One volunteer is worth quite a number of pressed men. But the American Presidential Election knows no volunteers. Two pressed men face one another in the lists. General...

HE present Government's record in economic policy of four anti-climaxes in nine months is one that the preceding Labour Governments did not surpass. Mr. Butler's statement on...

The White Paper on the re-transfer of the iron and steel industry to private ownership has the basic merit that it proposes the restoration of the Iron and Steel Board, which...

The characteristic performance of Dr. Moussadek in offering arbitration over the oil-dispute in Persia and then immediately withdrawing the offer is a sufficient discouragement...

The question of wage increases is rapidly taking on an aspect which it has-not worn for some years. The assumption that there is a semi-automatic process whereby wage demands...

Few bodies do more useful work than the House of Commons' Select Committee on Estimates. Striking evidence of that is provided by the committee's report on prison con- ditions,...

Last week's meetin g in Paris of the Forei g n Ministers of the six countries takin g part in the Schuman Plan certainly managed to g ive an impression of brisk activity. M....

state- ment on the balance of payments with somethin g of the hollow feelin g of the actor who knows in his heart that the play cannot live up to the preliminary puffs and...

By a coincidence reports of the debate of the House of Commons on transport in Scotland and reports of the 1951 census so far as it bore on the continued depopulation of...

• E XCEPT that Capri is more genial as an ultimate resting- place than a dungeon in Pomfret Castle, there is much in common between the decline and fall of King Farouk and of...

the production of that revolting commodity, the prune (possessed, it is said, of certain medicinal qualities in keeping with its general character), in this country. It will...

a proposal of Lord Jowitf s in the debate on the Defamation Bill in the House of Lords on Monday, I lighted on a passage in which Lord Simon illustrated a contention by a...

AC CORDING to Carlyle this country in his day was inhabited by twenty-seven millions, mostly fools. The Editor of the Daily Express evidently holds a similar opinion of his own...

weight than has in most quarters been given, to the well known devotion of the Express to veracity. It is well-known because both its " Controlling Shareholder," Lord...

on Wednesday in honour of M. Michel St. Denis, who is leav- ing London after many valuable and active years in this country. M. St. Denis, under the pseudonym of Jacques...

of fortune. To get a Suez Canal Directorship, an O.M. and the Chairmanship of the B.B.C. Governors, all within the space of a single year or not much more is something that...

has an oblique bearing on them. And there is just a touch of political—and more than a touch of psychological—. importance in the announcement that Pakistan was on Monday...

T HE Democratic Party's nominating Convention was a very nearly perfect example of the American faculty for making everything come out all right in the end. Those abroad who are...

By SIR HENRY BASHFORD ALISBURY is the most distant of our three market-towns. To go there is always something of an event. And, whenever we do, we turn into the Close. Apart...

By GEORGE BRINSMEAD U NTIL the coming of Evita, only one woman—a hand- some Irishwoman, " Madama " Lynch—had ever played a dominating part in the public affairs of a Latin...

By VERNON BARTLETT three in the morning the airfield becomes active. The lights are switched on along the runway. The motor- coach arrives with the outgoing passengers, some...

By SETON GORDON p OACHING gangs have been at work among the Highland deer. Fast cars with powerful headlights bewilder the deer, which are held in the headlights and shot, the...

Oxford in the Vacation By DAVID WAINWRIGHT (St. Edmund Hall, Oxford). A CANADIAN lady was recently reported to have said that she had found Cambridge more attractive than...

At this moment Drury Lane Theatre presents one of those extraordinary spectacles for which we should in vain seek a parallel beyond the precincts of the histrionic profession....

By HAROLD NICOLSON T HE appointment of Sir Alexander Cadogan as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the B.B.C. has, I observe, induced our leader-writers and commentators to...

CINEMA We're Not Married. (Odeon, Leicester Square.) Son of Paleface. (Carlton.)—Where's Charley ? (Warner.) AMERICAN films on American themes are more cloyingly complacent...

Tun programmes of this year's Promenade Concerts contain no absolutely new works, no first performances. Instead there are sixteen works which have never been played at a Prom....

CaLcurr' presented a sword of honour to the young major-general who had routed the Mahrattas at Assaye, and there was a silver table- service from his victorious- Deccan army....

Set by R. Kennard Davis A prize of £5, which may be divided, is offered for a poem of not more than eighteen lines, entitled " Disillusionment," based on and including the...

