A toNG the many advantages that Mr. Khrushchev enjoys in the game of high diplomacy he is playing with the West is that he needs to consult nobody—not voters (whatever he may...

THE KENYA GOVERNMENT brought down a brace of weekly newspapers with a left and right, as well as making thirty-four arrests; there were fresh riots in Nyasaland. In the Near...

FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1959

By SARAH A MONG the people of the city in West Berlin two simple facts make the atmosphere dark in the brilliant sunshine. They watch quietly the tempestuaus arrival and...

By DARSI E GILLIE PARIS I N Paris and in Moscow Mr. Macmillan seems to have convinced his interlocutors that he is a much tougher man than was supposed. There is an important...

By T. R. M. CREIGHTON W HEN I was in Nyasaland over two years ago, neither highly placed officials of the Native Affairs Department nor leading members of Con- gress nor Church...

THE latest burst of speculation about the election date is as silly as all its predecessors. Statements such as 'It is now almost certain that the General Election will be held...

by his own rhetoric, pr is he merely trying to keep his courage up? 'I want to go on record,' he said on Tuesday, 'as saying that plans [for recent events in Nyasaland] were...

to take place (as Well attack Britain for holding the Federal discussions of 1953 in London), he claimed that Nyasalarid leaders were 'thugs with no qualms about demo- cratic...

excerpts from the annual party conferences, the Labour Party refused to allow the cameras into their proceedings. The BBC, not the most cour- ageous of institutions, thereupon...

Queen as Head of the Commonwealth 'was not dependent upon the advice of any national Prime Minister . . . and should not be afraid to pro- claim the principles of the...

By LORD ATTLEE T llE history of the great subcontinent of India during the first half of this century is that of a complete change from the full-blooded im- perialism of Lord...

of wearing his Old Etonian tie, even in the presence of old boys of the Moscow Industrial Academy like Mr. Khrushchev. But I did not realise until I read an article by the Chief...

in London : Nudist Paradise . . . Adam and Eve . . Round the World with Nothing On . . . Isle of Levant . . .; The Adulteress . . . Love is My Profession . . . Passport to Shame...

By KENNETH ALLSOP DASSING through London last week was a founder-member of America's Beat Genera- tion, Mr. Kenneth Rexroth, poet, painter and innovator of the experimental...

Suites THE GOSSIP COLUMNIST is a sitting target for any reasonably good marks- man. Fleet Street would be disappointed if it did The World of Paul Sliekey, due in the West End...

The Lousy Eagle By ALAN BRIEN Creditors and The Cheats of Scapin. (Lyric, Hammer- smith.)—Clown Jewels. (Vic- toria Palace.) STRINDBERG had obsessions the way some people...

Coals in the Bath By ISABEL QUIGLY No Trees in the Street. (Em- pire.)—The Black Orchid. (Plaza.) THE Bisto Kids in the adver- tisement, a pair of ragged urchins sniffing...

An End of Authenticity By DAVID CAIRNS THE justification of the recent Tchaikovsky Festival was not that the performances were 'authentic,' but that they were good. We were...

MARCH 15, 1834 THE Proprietors of the Westminster Gas-works C nt word on Saturday to the Theatres and their princip:11 customers, that in consequence of a strike of the men....

Vaccine Against Flu By MILES HOWARD Two men came along to me for an opinion this week: both ( were depressed, both are in good positions and both were contemplating retirement,...

Readers who wish to receive the Spectator (9d, weekly) from'their newsagents are advised to place an order for regular delivery, as newsagents do not normally have spare...

Birth-day Present By LESLIE ADRIAN Why don't we hear more about them? Why aren't there more of them? In the first place, they are 'very difficult to run, mainly because the...

By STR1X T HE first race in the Household Brigade Saddle Club Point-to-Point Steeplechases was started at 1.30 last Saturday. There had been heavy rain in the district for the...

INTO THE STEEL INDUSTRY O N November 21, 1958, the Spectator announced that it had appointed an independent Commission with the following terms of reference : 'To inquire into...

I p Y the end of the 1920s the British iron and in di St A 1■4 19 steel industry had lost its wartime prosperity and had begun to suffer from both the general slump and...

rrHE Labour Party has declared its intention to renationalise . steel, and many arguments have been put to us in support of this policy. It is stated, in the first place, that...

D EFENDERS of the present arrangements of the steel industry are not concerned solely to defend private enterprise. They assert that the steel industry ought to be subjected to...

A COMPLETE report on the renationalisation of the iron and steel industry might be ex- pected to start with an examination of the general argument for and against public...

Sat,—As the author of the book which set off this correspondence may I just say that Guy Chapman's picture of •Bernard Shaw intimidated by Harris into paying him fulsome...

about the 'rightward' or retrogressive movement of the Conservative Party are apparently logical, but I believe nevertheless incorrect. In a predominantly two-party political...

Rev, Timothy Raphael, R. F. Nelder And Now Nyasaland Dennis Phombeah Frank Harris Vincent Brome, Michael loot, Derek Parker Head of the Commonwealth Lord A Itriachant D. H....

the Party Machine, have been disturbed by the leading article 'Orders are Orders' in your issue of March 6. You state that 'the constituency associa- tions of Bournemouth East...

your decision to come out clearly and strongly on the side of the secession of Nyasaland from the Federation. Other newspapers have failed to realise that this is a national...

