21 NOVEMBER 1958

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1848 IN REVERSE

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R EVOLUTIONS are infectious. Although there „were revolutionary factors present in the Sudan — growing economic difficulties, for instance—it is doubtful if the Army would have...

—Portrait of the Week— GENERAL IBRAHIM ABBOUD, the commander-in- chief,

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seized power in the Sudan, deposing Mr. Abdullah Khalil, the Prime Minister. This was a pro-Nasser or an anti-Nasser coup, according to which Beaverbrook paper, morning or...

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The Spectator

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1958

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CENTRAL AFRICAN ELECTIONS

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T HE overwhelming defeat of the Right-wing Dominion Party by Sir Roy Welensky's United Federal Party in the Central African Federal election on November 12 gives only the most...

AN END TO SELF-DECEPTION

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T FriliE Government must naturally be hoping that some good will come out of the many attempts now being made to continue negotiations about the European Free Trade Area. Talk's...

INVESTIGATING STEEL

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C MIMING Nationalisation, the pamphlet put out recently by the Federation of British Industries, the Spectator suggested last week that the informed public today does not really...

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The Rank-and-Filers

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By Our Industrial Correspondent rr HE use in the press of the antiquarian term I 'Trotskyist' has obscured the real significance of the group of militants who have found a...

When Hell Froze Over

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By RICHARD Tim: elections earlier this month were of enormous importance. They changed greatly the look of Ameri- can politics and reflected large changes in American attitudes....

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Ward Politics

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THE night nurse, a charming sandy-haired child who, I cal- culated in one of those spasms of panic provoked by the sight of a grey hair in the mirror, had not been born when Mr....

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ADDITION of Bulganin's 'name to the `Anti- Party Grotip' of

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Malenkov, Kaganovich, Molotov and 'Shepilov , who-joined-them' is surely not just a caprice of Khrushchev's, as has been suggested. Bulganin was involved in the plot, and did...

THE LORDS, too, have been having their fun. A small

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band of stalwart peers has for long been concerned about the• plight of British subjects expelled from Egypt after the Suez ultimatum. This in itself is certainly a worthy...

AM SORRY that my colleague Taper missed the '1 spy

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strangers' episode which also took place in the Commons on Tuesday; in its petty way it was very typical of the kind of thing that is helping to bring Parliament into public...

IS IT MORE IMPORTANT to allow your political supporters to

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use as many cars as they like at elections or to introduce some overdue measure of social reform? The Government evidently does not find that question difficult to answer, and...

ODD — a friend in Australia writes to me propos the elections

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there—how the people admire Mr. Menzies, and indeed are quite proud of his international reputation, but don't reallY like him—perhaps because he is a shade too clever for them....

A Spectator's Notebook

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WHEN Iti.T.GANIN was exiled to Stavropol earlier this year • true that Bulganin was ill and that Stavropol has a health connection of sorts, in that about a hundred miles away...

NEXT WEEK THE CITY OF LONDON and CHILDREN'S ROOK SUPPLEMENT

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at the usual price of NINEPENCE

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Marginal Comment

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By HAROLD NICOLSON W E were indulging the other day in that ex- cellent conversational gambit, 'links with the past.' An elderly guest told us that he had known a man, a Glasgow...

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The Gorgeous, Indestructible Gael

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By PATRICK CAMPBELL O NE of the bonuses I want for Christmas is another card from Jack Doyle, the well- known tenor, all-in wrestler and former White heavyweight boxing hope,...

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John Bull's Schooldays

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Never Smell a College Spoon By LORD ATTLEE I was at Haileybury during the last five years of Queen Victoria's reign. The school buildings had originally belonged to the old...

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Thomas Cook

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By HAROLD ,CHAMPION A TRADE journal recently stated that the health of travel agents is much more insidiously menaced by lavish entertainment at cocktail parties than by the...

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The Maltese Conference

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By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS U p till this year it looked as if the Maltese integration plan would probably go through. Whether it would work and how it would work Were further...

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A New Westminster

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W HEN I first learned that Westminster Abbey was to be demolished in the foreseeable future I was as dumbfounded as, no doubt, will be the readers of these words. I sought...

2gbe Opettator

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NOVEMBER 23, 1833 Mr. O'CONNELL made his appearance at the c Courts in Dublin on Saturday last; and, with 1 " e , apparent determination not to lose a moment's tirrirc walked...

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Roundabout

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Cement the true symphony of modern titan.' His black hair hung shaggily down over his C ollar; the small eyes looked sad with the slightly furtive air of an unfrocked priest....

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Theatre

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The Great Actor By ALAN BRIEN Ghosts. (Old Vic.) had brought to the Queen the lessons it brought to Mrs. 1 WAS wondering, on my way home from Ghosts, how far life Alving. And...

