T HE concerted denunciation of the nine doctors who are accused . of plotting against the lives of Soviet leaders is the gravest news to come from Russia for a long time. The...

Since the Mau Mau trouble broke out we have learned to distinguish between the two main types of British settler: the reasonable, liberal-minded type, and the illiberal, noisy...

While the British authorities were putting the final touches to their draft agreement on the Sudan before its presentation to the Egyptian Government on Monday, an Egyptian...

The governing factor in the negotiations or manoeuvres, whichever term may be preferred, regarding Central Affican Federation is the referendum to be taken on the subject in...

What the National Executive of the Labour Party expected from its extraordinary meeting with the General Council of the T.U.C. was never vtty - clear. But, on the key question...

Once again the pressure is being applied to bring Britain into the various projects for European unity. British observers at the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel...

I NCOMPARABLY the most important men in the Western World today are Mr. Churchill, General Eisenhower and Dr. Adenauer. It is sad that France can produce no one to put in the...

been defending the new 2d. and lid. stamps against critics. I find it astonishing that any critics of the stamps should exist. I have licked stamps in six successive reigns, and...

Ogilvie's Dictionaries or the Encyclopaedia Britannica, turns to me I naturally swell a little. But we must move cautiously. I am asked for the true derivation of Hogmanay....

of Harrow within twenty-four hours of each other are a grievous blow. I had known the Bishop rather the longer and rather the better of the two, but it would be hard to say...

" The International University Society " ? Resistance is recommended. I gather that the names of Sir Ernest Barker, Professor T. J. Haarhoff, of Witwatersrand'University and Dr....

week to be turning over the files of The Spectator for no more than twenty years ago (we can do six times as well as that when we try; we shall soon) and came on two items that...

I T was Philip Guedalla, I think, who said that history never repeats itself, but historians always do. To say that history never repeats itself may be going a little far—it...

Defence against spiders, no doubt. JANUS.

By D. R. GILLIE M OST French Cabinet crises are unnecessary and regrettable. The last one was particularly so. But, unnecessary and regrettable as they are, they naturally occur...

S S long as M. Schuman was at the Quai d'Orsay Franco- German relations were of a peculiar character. Since M. Schuman's reign has come to an end for the time being, it may be...

By J. F. 'VVOLFENDEN* ESPONSIBLE estimates suggest that seventy per cent. of all university students take up some paid vacation employment, and that each of them spends, on an...

By LADY T HE time has at last come when the self-respecting intelligent woman need no longer call herself a feminist. , During the first fifty years of our century the great...

By DORIS M. HODGES I AM a woman of thirty-seven and an agnostic. My parents had me taught the basic concepts of their own Noncon- formist faith when I was a child. These (to me)...

any of your friends residing in any part of the world at the following rates :— 52 weeks, 35s. ; 26 weeks, 17s. 6d. In addition a Birthday Greeting card will be forwarded...

THEATRE The Merchant of Venice. By William Shakespeare. (Old Vic.) THERE can be something for everybody, even reviewers, in the lucky dip of the Merchant, and Hugh Hunt sees to...

The Rake's Progress. THE Third Programme is to be congratulated on its presentation- of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. The singers were excellent. Alexander Young in the...

Decameron Nights. (Odeon, Marble Arch.)—Women of Twilight. (Plaza.) EVERY time I see that one of .the classics has been filmed I confess to a certain sadness, for, owing to a...

When preparing the shallot-bed remember that they do best in an open situation. The ground should be improved with super-phosphate —I- lb. to the square yard—forked well in....

Taking down a wood is a comparatively simple business. A few axes and cross-cut saws are the tools, and a tractor soon hauls the timber out; but when the ground has to be...

EDWARD GRW, an Irishman, extorted one pound from the servant of the Reverend Mr. Clark on the false pretence that he was agent to the Newcastle Deaf and Dumb Asylum. He wrote...

FROST was thick on the fields. By the gate the cart-ruts were like iron, and the sheep-tracks in the mud made an uneven surface completely unyielding to the foot. A yellow...

