at Brighton with Labour's bogus promise to repeal the Rent Act, Mr. Macmillan has been virtuously contrasting his refusal to have an election now with Labour's running away in...

SPECTATOP ESTABLISHED 1828 - NUMBER 6745 - FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1957 - PRICE NINEPENCE

TT is impossible not to be deeply concerned at 'recent events in the new State of Ghana. The tactics used against members of the Opposition parties, the deportation of two...

T HERE still seems to be no way of making sense of the proposal, launched so abruptly in Washington last week, for what is described as an Anglo-Canadian free trade area. The...

By DARSIE GILLIE O NLY a stop-gap Government, but, oh, what a gap unstopped! The fall had one dramatic element and only one. M. Bourges-Maunoury was brought down by one man, M....

In the Middle East King Saud and the Prime Minister of Iraq have been visiting Damascus, much to the jubilation of the Syrian leaders, whom they seem to have been exhorting to...

THE PASSENGERS and nearly all the crew were taken off the British liner Hildebrand after she ran aground in fog near Cascais, Portugal, today . . . some sang hymns as they...

KRAMER, Wimbledon title holder, in 1947, revealed after the match that Hoad was suffering from muscle trouble in the groin. Today he is taking Hoad to Arsenal football club for...

Snowball Rolling O NE thing that emerged from the Labour Party Conference (apart from a substantial number of delegates when Mr. James Griffiths got up to speak) was that if...

so that a greatly exaggerated version of the story was finally printed in the Communist Narodna Kulittra, with imaginary names for the authors who had given greatest offence....

called New Authors Limited seems to be a most interesting experiment which 81 1 . ould benefit publisher, young writers and, inc identally, British cultural life. Broadly speak-...

THE GOVERNMENT can thank itself for the imbroglio now developing over the Bank rate 'leak.' It was un- wise to refuse an inquiry, particu- larly in such an offhand manner. The...

affair alive, without the support of fresh informa- t ti on, there is one point, so far overlooked, which Will have to explain. The 'leak' is said to have taken place on the...

from the Kent coast, I was pleased to note that there was no traffic jam through Swanley. I gather that this is due to the beneficent activities of the Ministry of Trans- port's...

place in Bulgaria. At a moun- tain villa of the Writers' Union to the south of Sofia, not far from Mount Stalin (formerly called Musala—the kiss of God), a number of authors...

THE following reviews will appear in future issues of the Spectator: A Bit Off the Map. By Angus Wilson. (Seeker and Warburg, 15s.)—Kingsley Ands. The Responsibility of...

other night if Labour's plan to pay differential pensions, based upon previous earnings, was not a departure from the pure Socialist doctrine of 'from each according to his...

Strix has shown from time to time, but I never realised to what a range of reading the word fiction could itself be applied, until I saw the books listed under 'Recent Fiction'...

Conservatism: the Great Betrayal We have received the following article from a well-known journalist on a Conservative paper. He is not permitted to write under his own name...

By LORD ALTRINCHAM* T IM outstanding fact in•pOlitics today is that, althmigh the present Government has been 1 1 3 : ° ved unfit for office, and although - the Labour r tY 1 is...

By CYRIL RAY ONDAY night is carnival night at Collins's Music Hall, and last Monday's was the first since the news that the shabby theatre by Islington Green had been saved—by a...

By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS D R. KISSINGER'S argument, the publication of which in these weeks is by accident almost uncannily timely, is that both Russia and America are now...

Readership Survey No. 3 and summarising the information supplied by readers in recent questionnaires, are available at Is. Od. post free. Requests for copies, with remittance ,...

By JOHN TERRAINE TT costs twelve francs (roughly Is. 8d.) to go 'from Ypres to Passchendaele by bus today : the journey takes about twenty-five minutes. It cost the British...

By ANTHONY HARTLEY 'CI HALL I get him now, Daddy?' yelled the asmall American boy, camera in one hand and clutching at the pillar with the other to steady himself on his...

By JOHN BETJEMAN XCUSE me,' said a lady to me when I Was crossing Hammersmith Broadway. She el - bowed me off the traffic island and asserted her rights on the zebra crossing in...

