No. 6543 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20. 1953 PRICE ls.

HERE is no point in pretending that the White affair does not dismay friends of America as much as it must delight, on the one hand, its enemies abroad, and, on the other,...

The French Assembly has fearfully grasped the nettle and begun, for the first time for nearly two years, to debate the treaty of the European Defence Community. At this stage,...

Mr. Molotov has given the Bermuda Conference an un- ambiguous send-off, and for this alone the. West has reason to be grateful to him. In his attempt last Friday to make it...

There can only be thankfulness and a great sense of relief at Mr. Dulles's statement on Tuesday that he could not agree' to an extension of the period of " explanations," due to...

The Sudan elections have been a signal for both the British and the Egyptians to air their neuroses about signing an agree- ment with each other on the Canal Zone. The...

It was , suggested here when the initial controversy was at its hottest that no man in his senses would go to the stake for commercial teleyision. But now, as then, it must also...

The Liverpool Cotton Ekchange is to be revived in time to deal in next season's cotton crop. This is a political, as well as a commercial event. For when Sir Stafford Cripps...

After the electricians and the tanker-drivers, the engineers. The 800,000-strong Amalgamated Engineering Union (or rather, its 52-man executive committee) decided on Monday to...

ARLIAMENT has been busy this week getting the tickets, so to speak, for the Queen's Commonwealth tour, and as far as the two Houses are concerned the journey may now start. The...

T HE fact that the post-Stalin Ruisian attitude to the non-Communist world is not much different from the attitude adopted under the implacable direction of Stalin himself is...

The reform and revitalisation of Punch has been proceeding apace under Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge, the first of its editors (I think I am right in saying) to have seen war-time...

On Monday evening three gentlemen interrogated Mr. Evelyn Waugh for half an hour in a BBC programme called " Frankly Speaking." Affability is not among this great novelist's...

Although it will be sad to say goodbye to Mr. Julius C. Holmes after his five years service as Minister at the United States Embassy in London, no better replacement could have...

T HE Socialist member of Parliament who stigmatised as " disgracefully flippant " Lord Montgomery's reference, in an after-dinner speech, to the next world war as the " next...

Bombay is not a very good listening post for the Himalayas, and one should, I think, accept with considerable reserve the news agency report from that city that an Abominable...

I do not know whether the Press Council, which apportions blame, is also empowered to make awards or issue commenda- tions to journalists for exceptionally meritorious conduct....

By JULES MENKEN I T is almost twelve years to a day since the Japanese Privy Council, meeting in the Emperor's presence on December 1st, 1941, heard the Prime Minister, General...

By J. BRONOWSKI The Spectator has asked Dr. Brbnowski the question—If you were beginning your career now what branch of science or what field of research would you choose ?...

By DESMOND E. HENN I T is unfortunately impossible to embark on a discussion on how the English-speaking Britishers (an offensive term presently in vogue, but one apparently...

By SYDNEY D. BAILEY* T HE difficulty of constituting a Second Chamber in a democratic state is well known. If the composition of a Second Chamber corresponds exactly to opinion...

By JENNY NICHOLSON Rome U NTIL the-appointment of Sir Ashley Clarke as the new British Ambassador to Rome, no high-ranking Briton has expressed the fund of friendliness towards...

The Spectator offers three prizes, each of books to the value of eight guineas, for articles to be written by boys and girls in schools in the United Kingdom. Entries should be...

By IAIN HAMILTON S OME talk of Alexander, but I of Hercules. Of Ercole, rather, for it was the modern form which Peter Peasack- Thwarton gave himself as a nom-de-plume after...

By HAROLD NICOLSON W HEN I was a child I was frightened at night. " Pleasant dreams," the nursery-maid would say as she blew out the candle beside my bed : to this day, the...

Old Surrealism and New Realism As the thunder of the great revolution rumbles away into history and many of its aims are seen to have been cfnmerical, a number of inevitable...

THE question is sometimes asked whether a man has a right to criticise a play if he cannot write one. William Archer tried to do both, and The Green Goddess was the result. That...

THEATRE WHEN Sister Agatha after more than thirty years in a convent decides that she has no vocation, it is only natural that her return to the world should pose problems,...

RECORDS are listed, where possible, in alphabetical order of composers. Where several composers are represented on one record, it is listed under the name of the composer of the...