SIR,—Pharos describes as 'a dubious constitutional doctrine' my view that the Queen, as Head of the Commonwealth, is not dependent upon the advice of any national Prime...

bulletin on the night of the Gatwick air disaster 'was interrupted to show a Lux commercial.' Mr. Mayhew was wrong. Advertisements are never inserted in ITN bulletins. If he...

the Spectator of March 6 and reading my friend Mr. Brian Inglis's article on the Casement Diaries. I presume we are talking about the same diaries. Apparently the only thing Mr....

SIR,—I take due note of Mr. Rowse's piece of cor- rective information. I wrote in my article: 'a corn- tribution the editor seems to have commissioned under a misapprehension,...

makes unsubstantiated statements about the late Lord Birkenhead which would clearly be libellous if he were alive and cannot fail to cause immense pain to his widely loved Widow...

Mr. Guy Chapman can hold whatever opinions they choose about Frank Harris. What they are not entitled to do without protest is to mis- represent Bernard Shaw's opinion on the...

S1R,—May I add a postscript to Mr. Brian Inglis's interesting article on the Casement Diaries? Sir John Harris, Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society, who had been in...

facts right in his article on Yangtse gunboats; appearing in your issue of February 20. HMS Sandpiper was by no means the only gunboat that could navigate the Siang River to...

on the eve of his trial. In a letter written on August 20, 1950, G. B. S. replied : 'I don't know. My guess is that Wilde as an Irish gentleman would not run away. Possibly [he...

the 'main theme' of Mr. Mellanby's original article as promoting the appoint- ment of architects to design laboratories, though under this unfortunate title, I am a little loth...

SIR —In your February 13 issue Mr. Leslie Adrian, in his feature 'Consuming Interest,' devoted some space to the recent report on electric shavers published in the Consumer...

Publications Board to advert to a letter appearing in your issue of February 6, 1959. In this communication Mr. Oliver Edwards purports to quote from a letter to him from the...

Damned Objects By FRANK KERMODE T AM a 'damned object,' according to Mr. 'Everett Knight,* because, as an acquiescent member of a Faculty of Arts, 1 am both the victim and the...

In Flanders Fields, By Leon Wolff. (Longmans, 25s.) 1 AT my preparatory school we used to be told, once a year, about a grand and kindly old gentleman called Earl Haig. He was...

The Crowd in the French Revolution. By George Rude. (0.U.P., 35s.) THE Bastille fell to a crowd of wonderful opti- mists. In spite of hunger and unemployment, the Parisian...

Ethel Smyth, A Biography. By Christopher St. John. (Longmans, 30s.) Tins book about Ethel Smyth is as good as it could be, that is to say that it gives the facts and the...

Kenneth Grahame 1859-1932. By Peter Green. (John Murray, 30s.) THE golden age of children's books was the solidly, comfortably, middle-class Victorian, when fantasy did not need...

The Oxford Companion to French Literature. Compiled and edited by Sir Paul Harvey and • J. E. Heseltine. (0.U.P., 45s.) Dictionary of French Literature. Edited by Sidney D....

Sights and Spectacles. By Mary McCarthy. (Heinemann, 18s.) FOR once the misgivings in the author's preface are a perfect clue to the weaknesses of the ensuing book. This is a...

WILL there ever be a time when books on German history are not topical? When Germany's problems—problems largely rooted in the con- sciousness of a people obsessed with...

Yormt WAIN'S latest novel blazes off in a con- fusion of high comedy and dangling motivations. George Links, a young country solicitor, growing restive in the four-year-old...

Paper Boats: An Autobiography. By E. M. Butler. (Collins, 16s,) JOHNSON'S famous warning, to 'mark what ills the scholar's life assail,' seems curiously remote from the...

A Simple Guide for the Taxpayer. By John Wood. (Putnam, 9s. fd.) ONCE upon a time income tax was opposed as likely to bear most harshly upon the honest citi- zen who declared...

ACROSS. — 1 Despondent. 6 Chap. 10 Civic. 11 Burnished. 12 Singlets. 13 Ransom. 15 Trim, 16 Anon. 17 Elvan. 20 Riser. 21 Eros. 22 Thus. 24 Alarum. 26 Padlocks. 29 Agincourt....

ACROSS 1 'The wild ass stamps o'er his head' (6") 4 Rasputin in an astounding dis- guise (8) $ Nurses costume in the cupboard 1 (8) 10 Chastisement on the increase, jolly...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 471: Report by Papoose The usual prize was offered for a poem, in the manner of Herrick, Tennyson, Shelley, Swinburne, Marvell or Andrew Young,...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT SCARED that a new wage-cost inflation may be sparked off by the steel industry, terrified that the inflation-hedging boom on Wall Street may get out of...

By CUSTOS T HE last Stock Exchange account of the financial year closed more brightly on Tues- day after a depressing session. The rise in Ameri- can money rates had upset the...

p and 0. preliminary figures reveal a heavy decline, gross profits having fallen from 7 .6 million to £10.2 million, which was not un!xpected, when it is remembered that the...