By STR1X AsT night in a place where from time to time L i I go for a drink a big, fat man with a scowl on his face stalks up to me and says : 'Most of the words you use in those...

fly LESLIE ADRIAN A s . there is much need just now for efficient and independent testing bodies for consumer goods in this country, an investigation of existing or ganisatiops...

please permit me to address one last word to Madame Crevecceur, and one reverberating belly- rumble to Messrs. Neve, Beck and Co. (who are still not entirely candid about what...

by Mr. Anthony i t nwaite is vitiated by the reviewer's imperfect know- ■ j e „ ti g e of Jefferies's life and work. He writes: C'erics, during the ten final years of his...

interest. He will, 1 think, though, agree with me that Merdeka was not a current term in Malaya as re- cently as 1953, nor in fact till it had become an Indonesian slogan. I...

0 tu Brighton Id and Farm ,74_1aYan Independence :4. L. Stampa & Vernier Cri e Biography Racket "t b elicit Country Nroaton `Ax e d, Sw "Pi 11 ng the Streets Schedules D kne...

be allowed to give the family point of view? GLS was a gentle, lovable man, gay and com- panionable (Reginald Pound has referred to this in two of his books), but he had a...

ancestors, although they were not able to write to the Spectator, no doubt got hot under their bison-skin collars when some of their tribe began to grow cereals instead of...

has heard of the 'Over Forty-Fives' Asso- ciation, he is not familiar with its organisation, in that, unlike the 'Ex-Officers Association,' its mem- bership is open to men in...

SIR,—I have rarely read an article whkh gave mote satisfaction than Henry Fairlie's in a recent issue taking to pieces the BBC. Hundreds of gallons of ink have been used in...

SIR, — I sincerely doubt if Mr. Linton's proposals to combat prostitution, in your issue of September 20, are either the most effective or indeed the wisest. In the past...

SIR, — I am engaged upon writing a memoir of Dame Ethel Smyth. If any of your readers have any material or knowledge of her I should be very grateful to hear from them.—Yours...

myself, sustain Miss Jenny Nasmyth's strictures on our books with equanimity, although perhaps, in my own case, it is a little astonishing to have four years' serious study and...

quotes cases of patients who were originally certified as mentally defective after conviction for criminal offences, and who have been detained in the Institution for long...

SIR, — Having read Julia Strachey's review of All That Fall, by Samuel Beckett, may I please speak for at least 'One Who Doesn't' : I thought I saw Significance Of Sophoclean...

OCTOBER 6, 1832 THE demand for Church Reform is no ephemeral party cry, but springs from the settled determination of the more respectable and independent classes of society,...

week, Covent Garden for its annual Wagnerian convul- sion, Sadler's Wells with a limited .repertoire quickly improvised to fill in, rather patchily, until the promised revival...

Monet Reviewed TFt. Monet exhibition which has now reached the Tate has brought with it, in Douglas Cooper's cata- logue arid in various recent articles, arguments as to the...

FROM eighteen countries 698 dele- gates have just seen 655 films made by 159 producers at the fourth International Screen Advertising Festival at Cannes : 655 films add up to...

THE Boulting Brothers' film version of Kingsley Anus's Lucky Jim (producer : Roy; director : John) should make anyone who is sick of a Lucky Jim mystique throw up his hat and...

What Became of Jane Austen? By KINGSLEY AMIS T HERE is something to be said for the view, held . by rational critics as well as by mere going- t hrough-the-motions...

By D. W. BROGAN I T is nearly a century since a cabinet officer in the much-harassed administration of Presi- dent Andrew Johnson told the young Henry Adams that 'a Congressman...

By ANTHONY WEST T HERE is something irresistibly suggestive Of the lower levels of semi-detached life in much that is written about Russia by those who are sulY posed to be...

The Shakespearean Ciphers Examined. By W. F. and Elezcbeth S. Friedman. (C.U.P., 25s.) THosE who do not allow themselves to become annoyed by the Baconian 'theory' (Sir Henry...

Is Oxford life really like this? So lacking in flavour? So small? So dead? Or is this a work of treason? The answer, probably, is that all that is wrong with Oxford life is...