The Juggler. (General Release.)—Fort Ti. (London Pavilion.) IN fear, presumably, of our vitriolic pens, The Juggler has not been shown to the Press prior to its general...

Peter Grimes. By Benjamin Britten. (Royal Opera House.) IT is pointless to hail 'a composer back to his early triumphs, to ask him to repeat what may represent to him the...

that it was then too late for them to make the necessary arrangements should another site be found. This virtually banned the Rag. The Official Committee then cancelled all...

To mark the occasion of my birthday we made a journey of about twenty miles to have dinner at a little inn well-known for its cater- ing and found the company at the adjoining...

EVERYONE who has ever crossed a marsh or a bog knows the smell of marsh gas, the ferment of organic matter that comes from the ground at the pressure of the foot. I had always...

Rabbits that are infected by myxomatosis, I am told, suffer agony before the end and crawl about, bloated and suffocating, some- thing like rats when they have taken certain...

I have received from a friend who went out to Kenya some eighteen • months ago, and on whose word I have complete reliance, is self- explanatory and seems to be most...

SIR,—The Church of Rome has, in the course of nearly twenty centuries, numbered some very dubious characters amongst her bishops; but to Suppose, as Mr. Gedge supposes, that...

am anxious to trace any books of a biographical nature dealing with Margaret of Tyrol, the reputed original of the Ugly Duchess in Lewis Carroll's Through the Look- ing Glass...

by lifting, splitting and replanting the old clumps that have crowded their roots and reduced the vitality of the herbaceous border. Be careful not to rearrange the beds without...

SIR,—Mr. J. M. Cohen, in dealing with one aspect of homosexuality, draws an all too vivid and recognisable picture of the type he has in mind. How well one knows these...

I AM almost sure that it was Crashaw who wrote: Lock'd up from mortal eye, In shady leaves of destiny. If I err in the attribution I beg pardon and plead temporary inability to...

Make Mine Andante ByJOYCE GRENFELL I T is hardly an exaggeration today to say that speed is tantamount to standing still. You leave A and are at B —phwitt—like that. No...

Rough Diamond By JOHN ARLOTT T OM WASS, the cricketer, died a week or two ago in Sutton-in-Ashfield, the village where he was born. He was seventy-nine. As a. young man he...

What do you do with the minutes you save? By GORDON WILKINS NY day now, newspaper headlines will be announcing " Ice Causes Traffic Chaos " or " Roads Blocked by Snow. Coaches...

Virginia Woolf By RICHARD HUGHES C YRIL CONNOLLY was himself one of those critics who began in the Thirties to question the established reputations of Virginia Woolf and...

By PETER FLEMING I T is amusing (and not at all difficult) to speculate on what sort of a book this would have been if Everest had been climbed by the French or the Americans,...

The Uprooted from the Old World to the New. By Oscar Handlin. (C. Watts. I 5s.) The Cultural Migration : The European Scholar ht America. By Franz L. Neumann, Henri Peyre, Erwin...

JAMES FITZ-JAMES, Duke of Berwick, the son of James II of England and of Arabella Churchill, sister of the first Duke of Marlborough, began his distinguished military career at...

Shakespeare's " Measure for Measure." By Mary Lascelles, (University of London. Athlone Press. 15s.) NOT very long ago Measure for Measure, ill common with Troilus and Cressida...

but the hand that mixes them is as steady and deft as ever" is the kind of stuff 'it may be difficult to choke back on opening Thurber Country and greeting the same pop-eyed...

IF there is one mode of twentieth-century En g lish life which by its remoteness would now repay interpretation, it is surely that of a clerk in the Forei g n Of fi ce before...

IN his new book, Coming Down the Seine, Mr. Gibbings does not do justice to his own great charm and talent. He dissipates his powers in too much dalliance with passing thoughts...

W. B. Yeats and T. Sturge Moore, Their Correspondence, 1901-1997. Edited by Ursula Bridge. (Routledge & Kegan Paul. 20s.) IT is a pity that Yeats's letters are being published...

The Life and Work of Sophocles. By F. J. H. Letters. (Sheed & Ward. 18s.) "SOPHOCLES' Athens," announces Mr. Letters on his first page, "was a slum." Seldom can such a...