"Ah," he said. looking round. "The foot an' mouth before the war was the makin' of him. He hadn't a decent animal on his place till then. The chap what came to assess was some...

To the Tate Gallery has come an exhibition of work by Matisse which includes forty-nine bronzes—nearly all the sculpture he has ever executed. Six pieces were shown as long ago...

It was only when the light in the room began to fade that I looked up and saw the gas-mantle in its round globe. and a little while passed before I realised that it was not "...

THE WALTHAMSTOW WAY By J. P. W. MALLALIEU W HEN you cross the London and North Western viaduct and look down on Stockport in the evening, lit with those soda lights, you think...

were invited to submit a synopsis for a ballet based "on a situation after" Sartre, Ethel M. Dell, Ronald Firbank, Sir Osbert Sitwell, Ouida, Jane Austen, Raymond Chandler, I....

Set by Richard Usborne It is 1955, and no play can pay its way in London if it is not on ice. Macbeth on Ice is at the Old Vic, starring the Oliviers. Give the first or last 200...

StR,—In your issue of December 26th, 1952, you refer in your News of the Week to my speech at the Vienna Peace Congress. You stated that no answer was vouchsafed to any of my...

was surprised by your item in A Spectator's Notebook of December 19th attacking the Sunday Express, for I suggest that Janus himself commits a worse misdemeanour than the one...

SIR,—Mr. Darke's account of Communist technique in Britain _would be more convincing if it contained fewer inaccuracies. Surely a Communist of eighteen years' standing should...

Protestantism SIR.--I saw Dr. Sykes' criticism of my Westminster Abbey sermon only a few days ago. Permit me a belated reply. He misunderstands the purpose of my sketch of the...

SIR, —May I be allowed to answer the letters of your correspondents Mr. W. L. Andrews and Mr. H. A. Taylor ? My article on privacy and the Press was not intended as an attack on...

SIR,—Lord Eustace in his article The Writing of English says that " the best English there, barring some defect of accent, was spoken by J. R. Clynes." Why should an accent...

Sut,—It may interest Mr. T. B. Peacock, and is- perhaps worth putting on record,.that when Mr. Robertson Scott founded the Countryman, and 'was for twenty years its proprietor,...

THE history of the arts can hardly provide another instance of a 400-page book, written by a score of contributors, being devoted to the work of a composer who has not yet...

The British in the Sudan British Policy in the Sudan, 1882-1902. By Mekki Shibeika. (0.U.P. 30s.) THE reluctance with which the British people were dragged into the Sudan two...

Harold Laski. By Kingsley Martin. (Gollancz. 21s.) THIS is a very able book about a very able man—one of the most remarkable, in sheer grey matter, of his generation. As with...

The Family Affairs of Sir Thomas Phillipps (Phillipps' Studies No. 2). By A. N. L. Munby. (Cambridge University Press. 15s.) ANYONE familiar with the town of Cheltenham will be...

Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. First collected by the Revd. Alexander Dyce. Edited by Morchard Bishop. (Richards Press. 12s. 6d.) OP Samuel Rogers, in places...

HOWEVER much or little of the Bible particular persons may believe, there will be few to deny that it is the most interesting book in the world. But in parts it is perplexing...

a sumptuous piece of book-making in which Rex Whistler's ten Baroque drawings for A. E. W. Mason's Konigsmark find a fitting setting. Laurence Whistler introduces them,...

the Secretary, The Springhead Ring, Fontwell Magna, Shaftes- bury, Dorset (2s. post free), is devoted to the memory of the late H. J. Massingham, whb died last year and whose...

INFLUENCED, as one inevitably is, by the literary fashions of the day, the novels I find hardest to assess fairly are the gentle, moral, almost allegorical ones. Being devotedly...

Learning Laughter. By Stephen Spender. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 15s.) THE title of this travel-book is inappropriate. Laughter was just the thing that Mr. Spender did not find...

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IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, January 27th, addressed Crossword. 99 Gower Street,...

By CUSTOS STOCK market values reflect the opinions and judgement of a host of investors and speculators whose skill in assessing market influences varies enormously. These...