Art

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Neurasthenic Dazzle By SIMON HODGSON It is well known that in his last phase Pollock dribbled, trailed and tossed his paint on to his huge canvases in a manner approaching that...

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Ballet

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Age of Anxiety y A. V. COTON WHOEVER imagined that the war-time boom in ballet would extend into the austere late. Forties? And who, once that became an accepted fact, could...

Cinema

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Marooned in Love By ISABEL QUIGLY Floods of Fear. (Gaumont.) THE week's only film is British, set in the States, acted by an international cast, and set against the background...

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Television

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The Spice of Whose Life ? By PETER FORSTER HANK God, really, that there "T Which brings me to the point that my own main objection to TV's quiz shows is the manner in which...

A Doctor's Journal

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Not In The Book By MILES HOWARD T HE family doctor, in former days, was prone to a sense of professional isolation : he was out of touch with the continual interchange' of...

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On Being Mean

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By STRIX M Y friend's game-keeper was inveighing against a man whose house, surrounded by a large garden, stood in the middle of the estate and who was alleged to shoot any...

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PARTY PIECES

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Stocking Up, 1958 ... Wine for the Price of Beer ... Cool Comfort ... Leslie Adrian ••• Cyril Ray ... Kenneth Allsop • • • Stocking Up, 1958 By LESLIE ADRIAN SIR HENRY COLE...

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Wine for the Price of Beer

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By CYRIL RAY CLUB I know serves yin ordinaire, red or white, by the quarter-bottle—drinkable wine, and a real quarter-bottle in a carafe, not a mere large glass- ful—at Is. 9d....

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Cool Comfort

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By KENNETH ALLSOP AZZ has never had much rele- vance for the cultured British ---probably because, being here a rootless import mostly diluted down to dance music, the real...

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THE WOLFENDEN DEBATE his letter in your last issue, Mr.

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Peter Wilde- blood offers as evidence of the high incidence of homosexuality in this country the conclusions of an investigation, quoted in the Wolfenden Report, which...

Letters to the Editor

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The Church of England and Divorce Rev. W. J. S. Weir !Borstal Boy' Robert Lusty The Wolfenden Debate E. Royston Pike, Apple,. Roberts Anger in a Small Town • Wyndham Thomas....

ANGER IN A SMALL TOWN SIR,—Mr. Hodge and Mt. Nairn

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are more at odds with each other than with me. And Mr. Hodge is even at odds with himself. On the one hand, he wants people to be quite free to build whatever they like...

'BORSTAL BOY'

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SIR,—In questioning our decision (it was in fact mine) not to print a certain four-letter word in Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy Pharos raises an interesting point. It is certainly...

99 Gower Street, London, W.C.1

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Euston 3221

SIR,—Now that the Government has nerved itself to 'take note'

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of the Wolfenden Report, it is to be hoped that the lapse of time since its publication will have served to put the problems of prostitution and homo- sexuality into perspective...

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THE RUSSIAN ATTITUDE

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SIR,—The following story is instructive and illuminat- ing in the context of the Pasternak tragedy as showing a permanent Russian attitude in such matters. Mr. Ilya Ehrenburg...

TRICK-CYCLISTS

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SIR,—`Your results in these tests,' said the Personnel Selection Officer at Hyderabad Barracks in 1944, 'show that you're a classical type, as we call it, rather than...

SIR,—Perhaps I am not the only one of your readers

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to take exception to the tone of Wyndham Thomas's letter in your issue of November 7 about Robert liodge's sensible and temperate article 'Anger in a Small Town.' No one...

SICKERT'S PAINTINGS

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SIR, — I am preparing a second edition of my Sicker book which was published in 1942 by Faber 00 1 Faber. As many pictures have changed hands since that date, I should be...

SIR,—The article under the above heading which appeared in last

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week's issue of your journal contains an accurate presentation of the aim of this Council. In seeking Parliamentary control and protection my Council realise that Parliament...

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CHRISTMAS BOOKS

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Mr. Wilson's People BY FRANK KERM ODE R. ANGUS WILSON now writes long novels, VI and his latest* seems to be his best, Yet his world remains a small one. To define his area of...

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Holding the Candle

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Louis XIV's court at Versailles won in the seven- teenth century a glamorous reputation as a centre of culture, refinement and good taste, and has retained it since : how this...

Address to an Undergraduate Society

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The Chairman forgets my name. I address iliern. Half male, half female, one clergyman. Few beards. The usual exhibitionist In velvet or what-have-you appears to be absent....

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A Gay Scalpel

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The Blush and other stories. By Elizabeth Taylor. (Peter Davies, 15s.) MUCH of the writing in this second volume of Elizabeth Taylor's stories deals with the kind of situation...

Gentlemen and Players

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David Garrick. By Carola Oman. (Hodder and Stoughton, 42s.) Johnson and Boswell. The Story of their Lives. By Hesketh Pearson. (Heinemann, 21a.) PLAYERS were, perhaps, worthy of...

