U NITY' is one of those vague, evocative words which have won outstanding popularity in the twentieth century. To believe in 'it in almost any context is a passport to...

ESTABLISHED 1828 No. 6704 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1956 PRICE 9d.

Mr. N. H. Sharpe, President of the Greeting Card and Calendar, Manufacturers' Association, has deplored 'as a matter of principle . the appearance of the Christmas cards...

W HETHER or not Mr. Nehru's visit to Washington marks a high spot in the attempt by the US to woo the un- committed Afro-Asian States, it is certainly true that no one would...

O NLY three days after the contracts had been placed for the world's first three full-scale nuclear power stations, the Minister of Fuel and Power warned the country of the...

HE recommendations made by Lord Radcliffe have now T been tabled in the House of Commons. They consist of constitution providing for an elected single chamber with a Chief...

By Our Political Correspondent A T one moment in Monday's sitting it looked as if the PI interest was going to shift explosively from the floor of the House—where Sir Anthony...

A BLESSED Christmas calm seems to have been stealing upon world events during the past week, after the most feverish six months we have seen since the war. We have now time to...

revival of demo' cracy in Eastern Europe, we are inclined to neglect the utile tunate Baltic States. Russia got Lithuania by swapping it with Hitler for a slice of Polish...

retreat from an indefensible position. I only hope that the rule has not been replaced by a backstairs agreement which will in fact though not in form leave the situation...

THE GOVERNMENT of the Republic of Ireland is in the same uneasy position as certain neighbouring governments of being charged with foreknowledge, connivance, and even collusion....

Wilson has just received a six-page letter from his Publisher, Mr. Victor Gollancz, warning him against too much Party-going, public speaking, and frivolity. This raises a nice...

BY A CAMBRIDGE TUTOR N some dishonoured corner of many a home that has I been accustomed to send its sons to one of the older ,,, universities there hangs a mental portrait,...

Spectator ° 0 0k pages misprinting two weeks running the title of the I t i „e\v book by W. Macqueen-Pope published by Messrs. Mitchinson. I will now try my hand at it. The...

BY CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS I T was in the second half of the 1920s after our return to gold that many people. who had hardly given their minds to the topic before, started to...

By JOHN BETJEMAN T HE mindless uglification of England by bodies like the Central Electricity Authority. Service Departments. local and county authorities. the Ministry of Fuel...

I HARDLY believe that the thing that happened to me the week before last could have happened to anybody else. One of the reasons for my disbelief is that, unlike most people, I,...

DECEMBER 24, 1831 (From the advertisement columns) ‘...•HRISTMAS PRESENTS.—A due attention to Children's Hair is of the greatest importance, both as to utility and elegance. A...

Set by Six Fellows of St. John's College, Cambridge 1. Who, in what book? (a) was . . . 'extremely fond of sums, To which, however, he preferred The Parsing of a Latin word. ....

SIR,-1 read with very great interest the article by Brian Inglis on 'The Coming Crisis ill Medicine' in your issue of December 7. The necessity for medicine to adapt to new con...

SIR,—The statement in your leading article last week that 'Anglo-French intervention in Egypt did not . . . cause Soviet intervention in Hungary' may well be true. But it is in...

Any Questions? Dr. Donald Mcl. Johnson, MP Hungary Robert Oakeshott, G. W. Prager Crisis in Medicine Mary A. Lane, J. D. Graham Grenidge or Grinach Prof. Austin Duncan-Jones,...

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of appraisal of some illustrated weekly's 'Cry Hungary' number. Do let me add that it is now an established fact that such illustrated accounts of the hare penings in unhappy...

It is a good thing that the public, as potential patients, should take an intelligent interest in the doings of theft doctors. Mr. Inglis, in his article on 'The Coming Crisis...

SIR,-Mr. Sitwell, in his charming review of Grandfather's London in your issue of Decem- ber 14, refers to the 'roar' of London in the old days. I can never make the younger...

sense? Today's BBC news broad- cast announced in shocked tones the partici- pation of teenaged boys and girls in EOKA activities. What will be the result?—a thrill of pride and...