Report by limpet The following advertisement appeared four years ago under the heading " Personal " in a country newspaper : " Cricket—Will the Boiler Engineer Gentleman who...

Earth up growing greens and celery. Use a good insecticide to counteract leaf-miner. Draw earth away from onions to allow them to swell out. Three good crops of weeds in a...

Walking home, I met Dick, who told me that his dog had once gone wild to have her pups and he had had to bring the family back to civilised surroundings. My grandfather had a...

but in a slate- quarrying district. From the look of them they are an old thing, and yet so effective that I wonder they have not been exported. The fences vary a little in...

Few birds seem to trust the poplar tree in this area. Sometimes a thrush or a blackbird makes use of the lower branches, but for the rest the poplar tree is hardly ever the...

As I expected earlier in the year, it has turned - put to be, a great season for rabbits in this locality. Fields that never had them before, so long as I can remember, have...

term " dak bungalow " to interpret St. John's ." many mansions." He pointed out that it was appropriate to the upward journey of the soul after death, using temporary...

SIR,—In his review of Franz von Papen's memoirs Mr. Alan Bullock takes an objective and detached standpoint which is wholly admirable, but inevitably inadequate. To follow...

rendered in the A.V. of the New Testament and recorded by Janus, one occurs to me w i hich was in frequent use in Ireland in past years. In return for a kindness the wish was...

Testament by Mgr. Knox ? It is the most spiritually enlightening I have found, and it has no bias. He used the term " dwelling-places," but surely " mansions " is less...

- In Defence of Tyndale Sm,-1 hope you will allow me to comment on the paragraph by Janus dealing with the translation of familiar passages in the Bible. The particular verse...

SIR,—I do not think it is so funny that Mr. Fenner Brockway should enquire earnestly why the Iver Heath Conservative Association used a U.S. servicemen's baseball tournament to...

in the Spectator about whether in this country there were more women than men in the marrying age-groups; the correspondence rather petered out for want of reliable contemporary...

Sur,—As Battle of Britain Week again approaches (September 15th-21so, may I commend to your attention the work of the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund. Last year we spent...

SIR,—Thou g h I am delighted that Mr. J. Howard Wright enjoyed his first, and I hope not his last, visit to my country, I am afraid that my reaction to the content of his first...

SIR, —Janus was facing the wrong side of the London road in his parenthesis on Thomas Gray. The only sense in which Pembroke College " produced " Gray was that in which a...

SIR,—I was most interested to read Mr. Niall's reference in your issue of June 27th to the greater spotted woodpecker in a friend's garden. Exactly the same thing is happening...

Snt,—Mr. J. R. Dodeman's letter surely does less than justice to the many British booksellers who maintain well-stocked French book departments under the control of competent,...

Snr,—One hesitates to question the accuracy of any statement of Mr. Harold Nicolson's; but could he ever have addressed Prince Talleyrand as " Ambassador from His Most Christian...

Survey of International Affairs : 1947 - 1948. By Peter Calvocoressi. (Oxford University Press for Royal Institute of International Affairs. 45s.) THE major problem that has...

The Secluded Poet Emily Dickinson. By Richard Chase. (Methuen. 16s.) SHE became a legend while she was yet alive, with her poetry so different from anyone else's and the red...

Rose-and Crown. By Sean O'Casey. (Macmillan. 21s.) SEAN is a man of peace, he tells us in this fifth volume of his auto- biography ; but, wherever he goes, people will tread on...

We will post the SPECTATOR to 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...

A Study of Writing. The Foundations of Grammatology. By I. J. Gelb. (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 25s.) THE author of this book purposes " to lay a foundation for a new science of...

LADIES are rarely known in polite society by their surnames except when they appear in the dock. But more than a generation ago the combined name of Somerville and Ross was so...

The Open Night. By John Lehmann. (Longman. 15s.) THESE eleven brief essays, with their prologue and epilogue, are Mr. Lehmann's study of writers, diverse in their genius, linked...

A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, August 12th, addressed Crossword, and bearing NUMBER...

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Italian Opera. By Francis Toye. (Max Parrish. 8s. 6d.) THE " World of Music" series, of which this is the latest volume. has made formidable demands for compression on some of...

THE first three books are all different varieties of the popular novel, curiously linked to each other. Far and away the best of the three is Campbell's Kingdom, a roistering...

investors. After steeling themselves against the threatened impact of further " grave and far-reaching measures " to strengthen the pound they have been treated by Mr. Butler to...