W ITHIN the next two weeks both the main parties will hold their annual conferences, and within a fortnight after the last Labour delegate has left Margate, Parliament will...

ESTABLISHED 1828 No. 6640 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1955 PRICE 7d.

T HE Western Foreign Ministers discussing Germany must be conscious of a certain familiarity of outline in the problem. In spite of the slight blurring achieved by Dr....

T HE Burgess-Maclean White Paper has served only to confirm the impression that the Foreign Office and the security authorities between them have made egregious asses of...

T HE most spectacular news of the week has been Presi- dent Eisenhower's coronary thrombosis, and, if anyone has any doubts about its potentially shattering effect on the...

'ALL RESPONSIBLE citizens will agree with him [Sir Linton Andrews] that "it would be disastrous if confidence in the police were to be undermined." ' — John Gordon, Sunday...

BY HENRY FAIRLIE Last week, Sir Anthony Eden appointed a new personal adviser on public relations. It is hard to see why he needs one at all. Sir Anthony is his own best public...

Bevan referred to the Conservatives as `Gadarene swine,' he was indignantly reproved by many Conservatives and Conservative newspapers. I could never understand why, since...

THE NEWS that Mr. Donald Tyerman is to succeed Mr. Geoffrey Crowther as editor of The Economist is doubly interesting. The change involves two of the most remarkable figures in...

Soho between 'Jack Spot' and Albert Dimes; both men were severely wounded, spattering the pavements over which they struggled with blood. Yet they have both been acquitted,...

being brought to substitute the nobler word) with interest: I share the view Miss Isabel Quigly expresses on a later page that the great thing is to have an alternative...

trusted colleagues, as assistant and then deputy editor of The Economist from 1937 to 1944. Mr. Tyerman combined this post for a year; from 1943 to 1944, with that of the deputy...

BY MAX BELOFF M ILAN announces its many conferences by banners across the street. Why not one on 'The Future of Freedom,' in a city where ten years ago the body of a tyrant lay...

The Professional Author. Also Martin Turnell on Jean Santeuil. Kingsley Amis on John Lehmann. John Wain on F. R. Leavis.

BY THOMAS HODGKIN T HE middle classes of the world have no international anthem, no nag, no emblems, no myth of an heroic past, no messianic hopes for the future, no saints and...

BY DAVID HAWKES C ULTURAL developments in Communist China are meaningless unless viewed in an historical perspective. The great revolution in Chinese culture, beside which all...

BY CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS / F I were a foreigner I should think that the English were a trifle dotty about titles, and the Scotch, when it comes to that, a trifle dottier still. The...

BY HUGH MORRIS N marriage, Sir. . . ! ' The twelve-year-old boy was earnestly asking for help. 'It's the article 6n marriage I want to ask you about. . . . It's not so much the...

BY JOHN BETJEMAN Auntie realised how much we preferred her as her dear, dull, reliable old self. Auntie Times is really a man's paper, and the only ladies who enjoy her are...

The Plans of the Fortress I N the United Kingdom during the last war seventeen men and one woman were convicted of spying under the Treachery Act of 1940. Fifteen of the men...

of an error contained in the 'Political Commentary' of Mr. Henry Fairlie which ap- peared in your last issue. In support of his contention that 'The exer- cise of power in...

SIR, — As first—and last—Director-General of British Export Trade Research Organisation, I was, it need hardly be said, most interested in the reference to that ill-starred...

Euston 3221

Burgess and Maclean Lady Violet Bonham Carter John Sparrow (Warden of All Souls) The Status ol Malta William Tee/mg, MP BETRO Roger Falk L. S. Amery Rev. Richard Feilden Some of...

SIR,—I read with great interest the two articles in your issue of September 23, concerning Malta. May I ask, with regard to the first one, why Mr. Cole thinks it necessary to...

Robertson's article with relish, and I accept with delight her invitation to join in. But who is she to complain? As a Scot obliged by professional necessity to stay at home,...

Cinema SUMMER MADNESS. (Leicester Square.)— TOUCH AND Go. (Odeon, Marble Arch.)— . MY SISTER EILEEN. (Gaumont.) ALL producers are, to my mind, ill advised to take Venice as a...

