T HE bombing of the Tunisian village of Sakiet .by French planes was worse than a crime; it was a mistake, and it is surprising that the compatriots of Talleyrand should not...

SPECTATOR

By MICHAEL WINNER T HE Conservative Association of Holborn and St. Pancras had gone to some trouble to prepare the hall for Housing Minister Henry Brooke. Union Jacks streamed...

T HE report of the three wise men is written with a clarity and lucidity rare in such docu- ments. What it has to say is for the most part sensible; had it appeared in some...

next week by Roy Jenkins, MP for Stechford.

BY ANGUS MAUDE, MP Twenty years ago Chamberlain, commenting more in sorrow than in anger on the resignation of both his Foreign Office Ministers, said plain- tively that the...

SINCE HIS RETURN from his Com- monwealth tour the Prime Minister has broadcast four times—three of them on television. The contrast with his earlier, fumbling appear- ances has...

undergraduates in their third year, one of the questions was 'Which periodical do you prefer?' The results, published in Gemini, reveal that the Spectator heads the list at...

has abused broadcasting's hospitality; on the con- trary, I shall be very pleased if his recent appearances have finally destroyed the old notion of time 'balance.' It is absurd...

a Hollywood newspaper to pay a tribute to yet another film version of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. It is, he writes, 'a masterpiece. Jennifer Jones is revealed as one of the...

Gallup Poll, the proportion of electors who say they would vote Liberal at a general election has risen to 15 per cent. (nine months ago it was 6 per cent.). Any further rise in...

journals, including the Spectator, expressed concern was the threat of retaliation with nuclear weapons if the Russians launched a major attack with conventional weapons only....

Sunday, apropos Time and Tide, 'regret the death of a reactionary newspaper or periodical? When the Socialist Common- wealth is established, presumably such publica- tions will,...

deciding which three unknown British poets are to be hauled from obscurity, in order that their works may be published in a book by Eyre and Spottiswoode; I imagine that he will...

City Ways By KINGSLEY AMIS S T. HILDA'S was a place where they had big girls and little girls, but little boys only. All categories appeared to be heavily represented. My...

By HENRY KERBY, MP Last week Christopher Hollis urged, in an article, 'What shall we do next titne?,' that 'the most important task for the electors at the moment is to smash...

By J. E. M . ARDEN T is possible for the ordinary English reader Ito be reasonably well informed about the high- lights of Soviet politics. And he usually, too, has a pretty...

By JOHN IRWIN M Y first thought on reading The Third Eye was, 'Can this be true?'; my second, 'I hope it is.' Here was a tale of magic powers, born of strange experience; here...

By STRIX I N most of his compatriots, and many of mine, the first-hand accounts of Mr. Eisenhower setting out for a day's quail-hunting seem to have aroused disapproval...

MARCH 2, 1833 IRELAND A NUMEROUS body of the inhabitants of Dublin assembled on the 20th February, to take into con- sideration the proposed measures of coercion for Ireland....

The Kitchen Stove By LESLIE ADRIAN rrntz. old-fashioned kitchen stove, the kind that 1 bakes bread, heats the kitchen and provides hot water, is coming back into fashion. The...

Carve Her Name with Pride. rt , (Leicester Square Theatre.) Carve Her Name with Pride (direc- tor: Lewis Gilbert) is a story of courage, the courage that sent a young London...

Poets Are Out AFTER the tawdry revelations of last week's opening performance, even the gossip writers felt it their duty to massacre the Sagan- inspired ballet, Le Rendez-vous...

CAN a painter successfully trans- form his vision and talent? I can only think of one instance in the history of art to challenge a belief that he cannot; when one remem- bers...

THAT tiresome old saloon-bar comedian Charles Lamb was right about one thing—King Lear is un- actable. Though it is not fashion- able now to say so aloud. Shake- speare is...

message to Mr. Parkinson was addressed from Can- berra and began with the words `Dear Councillor Parkinson.'—Yours faithfully, R. E. SIMMS Chief : PUblicity Officer...

heard the Wolfenden Report debate on December 4 last from the Strangers' Gallery in the Lords. The Bishop of Rochester used the expres- sions reported by the newspapers—if not...

Wyce? 'Be honest, courageous and generous, and never let yourself be deceived by phoney values?' This simple injunction, he says, is based on his own mature experience. It comes...

Side Lines of History Professor Desmond Williams Photographs in Munich William Gregory `Dear Sir or Madam' R. E. Simms Railway Safety H. Brebner Science and the Philosopher's...

review of Professor Read's book Through Alchemy to Chemistry seems to overestimate the difference between the modes of thinking in what we may loosely call scientific and...

SIR,—May I assure Mr. Henry Kerby, MP, whose article Progress in Safety' appeared in your issue of January 31, that there, is no lad( of urgency in the constant search for...

