de Gaulle ' s con- stitution in any constituency in France was 64 per cent. — a figure which, had it been the national average, would have been impressive enough: the actual...

T HE 80 per cent. majority in favour of General de Gaulle's new constitution demonstrates clearly that 4he average French 'voter has had enough of the FoUrth Republic and its...

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1958

rr lin twentieth anniversary of the Munich agree- .," ment coincided with the announcement that Britain and America would soon withdraw their troops from Lebanon and Jordan, and...

By MICHAEL ADAMS T HE Lebanese crisis, after flaring up once again (and throwing far more sinister shadows than ever before), seems at last to be on the way to solution. At the...

By DARSIE GILLIE' GENERAL DE GAULLE has got his vote—a majority so great as almost to crush him as well as his opponents. Left and Right have voted for him. No group can now...

Pirates and Landlubbers s one of. Sir Brian Robertson's more spec- tacularly dreadful efforts crept like snail unwillingly to Scarborough, I found myself in agreement with my...

something praiseworthy they go and spoil it by doing something downright foolish. Recently at the UN the Republic of Ireland was the only Western country which had the courage...

WITH HIS LETTER objecting to my criticisms of commercial television (to which I reply in our correspondence columns), Mr. John Irwin in- cluded a list of the programmes he is...

our correspondence columns this week by saying that he gladly accepts my 'taunt that the Observer takes racialism particularly seriously.' I made no such taunt. What I did say...

PUTTING IT DIFFERENTLY, you can support a judicial penal policy, i.e. one you think is right, or you can support a 'political' penal policy, i.e. one you know to be wrong but...

IF MEMBERS of the Labour Party wish to understand the reasons for its present unpopularity, they could do worse than examine a couple of paniphlets which have come out in...

and misplaced, and they well deserved criticism. But the outpouring of ministerial patriotism that has descended upon her head has been rather ,overdone. The Lord Chancellor,...

to me the sense of happy catharsis everywhere as the French came out of church on a hot Sunday morning and ambled across the street to discharge their 'Yesses' down the ballot...

By THE BISHOP OF EXETER From 1066 to the Reformation there can be no doubt that divorce with the right to remarry was unknown in England. The ecclesiastical law of England was...

Sneak House By SIMON RAVEN To "THERE is a widespread illusion that 'sneaking,' r the bearing of tales to those in authority, is unheard of in British public schools. This was...

By ANDREW ROTH THERE is a slight abatement of tension in Teheran since the new revolutionary regime in Baghdad has apparently re- strained their most militant Nasser...

Words Without Music By ALAN BRIEN ANY hope that the company from the Dilsseldorfer Schauspielhaus would introduce us to players of the heroic dimensions and com- mando attack...

Ox-Eyes Therefore this year he was offering his. 'Garden of Eden' hair styles. A sumptuous programme explained that `Mr. Raymond is not, as perhaps the first glance implies,...

Fiddly-Om-Porn-Pon By GERDA L. COHEN TRIUMPHANT Victoriana the parks have remained and 'always shall be, amen. Pulsating with grena- dier bloom, the warm drenched grass, the...

Ingots and Incas By MATTHEW NORGATE NEVER again, I was telling my- self at Cork a week ago, do 1 wish to see an ingot, a sarong, a paddyfield, a symbolic dance, or a wave...

Dining Out By LESLIE ADRIAN A LETTER from a correspondent this week reminds me of a duty neglected: I ought to have thanked those of you who have written in since I sent out my...

Behaviour in Love By ISABEL QUIGLY Passionate Summer. (Leicester Square Theatre.) — The Naked and the Dead. (Gaumont.) ONE of the things we see in films which we never see in...

Learning to Learn By MILES HOWARD W HEN 11 ..was swotting through a lot of rather dull textbooks, after the war, to prepare for higher degree exams, I was obliged to go over...

By STRIX H is eyes narrowed. "You bastard gringo," he hissed. "In the old days my father would have buried you alive." `Slowly I rose to my feet. There was little point in...