S iR,--The correct pronunciations for which Mr. Betjeman asks are as follows : Marryb'n; pall Mall (though Pell Mell may be allowable); Brumpton; Hoab'n; Suth'k; Grinnidge (...

article on the future development of the Commonwealth must be obvious to almost all your readers. The refusal to face up to the challenge and opportunity that the Empire...

Mr. John Betjeman's last paragraph (December 14), for these words are indeed the shibboleths by which we Londoners born of Londoners know one another in our banish- ment. I...

most people by Edward Lear, who made Greenwich rhyme with spinach. This pronunciation was con- firmed a few years ago by 'Pibwob,' who, in a competition entry in your own pages,...

to Saint Barnabas's Hospital. Highest prices paid and remember our motto: dissection means no detection. Tel. CADaver 8989. AN ORIGINAL GIFT! Buy your small daughter some Suez...

So the BBC have dealt with prostitution. The tone of anguished solemnity in which last week's documentary was couched spoilt for me much of the effect of the programme. First,...

AT both the recent Stravinsky concerts in Loa: don the audience was denied the pleasure applauding the composer personally. Althoug h unofficially present in the Festival Hall...

Now that the first assault of John Bratby's pictures has been absorbed—his third shoo' is currently on view at the Beaux Arts Gallery —it is plain to see that we have here an...

The Year's Ballet SURVEYING the year's achievement at the year's end, it is apparent that ballet here in London now runs in a regular rhythm—a rhythm which is not much...

MEMORY—my memory at least, again— being a sieve-like affair, through which the disagreeable tends to vanish, retrospection is a pleasant task. The fine or amusing or touch- ing...

The Country Wife. By William Wycherley. (Royal Court.)—The Merchant of Venice. By William Shakespeare. (Old Vic.) Mrs. Gibbon's Boys. By Will Glickman and Joseph Stein....

BY ALOYS1US C. BICKERSTAFF HAVE considered the gross abuse of Astrology in this Kingdom, and upon debating the Matter with myself, I could not possibly lay the Fault upon the...

Conservative MPs welcomed Sir AnthonY Eden back to the House of Commons yester - day with cool, calculated politeness. Daily Mirror, December 18. Premier gets an affable...

The Lumber Room BY BRIAN INGLIS T . idolise both Berry Pleydell and Clovis Sangrail in childhood is probably not unusual—incongruous though the pairing is; Berry would have...

SHELLEY AT WORK. By Neville Rogers. (O.U.P., 35s.) POETRY is a very hard subject to write about, and there are alway s great temptations to write instead about something...

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HEROD THE GREAT. By Stewart Perowne. (Hodder and Stoughton, 21s.) Tim: reader should not allow himself to be put off by the compli- cated prolegomena with...

C ASTLEROSSE. By Leonard Mosley. (Arthur Barker, 15s.) i t :ORD CASTLEROSSE was the sort of man of whom it must have ° Cen said, when he died, `. . . we shall not look upon his...

THE NUDE. By Sir Kenneth Clark. (John Murray, 63s.) A GAP in art criticism is most satisfactorily filled by this NI whose 400 pages and 300 excellent illustrations cover all pet...

THE BUSINESS OF CRIME. By Robert Rice. (Gollancz, 16s.) CRIME has often been considered as an art; as a business, not. Als o the books overplay murder. Mr. Rice redresses these...

AMERICA AND THE BRITISH LEFT. By Henry Pelling. (Adam and Charles Black, 18s.) IT has sometimes been claimed that one of the traditional differences between the British...

MY FRIEND MAIGRET. By Simenon. (Hamish Hamilton, 10s. 6d.) The sun-drenched mistral-swept island of Porquerolles is almost as exotically outlandish a place to mackintoshed...

ls. 6d.) In the absence of a moratorium on remarkable resell''• blances, successful writers of crime stories—and Mr. Walsh has been very successful—should assume a self-denying...

with the tensions that led to the crime and the remorse that follows it. Not precisely a novel either of mystery or of detection, but a crime story in the most serious—and yet...

B liant, brutal story of murder by remote control in a New Y( of pimps and perverts and pornographic photographs, wh cops are either corrupt or given to kicking what they call...