SIR,—I was amazed to read the suggestion in A Spectator's Notebook' that I smuggled my camera in a cake tin into the Munich hospital in order to get the picture of the birthday...

SIR,-1 was very interested in your article on 'pop' fiction by Vittor Anant in your issue of the Spectator • on February 14. That the love stories we do give are acceptable to...

in that he thought (correctly) that Dr. Erhard's measures of 1949 would result in 2,000,000 unemployed in 1950, but that he would deny, with vigorous voice and clenched eyes,...

of Indo- nesia, Mr. Nehru called for the abolition of the last vestiges of colonialism. The Indonesians have never had any contact with Irian, by trade, conquest or travel. The...

reflect a fallacious basic assumption about ad- vertising in general—and soap powder/detergent ad- vertising in particular—which is all too prevalent today. The 'washing...

SIR,—I have just seen your issue of January 3 in which Strix states that we are not told what any of the Christian names of Stalky and Co. were. This is true of 'Beetle,' but...

SIR,—If it is 'obnoxious in principle' to attract recruits to the services by means of exorbitant pay increases , is it not even more so to compel every fit young man to serve...

The Tragedy of John Ruskin By PETER QUENNELL N , o wreck is so frequent, no waste so wild, as the wreck and waste of the minds of men devoted to the arts,' announced John...

IT would be instructive to chart the varying status of the 'provincial.' The medieval provinces were as powerful and creative as the capital : later, one man armed with only a...

The Search for Good Sense. By F. L. Lucas. (Cassell, 25s.) MR. LUCAS has picked four eighteenth-centurY characters : Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell and Goldsmith. Mr. Lucas...

The Addled Parliament of 1614. By Thomas L. Moir. (0.U.P., 30s.) ADDLED: it is not a nice reputation with which to go down to posterity. But almost all that most of us know...

Wai-Wai. By Nicholas Guppy. (Murray, 28s.) TROPICAL scenery, except by a palm-fringed beach, can be profoundly boring. You cannot see the wood for the trees, the form of the...

brought out No. 37 in their Illus- trated Classics, price 12s. 6d., an edition of Sense and Sensibility (with Lady Susan and The Wat- sons), which follows the text of the second...

Brave Men: A Study of D. H. Lawrence and Simone Weil. By Richard Rees. (Gollancz. 18s.) MORE nostalgia. This is an essay on the modern World, an essay in entire dislike. The...

Not Guilty. By Judge Jerome Frank and Barbara Frank, in association with Harold M. Hoff- man. (Gollancz, 18s.) MOST people are vaguely aware that justice. occasionally, can...

The Crime of Galileo. By Giorgio de Sa ntillana. (Heinemann, 30s.) ONE usually thinks of Galileo as a victim of Church cruelty and of the sort of Church idiocy that takes the...

The Cassell Miscellany 18484958. Edi ted by Fred Urquhart. (Cassell, 30s.) THIS massive volume is an anthology from a hundred years of publishing by the house of Cassell. In...

THE reviewer of novels is always, and sometimes rather desperately, on the look-out for anything which might be called a 'trend'; it was, for example, a purely journalistic...

ARNOLD BENNETT, writing in his Journals, put down one day: Romano's. This restaurant is quite different at lunch time from dinner. Theatrical people entering, mutually known, a...

The Common Cold Y ou would think that the common cold should be easy enough to study; but it is not so easy as it looks. Colds often seem to spread from one person to another,...

By CUSTOS THE gilt-edged market opened the week with a fit of the Cohen Com- mittee blues, which is not surprising. Some recovery followed on further reflection that money...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT MY criticism of the Cohen Com- mittee's report will be confined strictly to the field of economics, but I must say at the outset that its exposition is...

By JACK MALLOCH T HE name of Mr. Hugh Fraser has become widely known in recent years because of his increasing capacity to absorb drapery and allied businesses. In the major...

By PHILIDOR No. 142. Specially contributed by J. AIZIKOWICZ (Haifa, Israel) BLACK (7 men) WHITE (10 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next week. Solution to...

Zeta is Greek to most people. Competitors were therefore asked to compose• an in baffled praise of the new contrivance. ode To judge from the entries, Zeta is to do with six...

Grope. 11 Carrot, 12 Pintados, 13 Darwin. 15 Ignition. 18 Parietal. 19 Offers. 21 Fatalist. 23 Arnica, 26 Event. 27 On the mend, 28 Repercussion. DOWN.-1 Chanced. 2 Satyr. 3...

some of the more forthright .adult novels, competitors are invited to get their own back. The usual prize of six guineas is offered of an extract from any well-known children's...

ACROSS 1 From Our Aeronautical Cor- respondent, perhaps (6, 6). 9 Has toucan developed spines? (9) 10 The craft of the draughtsman (5). 11 If you want a change of cash, see...