OCTOBER 5, 1833 THE Marquis of ANOLESEA' took his leave of Dublin on Friday week. In spite of all the opposition and abuse which his Government has received at the hands of...

SIR.—E , ien if voters who are not interested in politics could be assumed to make an electoral. choice • on strictly rational grounds, there are some of us in the Labour Party...

The Notting Hill Sentences David Astor, Rev. F. A. Jasper Loyalties Ltd, Rev. Austin Lee How to Win an Election John Papworth The Population Problem Admiral Sir W. M. James...

sentences. It follows the en- lightened line he (and you, sir) have advocated for so long. But in this instance he fails to appreciate two considerations. Firstly, no analogy...

SIR.—Mr. Anthony Windrum's letter on the granting of visas to foreign visitors (Spectator, September 19) refers to damage which may he done to overseas trade by the impediments...

SIR,—Your correspondent sees your phrase, 'It is better to be disloyal and dishonoured than dead,' as the antithesis of 'all that Great Britain with Its Christian tradition...

SIR.—We are told by statisticians that, if the present increase of the human race continues, there will by a stated year be one square yard of the earth's land surface for each...

[the 1TA contractors) are doing little or nothing to im- prove the quality of programmes.' Would Pharos please tell us who is to decide what is better for the public other than,...

SIR,- - I feel sure that all right-minded people, not merely a majority of them as he modestly anticipates, will share ex-Corporal Brooke's .condemnation of alliophagy. A ..viee...

found Taper's amusing report just,•:but sometimes only just. I am glad he liked Mr. • Grimond's speech, He must have had a front seat; but I was sitting at the back and,...

SIR,-1 do not want to trouble you further, but the letter of Mr. Arden does seem to me to prove my case. He honestly cannot conceive of a man being keen to do an important and...

Sta, 7 -Taper, quite my favourite political commenta- tor, asks whether it is seriously argued that people would care one , way or the other about site value taxation and free...

SIR,—May I suggest that the Formosa dispute has never been adequately examined as a question of right or wrong? I submit that it was very wrong indeed of Presi- dent Eisenhower...

(of the bomb plot on Hitler) It is not merely the approach of snow, Haunting the stiffened earth, but total fear Which stuns a.history underfoot, and so Cracks values in a...

The Man Under the Bed B y D. W. BROGAN AMONG -Freudian psychoanalysts, in the life- time of the Muster, it used to be the custom (I was once told) to refer to Freud as 'the...

The Comic Tradition in America. An Anthology edited with a Foreword and Notes by Kenneth S. Lynn. (Gollancz, 21s.) ONE does not pick up a 'book with this kind of title in any...

ARRIVING, contrary to all the author's expecta- tions, in the midst of a new crisis over Formosa, M. Faure's book poses once again the question of our relationS with Communist...

Like gardens of glass these islunds, Flowers coloured, ancient and stiff; But the steamer moves off, and the fog Repossesses the black of the cliff, Reveals the green grass for...

The Vichy Regime 1940-44. By Robert Aron. (Putnam, 42s.) Jr is hard to be fair to Vichy. If ever a policy ended in failure it was that one, and the historian would be less...

WHEN the biography of Michael Collins appeared, recently we Irish were mortified to realise how his name—a household ogre-word here in its, day— is now all but forgotten. So is...

The London Shakespeare. Edited by the late John Munro with Introduction by G. W. G. Wickham. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 6 vols., 7 gns.) Ti-its is a handsome set of volumes, at a...

Pope and Human Nature. By Geoffrey Tillotson. (O.U.P., 25s.) PROFESSOR TILLOTSON'S theme may be said to be the ways and means by which Pope in his poetry gives a concrete and...

C.F.S., Birthplace of Air Power. By John W. R. Taylor. (Putnam, 21s.) AEROPLANE piloting technique has exhibitec' three distinct phases : the sensual, the instrumental and the...

