OW that the autumn is beginning the usual seasonal increase in Egyptian political activity is beginning too. As a consequence General Neguib is having to face all his main...

The Korean truce talks stand adjourned until October 6th while the Communist delegates consider fresh United Nations proposals designed to break the crucial deadlock over...

The basic assumption of the British Government in the Persian oil dispute seems to be that deadlocks exist only to be broken, for Dr. Moussadek's latest and most outrageous...

The Bishop of Oxford's solution for the eternal problem, of the inadequacy of incumbents' stipends means that in his extensive diocese more clergy will be overworked, fewer,...

Ice-cream and chocolate are commodities attractive to the young, and manufacturers supply them in abundance. Tele-' vision is another commodity attractive to the young, and its...

It cannot be claimed that the Council of Europe comes out of its latest session stronger than it went in. Despite the final decision that the six countries of " Little Europe "...

The United States presidential election is at last entering the stage of heavy fighting, and the chances of a genuine intellectual debate between now and November are getting...

T HE extent of the damage, one day at Morecambe has done to the Labour Party will not be fully demonstrated for some time to come. The magnitude of the Bevanite success must not...

the interesting letters from Lord Asquith and others on Mr. Asquith's literary posers till they appeared in the paper. They move me to two observations, one particular and one...

0 "Crawfie " is at work again. In what I find a most repel- lent advertisement of a woman's paper I read : "At Last! Royal Governess `Crawfie' tells the full, intimate, authen-...

the whole a very good way. The announcement on Wednesday : "Mr. W. F. Casey retired last night from the Editorship of The Times. Sir William Haley takes up the Editorship...

those who only knew of him at a distance—as an M.P., as a millionaire, as a racing man (who, I believe, never betted) as the owner of Cliveden (with its non-existent " set "),...

of Phrase and Fable? Cassells have done a public service in producing a new and revised edition—a new brew, in fact. My immediate impulse was to test the newcomer, quite at...

By ERNST FRIEDLAENDER E VER since Dr. Schumacher's sudden death there have been all kinds of conjectures in German political circles about the future course of the Social...

By LUDOVIC KENNEDY R EADERS of Mr. Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One must sometimes have wondered how far his fantastic Cali- fornian cemetery of Whispering Glades corresponds to...

By ELIZABETH PAKENHAM 0 UR feelings about the family have grown steadily warmer over the past twenty years. The war thawed out the last relics of coldness left over from the...

By LOAD DUNSANY p OZZET was a young man well known among cricketers and many others at Oxford; and one day he took his degree and went down, and arrived in London and...

By THE BISHOP OF FULHAM * D OES this country realise that its influence in Europe is still very great and can be greater ? To assume that with our decline as a Great Power our...

I doubted, yet I wondered. The attesting sun in turn Shuts out that darker heaven where constellations btirn. I could not trust their witness, or dream they saw aright, But when...

By MICHAEL GRAHAM T HE question in my title arises from piecing together information in some books on the " travel " shelves, including a new one by Farley Mowat. Another new...

As many as 561 entries having been received, apart from others which 'arrived after the appointed date, the task of adjudication will take longer than was anticipated. The...

By HAROLD NICOLSON A NTHOLOGIES, especially personal anthologies, offer many diverse kinds of pleasure. It is agreeable to be reminded of passages we had forgotten, or which...

Bruce Hamilton. (New.) THOUGH I am not, 1 hope, a harsh man, I feel that one of Her Majesty's judges, if sentenced to death for the murder of his illegitimate son, ought really...

THEATRE Second Threshold. By Philip Barry. (Vaudeville.)--Two Loves I Have. By Dorothy and Howard Baker. (Arts.)—Love from Judy. Book by Eric Maschwitz and Jean Webster :...

Toscitham's return to London after fourteen years must have meant the satisfaction of much curiosity among younger music-lovers ; and It has certainly revived happy memories...

