T HERE are stirrings in Spain. The head and 1 the heart of the resistance to Franco are no longer among the ageing Liberals in exile but in Spain itself. Not, as might have been...

T HE London police have done themselves a bad turn by their handling of the Podola arrest. Whatever happened after detectives broke into his bedroom should have been immediately...

TT seems many years ago now since British readers could be rightly, and righteously, shocked by newspaper evidence of colour prejudice in America. Notting Hill and Nottingham...

By IAN GILMOUR H ow do we prevent the Middle East going Communist? is the question which should be, but is not, preoccupying the West. Those who think the right answer is to...

In one sense, this is fortunate. If we do not hang out banners extolling the virtues of our Members of Parliament, it should be remembered that neither do we hang out the...

written to say how much they approve of the looks of the present 'emergency' Spectator. Some of them have urged that we should stay this way: but the difficulties, technical and...

Times correspondence columns about the discomfort suffered by tourist class passengers in air liners— especially tall ones, who have no room for their elbows or their feet. Lord...

if, instead of every- one concentrating the hue and cry after murderers, we tried to reduce the number of murders by limiting the availability of firearms. Agreed: the law...

THE 1958 parliamentary re- turns for offences relating to motor vehicles is as de- pressing a document as I have seen for a long time, with its revelation that the number of...

himself lazily out of answering an awkward but pertinent question by a grimy old parliamentary expedient. The question was on why doctors who have been fined for negligence in...

By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS W E need a much franker debate about nuclear policy than any we have had up to now. The danger of the nuclear debate is that it is always lagging a year...

that use of older, slower aircraft can bring down fares—should also be refuted. I was talking recently to Ronald Orme of Icelandic Airlines—a company set up after the war, which...

Sean Tar at Sea By PATRICK CAMPBELL 'D EAR SIRS,' I wrote to the British Board of Trade, 'for the past four years, twenty-four hours on and forty-eight off, I have been in...

By STRIX I N a small community—in a village say— the prima donna is a nuisance; but not, perhaps, an unmitigated nuisance. The taker of umbrage, the writer of letters beginning...

Less Music, Maestro, Please By ALAN BRIEN Ages of Man. (Queen's)— , ----., Once More, With Feeling. (New)—The Rope Dancers. (Arts). SIR JOHN GIELGUD once described his...

'FLORAL', said the badge in the floral dress of the elderly lady officiating near the platform of the Llangollen International Eisteddfod. The task of identifying some of ; the...

Scofield for King By PETER FORSTER THE rival inscrutabilities of the East and the BBC cer- tainly came face to face with the latter's decision to withdraw a half-hour American...

Noel and Christopher Robin By CLIVE BARNES WHAT, as the psychiatrist might put it, do you think of when I say the word 'ballet'? Pretty girls in billowing white tarlatan,...

Love and Amusement By ISABEL QUIGLY The Man who Understood Women. (Leicester Square Theatre.)—Tempest. ( Plaza. )—Journey into Autumn. (Paris-Pullman.) IT isn't (as we all...

Public Agonies By SIMON HODGSON THE Romantic Movement exhibition extends beyond the Tate, to the Arts Coun- cil Gallery in St. James's Square, where water- colours, drawings,...

Pictures for the Poor By LESLIE ADRIAN 'Too CHEAP' is not a phrase one meets every day in these mercenary times, but there are some objects which people hesitate to buy if...

SIR,—What an admirable programme The Sunday Break seems to be whenever I am not watching! Frankly, I am a little surprised that after the last exchange Mr. Penry Jones has the...

that health service administration is in- efficient. It would be interesting to know whether he has any concrete information on this point or whether he is subscribing to...

National Health Service A. J. Blake Leucotomy Norman Scwires Sunday Break Peter Forster Leaves in Vallombrosa Ian Blake 'Roots' Lisa Hughes The Legitimacy Bill G. W. R. Thompson...

SIR,—You recently published a letter over the signature 'J. W. Affleck'. I have to inform you that Dr. Affleck was not responsible for that communication. I was its author. My...