Sail Ho! By Sir James Bisset. (Angtis and Robert- . son, 21s.) SIR JAMES BISSET, KB, sometime 'commodore of the Cunard Line, has given the public an account of his six years...

BY FRANK KERMODE G RANTED, for an hour, the tongue of a critical angel, one could say of these books* nothing that could possibly be more extraordinary than this : they have not...

Inside, on the mosquito net, a dowdy moth Kettle-drumming to get out. Outside, varicoloured butterflies Bunched on the trees, like a harvest festival. A night comes into my...

All things being done or undone As my hands adore or abandon— Embody a now, erect a here A bare-backed tramp and a ditch without fire Cat or bread; and no shoes, Honour, or...

People and Parliament. By Nigel Nicolson. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 18s.) KNOW Bournemouth is a pretty repulsive place. Still, there are limits, and the behaviour towards Mr....

T. S. Blot: A Symposium for his Seventieth Birthday. Edited with an introduction by Neville Braybrooke. (Hart-Davis, 21s.) THERE is a nip in the air by now. Granted that he is...

Daddy's Gone A-Hunting. By Penelope Mortimer. (Michael Joseph, 13s. 6d.) Clotilde. By Cecil Saint Laurent. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 18s.) Parton's Island. By Paul Darcy Boles....

The Berlin Blockade: A Study in Cold War Politics. By W. Phillips Davison. (O.U.P., 60s.) IN a way it is a little unfortunate that Professor Davison's book on the first great...

Star Chamber Stories. By G. R. Elton. (Methuen, 21s.) DR. ELTON'S stories are based on the Star Chamber records of the 1530s. They are, he disarmingly tells us, the by-products...

murder of an Englishman in Iraq, with some feeling for what caused the recent factual taking-off of indigenes. Lashings of local colour and liberal ideas. CHRISTOPHER PYM

MICHEL NEY, Marshal of France and Prince of the Moskowa, resembled nothing so much, both in his excellences and his defects, as a Centurion of Rome. A loyal subordinate, he...

IN spite of all the kindness shown by the English to less fortunate peoples and to animals, intelligent foreigners still remark as they have remarked for two centuries that deep...

The Gigantic Shadow. By Julian Symons. (Collins, 10s. 6d.) Minor work from a master. Mr. Symons can sketch in the contemporary London scene—telefolks, dance halls, Pimlico...

long, very detailed, rather senti- mental, quite irresistible saga of a Mid-Western murder trial—spotlight on the tactics and strategy of the defence attorney. Already bought by...

of the wrapper should have read the book—it's good : a tale of a recently discovered hoard of gold; currency evasion; and fairly decent chaps pursued by quite nasty ones from...

A shooting in Cheshire, solved by the worthy Superintendent Littlejohn, in another of this prolific author's admirably pedestrian, provincial and quite probable puzzles.

By CUSTOS ITIHE attempt in some quarters to kill the very I selective bull market in equity shares has not succeeded, for a new Stock Exchange account has opened with...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE Commonwealth economic conference at Montreal resolved that a common aim was to make sterling convertible. 'as soon as the necessary conditions have...

J AMES HOWDEN & CO. have been estab- lished in Scotland for half a century and are well known as manufacturers of all types of industrial fans, steam turbines and separators,...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 448: Report by Allan M. Laing One of the legal highlights of last year was the reminder, by the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, that it, was...

ACROSS I Single-unit dwelling, so to speak ? (8) 5 Situation preparatory to repairs on the quay, it seems (4, 2) 9 Aspect of the knight the night before (8) 10 When...

11 Ina 12 Itenressed. 13 Marengo, 15 Enliven. 17 Designs. 19 Dry-shod 21 Light-ball. 23 Nomcn, 24 Hourl, 25 1phiuenia. 26 Ready reckoner. DOWN.-2 Overturns. 3 Total. 4 Inferno....

son - net to Autumn in which the word 'parachute,' in any of itsfOrAls; is to he used. Entries, addressed. `SpectatOr Competition No. 451,' 99 Gower Street, London WC1, by...