The Age of Inigo Jones. By James Lees-Milne. (Batsford. 42s.) BEGINNING his book with a quotation from Antony and Cleopatra. "On the sudden a Roman thought hath struck him," Mr....

Madeleine's Journal. By Mrs. Robert Henrey. (Dent. 16s.) With Malice Toward Women. A Handbook for Women-Haters drawn from the Best Minds of All Time. Selected and edited by...

1T is interesting, and, I think, worthy of note that there has of late been such a demand for and interest in those books which deal with What the psychologists call "the heroic...

The Second Sex. By Simone de Beauvoir. (Cape. 50s.) MISS DE BEAUVOIR has written an enormous book about women and it is soon clear that she does not like them and does not 11c0...

The Pattern of Communist Revolution. By Hugh Seton-Watson. (Methuen. 25s.) The Pattern of Communist Revolution. By Hugh Seton-Watson. (Methuen. 25s.) THIS is a valuable and...

The Dramatic Festivals of Athens. By Sir A. W. Pickard-Cambridge. (0.U.P. 50s.) Tins posthumous work of the late Sir A. W. Pickard-Cambridge needs no praises from a reviewer....

A History of the Sciences. By S. F. Mason. (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 28s.) DR. MASON'S intention in writing this book was to produce a lucid, 500-page survey presenting the...

Conscience and the King. A Study of Hamlet. By Bertram Joseph. (Chatto and Windus. 12s. 6d.) THERE is a growing tendency to place great weight on the meaning which Shakespeare's...

Behind the Tests. By Norman Cutler. (Putnam. 10s. 6d.) Cricket Triumph. By Bruce Harris. (Hutchinson. 8s. 6d.) Picture Post Book of the Tests. By Denzil Batchelor. (Picture...

The Shaggy Dog Story. By Eric Partridge. (Faber. 7s. 6d.) Father, Dear Father. By Ludwig Bemelmans. (Hamish Hamilton. • 12s. 6d.) Sexes and Sevens. By Peter Kneebone....

Poems, 1953. By Robert Graves. (Cassell. 7s. 6d.) 0 Lovely England. By Walter de la Mare. (Faber. 10s. 6d.) INCREASINGLY, as one reads the work of contemporary poets under the...

FRANK O'CONNOR defines his latest collection of short stories as an attempt at " something for which he has secretly always longed, the Perfect Book " and his publishers,...

The Reason Why. By Cecil Woodham-Smith. (Constable. 15s.) THAT the charge of the Light Brigade was a glorious feat of British arms is one of the first pieces of history we...

Battle Cry. By Leon Uris. (Wingate. 12s. 6d.) WAR in the three tenses, past, present, future, is the theme of this week's books. Most straightforward of them is Battle Cry. It...

Alphabet, published a few years ago, Dr. Diringer 's new book is a remarkable work of synthetic scholarship, a history of " the book " from scratchings in prehistoric caves to...

21s.) SIR ERNEST BARKER confesses somewhere that he would gladly have joined a society "for the promotion of recklessness in conversation." Yet his book, which is presented as...

MR. HODGES'S study of the Elizabethan theatre appears at a time when interest in the subject has been stimulated by the findings of Dr. Leslie Hotson as well as by produc- tions...

(Methuen. 25s.) OF the many great singers whose names spring to mind at the mention of Wigmore Hall or Gerald Moore (for to many people they are almost synonymous), two at...

PAINSTAKING account of Edith Wharton's writing (not her life). Edith Wharton is such a good writer, and so stupidly neglected, that any criticism is better than none, and there...

travel; it would be interesting to know how many of them are published in A year. Mr. Mitchell, however, most acceptably differs from the usual mixture by writing about the sea...

THREE chess books, all different, each very good in its way. The success of Mr. du Mont's previous book, 200 Miniature Games of Chess, has encouraged him and his publisher to...

6d.) Without Veils. By Sewell Stokes. (Peter Davies. 15s.) THIS lightweight—featherweight, I might almost say—collection of stories by Jeanne de Casalis shows an actress's...

By CUSTOS BULLISHNESS in the industrial market received a check this week on the labour unrest and the publication of some disappointing reports. When an industrial company of...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT IP I write this week about the pulse of the security markets it is not because I wish to sound any alarm or air any unpopular opinions. I am merely making...

(A Book Token for one guinea will he awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, December 1st, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...

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