BRITISH, repellent, bloated, vile, comic, insulting and instinct with evil are some of the words that have been applied to the sculptures of Jacob Epstein. They have been called...

Full House. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) Pat and Mike. (Empire.) 0. HENRY was one of the first story-tellers of all time, and it is fitting that Hollywood, in making five of his...

A chair-bound ancient, all the Ex- Ercise I get is writing cheques, And all the thought that fills my mind Is how to raise the wind (or wind), And what I want to raise it for Is...

Two well-dressed young men have been charged at Marylebone Police Office with drunkenness and injuring a badger in the Zoological Gardens by giving it gin. They went to the...

Sylvia. (Covent Garden.) MY first impressions of Sylvia have not changed now that I have seen the ballet on two further occasions. I still find that, in his effort to recapture...

going on behind the hedge, and I stood still, wondering what was happening. Someone tripped over a tin can, a dog barked and all at once there was a great deal more scuffling....

or two to come, 1 think the adder' has already gone to spend the colder months in torpid state. It is therefore a little late to talk of snake-bite again, but a correspon- dent...

one of the farms, and he carried a rabbit. It was a very particular kind of rabbit, he told me, for it had been drained of its blood by a stoat. There was nothing new in this...

DURING the past month or two I have read a great deal about the step forward that has been taken in official blessing for the Sawyer trap. I believe that it is a real step...

About this time everyone who likes a spring display thinks of putting in bulbs. Massed for naturalising, such things as muscari, scilla, chionodoxa, daffodil, crocus and winter...

Set by Frank Evelyn - Autumn Books.—Readers are invited to submit imaginary excerpts from imaginary publishers' lists, together with quotations from the blurbs ; not more than...

"A stubborn, barbarous race ! " the alien vows : " Shopkeepers, mutes, dull rural sheep and cows I Blinded to Art ;. sans wit, esprit and ton; Gauche lackeys, yawning at Life's...

Report by Marghanita Laski Since literary fashion will eventually praise many best-sellers which at present it denigrates, competitors were invited to submit excerpts from new...

not become free and exalted Souls . " Aristotle Plato to his Utopia No poet would admit. But they—his captives too—who make Songs for mere joy and music's sake, Under his...

SIR,—May I, as one who also sees many children's MSS. in the course of a year's work, reply in brief to Miss Streatfeild's most interesting article in your issue of September...

am driven for the first time to use my position for public comment on your reviewer's article on Who Lie in Gaol, by Joan Henry. On principle 1 have always avoided doing this...

Prison Conditions Eirt,—Your reviewer of Mrs. Henry's book on her personal experiences in Holloway and Askham admits that she does not know the first thing about prisons. As...

SIR,—When the B.B.C. were taken to task a few months ago over their habit of calling" the West German Chancellor Herr Adenauer, they explained, if 1 remember rightly, that...

SIR,—One can only suppose that boredom begets boredom, but could not Lucilio make some suggestions how the " well-informed support and constructive criticism " demanded by the...

heir article with a question: whether the children of one generation differ fundamentally from those of another. I think not, but at the present day there is so much limelight...

SIR,—Strix, in his comment on the future of the public schools, stops short of the real issue, as did Mr. Birley when I heard him speak recently on this subject. Mr. Birley...

SIR,—The remarks of both Mr. Steward and Dean Robins seem to be made in the worldly sense, for they disregard the fact that once a person has been baptised and becomes a...

SIR,—Can any of your readers suggest books suitable for a reasonably intelligent boy of nine-and-a-half ? There is very little choice of boys' books here and I have exhausted...

First and Last Loves. By John Betjeman. (John Murray. 20s.) WE live, says Mr. Betjeman, in the age not of the Common Man but of the Average Man : " There is a refinement about...

R. L. S. Voyage to Windward : The life of Robert Louis Stevenson, By J. C. Furnas. (Faber. 25s.) IT is hardly possible, however one may hesitate to dispute a statement printed...