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King Stork

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Communism and Social Democracy 1944-1931. (A. and C. Black, 18s.) We may take a single incident to show both the distinction, sometimes blurred by Professor Cole, between...

The Comparable Max

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Max's Nineties. Drawings by Max Beerbohm, 1892-1899. (Hart-Davis, 30s.) 'Ti* younger generation is knocking at the door; and as I open it there steps spritely in the incom-...

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Rule by Merit

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The Rise of the Meritocracy 1870 - 2033. By Michael Young. (Thames and Hudson, 15s.) MICHAEL YOUNG is a sociologist not altogether approved of by his brother-sociologists. It...

The Sleep of Motion

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The Lost World of the Kalahari. By Laurens van der Post. (Hogarth Press, 18s.) COLONEL VAN DER POST is a brave, active and gifted man. He has the courage and the hardi- hood to...

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Men Writing

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Men Fighting: Battle Stories., Edited by John North. (Faber, 18s.) • 0 W is this for a loaded sentence : . . it will he seen that the fighting man addresses himself to the...

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All For the Best

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Distinguished for Talent. By Woodrow Wyatt. (Hutchinsons, 21s.) THE theme of Mr. Wyatt's book is the resilience of our country, his mood one of irrepressibl e optimism. After...

Pre-RapItaelihe Picasso

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Picasso: His Life and Wolk. By Roland Penrose. (Gollancz, 25s.) ROLAND PENROSE'S Picasso has been warmly praised and rightly so, for it is an excellent bio- graphy, rich in...

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Sharks and Despots

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Bankers and Pashas. By David S. Landes. (Heinemann, 30s.) THis book is built round a correspondence be- tween Edouard Dervieu, who established a bank in Alexandria in 1860 and...

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Poem

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after Neruda Tonight, I write sadly. Write, For example : Little grasshopper, Shelter from the midnight frost In the scarecrow's sleeve, advising myself. The night wind throbs...

The Opal of the Left

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By BERNARD LEVIN I WENT to Oxford a few months ago, and found myself at one point talking to some under- graduates of a Leftward political cast. Full of the fire with which...

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Main Anxiety

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the Devil's Repertoire or Nuclear Bombing and the Life of Man. By Victor Gollancz. (Gollancz, 10s. od.; paper-covered edition, 5s.) Our Nuclear Future: Facts, Dangers and Oppor-...

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I's and Me's

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The Life of Henry Brulard. By Stendhal. Translated by Jean Stewart and B. C. J. G. Knight. (The Merlin Press, 25s.) WHEN Henri Beyle began the composition of The Life of Henry...

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Sublime Science

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And. There Was Light: The Discovery of the Universe. By Rudolph Thiel. (Deutsch, 25s.) THE growth of human understanding about the universe is most vividly seen in the...

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Dafydd and the Lower Orders

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My Brother and I. By William George. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 30s.) knows Lloyd George. . . .' The song is proof of to see him rejoice in outwitting Balfour and build the...

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Russian Diary

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Red Curtain Up. By Beryl Grey. (Seeker and Warburg, 30s.) FEW ballerinas would write a complete and spontaneous account of a touring visit abroad— to most of them that would...

Florentine Decays

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As characters the Medici were scarcely very ' edifying : they began as unscrupulous bankers; they matured as tyrants; and they ended in paralysing debauchery. Their immortal...

THE article in which Sir Lewis Namier discusses the first

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volume of Edmund Burke's letters has had tc be held over for some weeks owin g to a postponemen of publication.

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Lines of Communication

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Out of the World and Back : Into Hades and A Traveller in Time. By Andrew Young. (Hart-Davis, 12s. 6d.) New Poems, the PEN's traditional yearly anthology, is nicely complemented...

Great Game

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Madison Avenue U.S.A. By Martin Mayer. (The Bodley Head, 25s.) `Tins is the best book on advertising,' says David (Schweppes-Hathaway Shirt) Ogilvy in his pleasingly short...

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Question of Identity The Strange Story of Dr.. James . Barry.

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By Isobel Rae. (Longmans, 13s. 6d.) ISOBEL RAE'S biography of James Barry, the Edinburgh MD who became the Inspector- General 'of Army H'ospitals in the 1850s and was discovered...

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Gaiety Girl

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THE Empress Theodora is the most unnerving and beastly example in history of the chorus girl who married into ermine. Never was there a less likely stage-door chappie than...

The Rise of Russia

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MR. CARR'S continuation of his magnum opus on the history of Soviet Russia carries the story from 1923 to 1926. The heroic age of Soviet Russia had been preoccupied with the...

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Dickens to Hardy

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?HIS volume holds together better than its pre- lecessors because the opening historical essay, iy G. D. Klingopulos, is of rare wisdom. It keeps ip so scrupulous a concern for...

