. The western world has become so absorbed in...

duty it is to give her counsel, besides her husband and her mother to whom she can turn for it if she feels inclined, the Queen h as acquired a steadily expanding corps of...

from the perusal of a bill. I accordingly feel justified in quoting from a statement of his account submitted by a retired estate carpenter to a lady for whom he does occasional...

glum when there is a high wind at this time of year. A lot of wild pheasant chicks are now about the size of sparrows and able to fly for a short distance, and he believes that,...

OT merely in the short history of the British Empire but in the long history of war there has never been anything like the Commonwealth Division now serv- al in Korea. We are...

Shakespeare Newsletter, which is ptth- lished in New York, for news of what promises to be an e xceptionally interesting production of King Lear. The original play has been...

By JENNY NICHOLSON Rome. TALY'S second general elections since the Mussolini- Hitler war, took place last Sunday and Monday in an atmosphere of religious solemnity. The result...

8 3 7 GEORGE BRINSMEAD I N mid - April the leade - rs of Argentina's lavishly-financed army and of the powerful trade unions jointly delivered an ultimatum to President Peron :...

By A NAVALCORRESPONDENT T HERE are few spectacles more satisfying to the great majority of Englishmen than a Review of Her Majesty's Fleet in the historic anchorage at Spithead....

By BRIAN INGLIS Dublin. F OR the second time in recent years a political contro- versy has sprung up here on the relationship of Church and State; and, once again, a Health...

By SIR CARLETON ALLEN, Q.C. T HE ignorance of town-dwellers about common British fauna, other than bipeds, is truly deplorable. I have better acquaintance (like Young Albert)...

MUSIC Gloriana. (Royal Opera House.)—A Garland for the Queen. (Royal Festival Hall.) AT Covent Garden, Britten's Gloriana has still, at the time of going to press, been held...

FEW people can be enthusiastic over the Shrew as a play. However, like Much Ado, it has two famous acting parts and it gives scope to a ,producer. George Devine uses this scope...

I SUpposE it was too much to hope that, besides Benjamin Britten's opera, Gloriana, we might also have had a full-length ballet from Frederick Ashton to celebrate the great...

THE wave of Coronation exhibitions, though not yet spent, has begun to lose its force. For a few days more visitors to the Victoria and Albert may enjoy the flower arrangements...

The Beggar's Opera. (Rialto.)—The Captain's Paradise. (Plaza.) —Single-Handed. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) BEING a classic, The Beggar's Opera, however it is treated, is bound to...

be hurt by Mr. Henn's article (May 22nd), but since he admits the accuracy of what is there said he would have been wiser to keep silent. He urges that " it is high time the...

SIR,-1 am afraid that I have not yet examined the results of tilt R.A.E.C.'s survey of the standard of literacy among National Service' men, but I must contest certain of Dr....

'Afutonomy for Government Departments ? SIR, — In his review published in the issue of May 29th of Sir Walford Selby's book Diplomatic Twilight, Sir Charles Webster seems to me...

SIR,—" The Lone Prairce " appears to have evoked blizzards in the brains of your correspondents, Messrs. Desmond E. Henn and David Mitchell, which might be allowed td blow...

Nu Graves wrote in The White Goddess: "I could not . . . have a nswered a single question in the Hanes Taliesin puzzle . . . if I had not known most of the answers beforehand by...

Sta ; In his reference to the marginal five per cent. of houses in Britain without piped water, your correspondent, Mr. Gordon Nicholson, may not be aware that the householders...

David Mitchell, states that the majority of his countrymen feel little affection f or this country. I trust he has done the necessary interviewing without w hich this point...

Stit,—In your issue of June 5th, Mr. Dingle Foot, reviewing " The Law of Libel and Slander " by Oswald S. Hickson and P. F. Carter, writes: " As long as the English tongue is...

My grass—conscience prevents my calling'it lawn—is in a desperate state through neglect of dandelions,, daisies and moss. . Since lawn sand, which would deal with the weeds,...

"SNAIL, snail, put out your horns and I'll give you bread and butter the morn," I was taught to recite to the " black snail " when I encountered it on the road as a...

SIR, —The skit on William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes was Sheerluck Jones and not Picklock Holes. • I have the programme in front of me —Terry's Theatre, October, 1901.—Yours...

SIR,—I have been commissioned to write the life of the late Mr. Theodore Cooke Taylor who died in October last at the age of 102. He was one of the pioneers of profit-sharing in...

Fables. By Jacquetta Hawkes. (Cresset Press. 15s.) The Doctor and the Devils. By Dylan Thomas. (Dent. 10s. 6d.) MRS. HAWKES is a perfect exemplar of the writer in the situation...

Restless Egotism L elia: The Life of George Sand. By Andre Maurois. Translated by Gerard Hopkins. (Cape. 25s.) ANDRE MAUROIS 's biography of George Sand contains a consider-...

Ihe THE appearance of the first volume of the Pelican History of issued by Penguin Books and edited by the Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge, is a landmark in the history of...

ROBERT HAY was born of poor parents at Kirkintilloch in Dum- barton in the year of the French Revolution. During the next ten years his father changed house and trade several...

MR. GORSLINE is an American painter and illustrator, and the most valuable part of his rather ambitiously named book is undoubtedlY the portion devoted to American costume...

" Henry James : The Untried Years, 1843-1870, " by Leon Edel ; the Bishop of Southwell " Well Remembered " by Claude Martin Blag- den ; and C. E. Vulliamy " The Chronicle of...

A Change of Sky. By Frank Singleton. (Chatto Windus. I ls. 6d.) Epitaph of a Small Winner, the first of Machado de Assis' novels to appear in English, was published in Brazil in...

This Star of England. By Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn. (Coward- McCann, New York. $10.) THIRTY years ago • Mr. Looney tried to show that the works of Shakespeare were written by...

Tim story of Caddie shows once more that there is one kind of truth for fiction and another for - real life. If her autobiography had been turned into a novel everyone would...

French by Kathleen Pond. (Burns Oates. 30s.) COMPARED with Miss V. Sackville West's biographical essay in The Eagle and the Dove this new, full-length study appears a little...

By CUSTOS MARKET observers are still perplexed by the conflict of economic portents and indices, particularly in America. Total U.S. pro- duction is now about 10 per cent....

lA Book Token for one guinea trill he awarded to the sender 01 the first correct +oration opened alter noon on Tuesday week, June 23rd, addressed Crossword, and bearing NUMBER...

ri m A L E I, e E IS R A Solution on June 26 The winner of Spectator Crossword No. 732 is Mrs. B ATEMAN, Hat D., 2 Queen's Gate Place, London, S.W.7. DONALD