The Sterling Area : An American Analysis. Research and Statistics Division, E.C.A. Special Mission to the United Kingdom. (Obtainable from H.M. Stationery Office. 21s.) The...

Don Juan (in the Russian Manner). By Anton Chekhov. English version by Basil Ashmore. Preface by Desmond MacCarthy. (Peter Nevill. 10s. 6d.) THE late Sir Desmond MacCarthy's...

The Burlesque Tradition in the English Theatre After 1660. By V. C. Clinton-Baddeley. (Methuen. 18s.) IT was Stephen Leacock who advised Mr. Clinton-Baddeley (after he had...

HISTORIANS tend to chop up their subject into convenient lengths which they can arrange in conventional patterns. The story of the first British Empire, and its conclusion in...

One-Upmanship. By Stephen Potter. (Hart-Davis. 8s. 6d.) Shakespeare and Myself. By George Mikes. (Wingate. 8s. 6d.) THERE are two great levellers: death and ridicule. For no...

THE two latest volumes in the Yale edition of Horace Walpole's correspondence, which continues its stately but increasingly expensive Progress under Mr. W. S. Lewis's...

The Correspondence. Paul Claudel and Andre Gide. Translated by John Russell. (Seeker & Warburg. 25s.) IN 1947 M. Paul Claude!, aged 77, gave an interview to Combat. He talked...

The Devils of Loudun. By Aldous Huxley. (Chatto & Windus. 18s.) MR. HUXLEY has always had a keen nose for corruption. In his early novels he exposed it in all its absurdity...

COLONEL THE HON. WILLIAM CODY was a magnanimous leader of his great enterprise, but he might have been a little peeved had he fore- seen, in his sad old age, that for many he...

THE peoples of the west have, never been provided with any authori- tative explanation of the military implications of the decision, made on political ground;, to exclude Spain...

MR. MACNEICE'S poetry has really changed very little since the mid - thirties, and one has sometimes felt as the years slipped by that it was time for a change. What is...

DASHING into the battle of cliches, having read Mr. S. Potter's latest treatise, I will not say that Miss Irma A. Richter's Selections from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci...

Hear and Forgive. By Emyr Humphreys. (Gollancz. 12s. 6d.) The Frontenac Mystery. By Francois Mauriac. (Eyre & Spottis-, woode. I ls. 6d.) Daughter of the House. By Catherine...

As usual, the only real detection this month comes in a reprint— the Second Gollancz Detective Omnibus at 6s. 9d.—containing Dorothy Sayers' first Wimsey book, Whose Body?,...

"THOUSANDS of new books," the trade announces, are to be published this autumn. As usual, biography and autobiography predominate; but the books about the war are diminishing....

Fundamentals of Good Writing is a book ! which gives a comprehensive picture of how the intention, personality or "state of feeling" of a writer can correspond with his $ use of...

is possible to have a pretty shrewd idea concerning the identity of " Vigilans"— le style, c'est l'homme—but, whoever he may be, this reviewer finds his book rather...

fashionable to emphasise his coarseness and violence, to remember only the occasions when his advice was bad. This account of his life and work by Pro- fessor Bainton conceals...

twelfth annual issue of the Saturday Book," reads a note facing the decorative title-page, "has been designed by Lawrence Scarfe, Edwin Smith, and the Editor." The verb is...

Edited by Will Moore, Rhoda Sutherland and Enid Starkie. (Oxford University Press. 30s.) THIS collection of essays by his colleagues and pupils celebrates the eightieth birthday...

Butler has not delayed long, faced by a crumbling wicket, in going in to bat in the gilt-edged market. His much-heralded funding operation has now taken shape and comprises...

The winner of Crossword No. 696 is: The Rev. ALLAN CAMERON, The Manse, Forgandenny, Perthshire.

EA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened alter noon on Tuesday week, October 14711, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...