SIR,—I am in the process of writing a bio- graphy of actor and director Orson Welles and would be grateful for the help of your readers. Any relevant material which might help...

SIR,—May I express my wholehearted agree- ment with your very fine tribute to the late Leopold Amery. Although I only met him on one or two occasions, his influence on my...

A HARROWING week it has been for television critics. Viewing now starts soon after break- fast and ends not far off midnight, so conscien- tious critics can be met, pink-eyed as...

The Spectator will gladly arrange for books published in Great Britain and reviewed or advertised in the paper's columns to be sent to readers who can- not otherwise obtain...

MICHAEL AYRTON As I suggested in my notice of John Bratby's exhibition last week, one of the greatest diffi- culties facing the young painter nowadays is knowing how, to his...

October 2, 1830 THE Day OF ALGIERS.—Lady B sees the Dey of Algiers every day. He enjoys the fall of Charles the Tenth exceedingly. He was sulky till that event occurred; but...

THE post-war German cinema has largely con- tented itself with imitating Hollywood musi- cals, a field where Hollywood is inimitable. But the past year has seen a freshet of war...

Beauties of Johnson BY JOHN WAIN HIS elegant book* is ideally designed to fill an important • gap. Johnson's writings, as distinct from his reported conversation, have never...

THE DARK CHILD. By Camara Laye. Translated by James Kirkup. (Collins, 12s. 6d.) WHY is this book of M. Laye's about his childhood and youth in French Guinea so moving? Partly,...

THE WORLD OF DEW. By D. J. Enright. (Seeker and Warburg, 18s.) FIRST impressions of a new country usually have their own limited value, and there have been hundreds of books of...

THE FIRE AND THE FOUNTAIN. By John Press. (0.U.P., 25s.) THIS is a book which, though it never uncovers anything very new or says anything very startling, manages to assemble a...

READERS' GUIDES: MOUNTAINEERING. By Janet Adam Smith. (National Book League, 2s. 6d.) COMMANDO CLIMBER. By Mike Banks. (Dent, 18s.) KANCHENJUNGA. By John Tucker. (Elek Books,...

BOTH these volumes are records of English disasters during the Hundred Years War, one of them a defeat for her arms in the Spanish Peninsula, the other for her diplomacy at...

THE INHERITORS. By William Golding. (Faber, 12s. 6d.) WHEN a first novel shows extraordinary originality, it appears— and, of course, it is—unrepeatable. People wonder what on...

BY IAN NIALL Accourrrs of stoats and weasels hunting in packs have always been prevalent, and I have seen families of weasels at it many times. They have a mad moment or two...

told me how eels used to be caught with a bundle of worms on a hookless line, when I carne across a similar method in The Driffield Angler, an old book packed with sporting...

AMERICANS are friendly; their fried food is awful; San Francisco is beautiful; highway signs are not. This is the range of Mr. Ney- roud's gestures as a social critic, and his...

BY PHILIDOR No. 17. F. GAMAGE WHITE, 9 men. No one in the world can play more beautiful games than Korea; when at his best he is a perfect stylist and, like all stylists in...

Geraniums are one of the most popular bedding plants and among the easiest to propagate. The great danger to both cuttings and established plants is frost, although almost as...

The conversation was evidently on the sub- ject of bulls and their temperament, and I listened to two accounts of narrow escapes from mad bulls before the little man spoke up....

Competitors were asked to give a set of rules, also a suitable compulsory treatment, for addiction to one of the following: ballet; Scottish nationalism; football pools; conti-...

ACROSS 1 How a famous judgement in a beauty competition might be described (8). Plenty more where these flowers come from (6). 9 A key rank (8). 10 A sibilant would turn this...

In a recently published book, The Fire and the Fountain : an Essay on Poetry, Mr. John Press, to illustrate a theoretical point, perpetrated this parody of the opening lines of...

iv The W10.11ell of Crossword No. 952 are: Miss M. SHEPPARD. BISh0/11 Canning, Devizes, and MRS. P. E. OLIVER, 1 Clifton Crescent, Folkestone.

By CUSTOS THE stock markets stood up very well to the one-day panic on Wall Street. The private investor could be discerned picking up his favourite industrials on the fall,...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE day's slump on Wall Street which followed the weekend news of President Eisenhower's heart attack must seem to the European onlooker to be momentary...