The French Effort

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THIS IS the history of the French part in that experiment which was launched by the League of Nations after the First World War, by which Western Powers were given the...

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It's a Crithe

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Hide My Eyes. By Margery Allingham. (Ch:ittn and Windus, 13s. 6d.) A murderer rather 1 114 Neville Heath, and a woman who loves him like 3 mother; the engaging Mr. Campion and...

Heart-rending Sense

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Steps. By Robert Graves. (Cassell, 30s.) ROBERT FROST has often read his poetry to full houses in a Boston concert hall. On any other night it is speakers and orchestras....

Undiplomatic Exit. By John Sherwood. (Hod' der and Stoughton, 12s.

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6d.) Vivid, verisitnilitud in ' ous bumping-off of British ambassador in Arab country at Suez-time. Elegantly written, intelli- gently exciting piece by one of the very best of...

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Obsession. By Tom Gurr and H. H. Cox. (Mul- ler,

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15s.) Precious little literary merit in this not very fictionalised reconstruction of the murder committed in New Zealand in 1954 by two intel- ligent and good-looking...

Dreadful Summit. By Stanley Ellin. (Boardman, 12s. 6d.) A sixteen-year-old's

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first experiences of sex and sudden death in one New York night- powerful, readable piece of violence in Catcher in the Rye idiom.

The Doomsters. By John Ross Macdonald. (Cassell, 12s. 6d.) Long,

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meticulously plotted Californian piece about a runaway from a looney bin, the murders that follow his escape, and the Marlowe-ish private eye who sorts it out.

Murder on their Minds. By George Harmon Coxe. (Hammond, 12s.

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6d.) This workmanlike American author handles such conventional formulw as the newspaperman chasing a hunch with great skill and resource : the missing papers are found and the...

The Stairway. By Ursula Curtiss. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 12s. 6d.)

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Model story of suspense by a past-mistress. Did the nasty husband fall downstairs or was he pushed? By pretty wife, or puddingy. companion? Utterly convincing little classic of...

The Man Who Came Back. By John Bryan. (Faber, 15s.)

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In one chapter alone are such implausibilities as a London pub that does 'venison damn well. Also wild duck with orange salad .. and a Soviet diplomat in good standing who quite...

One Step from Murder. By Laurence Meynell. (Collins, 10s. 6d.)

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There is some unconvincing love-stuff and one gob-stopping coincidence but the little bit of blackmail is all too plausible, and Murder looms up effectively in an almost Arnold-...

Picture Books

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A - NEW journal of the graphic arts has led off with its first highly decorated number. It is called Motif, it costs a pound-less by yearly subscrip- tion-and will come out...

And be a Villain. By Joanna Cannan. (Gol- lancz, 12s.

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6d.) and Death in Russian Habit. By Sea-lion.' (John Long, 12s. 6d.) Strictly for sahibs. Miss Cannan's detective story would be a joy were it not for her odious superiority...

Ordeal by Innocence. By Agatha Christie. (Collins, 12s. 6d.) There

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she sits, bless her; spinning her web, untroubled by any need for plausibility or prose style, aware that to thousands of ladies of her own age hers is the only name that comes...

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INVESTMENT NOTES

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By CUSTOS T HE gilt-edged market remains out of popu lar favour. With some good and some bad ert ini d : pany reports industrial shares have been mi x but the `undertone' has...

SPREADING SHARE-OWNERSHIP

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By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Briefly, the scheme proposes that a `sponsoring' industrial company should form and finance a so- called 'shop' company to buy on the Stock Exchange the...

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COMPANY NOTES

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T UBE INVESTMENTS have produced re- markable results for the year ending July 31, 1958; the trading profits (after depreciation) were £605,000 higher at £12,579,000, a record...

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It has been reported that Pride and Prejud. ic : is to

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be made into a musical. If they can br 11 ,';, themselves to do so, competitors are invited 1,`" forestall the production by submitting lyrics tot They can be in any form—solos,...

Play the Game, Plebs!

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Competitors were asked to compose the school song, or an extract from the school maga- zine, of an expensive public school after it had been taken over by the State. How...

SPECTATOR CROSSWORD No. 1,019

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ACROSS 26 1 Steeds for the witches in Macbeth no doubt (6) 4 Chesty? In a rich coat, too! (8) 8 Tympani for the Toy Soldier, we hear (8) 1 10 The old heroine is more than old...

SOLUTION OF CROSSWORD No. 1,017 ACROSS .— 1 Prompt-book. 6

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Palm. 10 Upper. 11 Nickie-ben. 12 Paradise. 13 Odd man. 15 Waul, 16 Cant. 17 Sheba, 20 Dream, 21 Erne. 2.2 Vere. 24 Althea, 26 Impacted. 29 Apple-pies. 30 Apace. 31 Earl. 32...