SIR,—The House of Lords was right in re- jecting clause one of Lord Chorley's Legitimacy Bill. The principle is that an illegitimate child is legitimated by the sub- sequent...

SIR,—Taper usually throws a most reward- ing light into the darker recesses of West- minster, so it is a little sadly that I seek enlightenment about a remark in his latest...

SIR,—And for those of us who find it really awkward to get fresh yeast regularly there is now dried baking yeast, in tins or in 2 oz. sachets. It is as easy to use as the fresh:...

SIR,—Seldom is one not entertained by Alan Brien's criticism and rarely does one quarrel with his opinions, but he seems to have been blinded by the art of Joan Plowright in...

The established lovers of an elder generation Dead from the waist down, every man of them, Have now expired for sure And, after nine days' public threnody, Lapse to oblivion, or...

Chez de Gaulle By D. W. BROGAN T am not an admirer of the historical I doctrines of Dr. Arnold Toynbee, but one of his favourite principles has been brilliantly exemplified in...

Love and the French. By Nina Epton. (Cassell, 25s.) Tie trouble is that ever since the Symposium all theoreticians who wish to uphold love, as opposed to those who, like Proust,...

ONCE, when I was fourteen and he was forty-five, I wap taken to visit Edward Johnston at Ditchling. I had lately won an 'Art' prize at school with an illuminated collect the...

ASTONISHING how little has been written on Berlin in English. Isherwood, of course, and that scene in Agents and Patients; some in- teresting war-time adventures with Christian...

Let it stand A stone guest In an unhospitable land, Its speech, the well's speech, The unsealed sources, Bringing from thence Its own sustenance. Its grace Must be the match...

'The character of John,' his first school- master wrote when Durham was six, 'is very uncommon. I think he is capable of going as far in good or bad as any human being I have...

Beloved Infidel. By Sheilah Graham and Gerold Frank. (Cassell, 21s.) ANYONE who hires Gerold Frank, the trusted back-seat driver in more than one winning story of a woman's...

The Horses of the Sun. By Oriel Malet. (Gollancz, 16s.) Exam settings are a great cover-up for nullity and the species of fine feeling that has never bumped into a thought—which...

By MARIUS BEWLEY L EAVING aside the critical prefaces to his novels, about which perhaps too much has already been said when one considers how little they themselves say in...

Through the window, Listening carefully, I overheard a low Moonlight murmur from an olive-tree- Three cats rehearsed the virtues of catkind: Catkind's silky tread and devious...

Selected Journalism. By Stendhal. Edited and Introduced by Geoffrey Strickland. (Calder, 30s.) IN France the study of a major writer has a way of turning into a minor industry....

A clean-limbed Englishman among sinister 'Orientals' (by which the author means Levantines); and an English gentlewoman with candid blue eyes in the harem of an Egyptian husband...

characters popping out on cue to buy cuttle fish or mangoes, and thus allowing the author to get in her descriptive bits. Nice, summery read, with some of the appeal of a good...

12s. 6d.). consists of two stories. In the first a woman knows that one of the policemen guarding her has been suborned to kill her. The question is which—and how to catch and...

I AM AN untidy man, and like all untidy men, I have fits and spasms of excessive tidiness. One of those recurring fits consists of a furious assault on my bookshelves, in a vain...

Shadow of Guilt. By Patrick Quentin. (Gollancz, I2s. 6d.) No novel could be as good as its Gollancz blurb, but this neat string of red herrings—one suspect after another proving...

plot may be pretty unlikely, but the young and agreeable Londoners involved in it are such as you might meet at anyone's sherry party, and the blackjacking, blackmailing, and...

when he needed to utter only one more word of the family secret and thus make everything plain. Not a true detective story, for other vital clues are hidden from the reader, and...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE Old Lady of Thread- needle Street has actually begun to dress herself a little more in the fashion. She is still wearing an old- fashioned veil to hide...

The debate goes on as to whether brewery shares are 'growth' stocks or not. The answer seems to be that this is not a 'growth' industry but that some energetic and well- managed...

GENE .RAL ELECTRIC have produced profits before tax of £4.25 million against last year's gross profits of £4.76 million; and in spite of the cut in the interim dividend in...