6d.) There are clues in the calypsos sung to a steel band and a good deal of rum-drinking, on this particular one of the Virgin Islands, which is owned by the United States ,...

10s. 6d.) Mr. and Mrs. North are in the 'Thin Man' tradition of American wise-cracking husband-and-wife detectives; thi s latest adventure of theirs, stalking murder among...

THE SACRIFICE. By Simenon. (Hamish Hamilton, 13s. 6d.) 1 short novels—nearly twice as many pages as the Maigret stc for only three shillings more—which are not precisely detect...

ma characters (and too tittle proof-reading) for perfect clarity; takes a solid ten pages or so of explanation at the end to reso the preposterous plot—but, all the same, Nigel...

mystery set in some such Yorkshire industi town as Leeds (for some reason camouflaged as 'Airechester') likeable and probable young bobby-hunting tough but not co characterised...

Hammond, 10s. 6d.) Also set in the Caribbean, a straig forward American detective story, not too far-fetched, not v violent, with likeable characters, and a little drinking and...

PENGUIN Translations have fired another salvo on Greek drama. Mr. Vellacott's The Oresteian Trilogy (Penguin. 2s. 6d.), taken as a test of the quality of the plays, would for-...

THREE editors and five associate editors have combined to produce a new edition of Dryden's poems and plays, to be completed in an unspecified number of volumes. In The Works of...

NomiNo puzzles the British spectator of the American political scene more than the party system, so irrational, complicated, slow-mov - ing, decentralised,, in short un-British...

IN 1941 Dr. Halliday Sutherland heard that his book the Laws of Life, which he had written years before and which in 1936 had received the permissu superiorum from the...

By IAN NIALL WE bought some honey the other day, and this reminded me that my grandfather was a successful bee-keeper, a thing I cannot claim to be, which is to my shame. When...

in the new year. I suggest Cox's, Blenheims, Ribston Pippin (self-fertile) as dessert keepers, Bramley's or Newton Won- der (self-fertile) as cookers that will keep. An expert...

BY PHILIDOR No. 81 WHITE (5 men) Solution to last week's problem by Chandler: Q-Kt 2, threat Q x B P. 1 . . . Kt-B 6; 2 Q-Kt 6. 1 . . . Kt (4)-Q 5; 2 Kt-K 4. 1 . . . Kt (7)-Q...

and back to the farm on which he works, had a shock of hair that would have done credit to an old English sheepdog. There was, until recently, something decidedly sheepdog-like...

of the stream, I remembered that the last time I went that way I found a magpie's nest in a b roken-topped fir, and a brood of hedge- sparrows in a little bush at the side of...

Tito Shell Guide to Wiltshire, originally pub- lished in 1935, now reappears enlarged and revised by Mr. David Verey (Wiltshire: A Shell Guide. Faber, 12s. 6d.), and embellished...

here are a number of variants on normal chess—some have been mentioned before in this column. LOSING CHESS. You must capture if you can: given a choice, take what best suits...

Officers' we know, and now dust' men are to be 'refuse collectors.' In anothel field we have 'National Service' for con', scription and 'redundancy' for 'the sack.' fi,'‘ prize...

The usual prize was offered for an eight-line verse for a Christmas card with the words 'A merry Christmas and a happy New Year' arranged diagonally, i.e. 'A' to be the first...

ACROSS t Underwear suitable for the exponents of mergers (12). 9 It sounds almost as if nobody knows the sculptor in Scotland (9). 10 Ladies only in ancient Rome? (5) 11 So a...

(Manufacturers of Standard & Triumph Cars, Ferguson Tractors & Standard Commercial Vehicles and Diesel Engines) RESULTS REFLECT YEAR OF CONSIDERABLE DIFFICULTY LORD TEDDER ON...

BY CUSTOS BUSINESS on the Stock Exchange dwindled this week, partly because of the approach of the Christmas holiday, partly because of preparation for the £40 million...

BY NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE idea still persists that American hostility to the Suez adventure was dictated by the Washington oil lobby, that behind Mr. Eisenhower's...