The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell. By Maurice Ashley. (Hodder and Stoughton, 25s.) OLIVER CROMWELL died in September, 1658: Dr. Ashley has left all the other tercentenary bio-...

WitAT the devil then am I? After all these eighty years I know nothing at all about it.' No less egocentric in his eightieth year than formerly, Carlyle put the question...

The Portrait of a Whig Peer. By Brian Connell. (Deutsch, 30s.) . IN attics, stables and the cellars of aristocra lle houses, the huge, hairy travelling trunks of th e...

Craft and Character in Modern Fiction. By Mor- ton Zabel. (Gollancz, 21s.) KIPLING and Galsworthy, it says here, were saved from being mere journalists by 'the finer conscience...

WORDS cannot describe, nor lambs forgive, nor worms forget, the tedium of this awful book. Reading it is like riding a bicycle through sand - dunes. Spurred on by a glum sense...

THE hero is always the man of action. Typical man of action of our day is the big businessman —his battlefield the office and board-room, his weapons the bank balance and the...

FAMILIAR as we have become with the American tourist, it is refreshing to come, for once, upon an American traveller. Mrs. Vincent and her husband packed their three small...

Medicine My Passport. By Dr. Donald Stafford Matthews. (Harrap, 18s.) THE professional treats his autobiography as he would a piece of fiction, giving the story of his life a...

Germans Under My Bed. By Ewart Jones. (Arthur Barker, 15s.) PERSONAL war stories come in two forms, those written by the protagonist and those reconstructed by a professional...

MORE than 250 years have passed since Defoe delivered his vigorous attack on that mythical creature The Trueborn Englishman, a thorough' bred type, he declared, that did not...

The Tin Armada. By Satherley Whitehand (Cassell, 15s.) The Black Cloud is a splendid affair, as good as Mr. Hoyle's other bland and thrilling manifesto about the new cosmology,...

The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones. By Charles Neider. (Muller, 13s. 6d.) Novel of suspense set in the Far West of the heroic age— the 1880s: a gunfighter is caught, escapes...

is a policeman who says —and the little dots are the author's—in my class of people, that word "mistress" . . . it sounds sort of . . . continental.' There is a Lord Richard...

Devil's Brood: The Angevin Family. By Alfre ( Duggan. (Faber, 21s.) 'Fltom the devil they came and to the devil the) will go.' There is obviously the stuff of tough astringent...

10s. 6d.) Unusually convincing story of intrigue inside big industrial concern, with murder and mystery as incidental by- products. Written with style, point, and a Bal-...

That admirable half-caste aborigine, Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, in another of his adventures in the Australian out- back, involving not only a killing and a kidnap- ping but...

guignol stories, of which one, 'The Specialty of the House,' much admired and much anthologised, sets pattern of highly skilled construction, surprise ending, touch of horror....

(Reinhardt, 12s. 6d.) Simply a tale of pursuit. A man breaks jail, shoots the husband of his former wife, and flees with her across the United States, with the cops after them....

6d.) Bellicose, battle-scarred bull-terrier bitch (caricatured by dust-cover into bull-doggery) wins heart of dear old Mr. Cork, the elderly city gent, and solves her own...

The high-born of both sexes and most of the NATO nationalities romp around the Riviera di Ponente in their high-powered cars; and Canadian Colonel Sarel, whose second adventure...

Neat, probable lower-middle-class little piece about how surburban radio dealer is driven by debt into one murder and by fear into the next : enough to haunt you into paying...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 396 Report by W. May Byron Coln • • petliors will remember the 'old man of Nantucket Who kept all his cash in a bucket; But his bluer named Nan, Ran...

translation in equivalent form of La Ceppede's sonnet on the Passion : Aux monarques vain queurs la rouge cotte d'armes A ppartient justement.Ce roi victorieux Est justement v...

ACROSS I Very much the head girl (6). n 4 The Archdeacon gets back at Ted in revenge (8). Transposed stretch of Water sounds as if it catises a fine frenzy (6). iv Golly, top...

times, for, after all, there were no poachers until laws were framed. When salmon fishing became more democratic the poacher lost his aura of romance and even the common man...

By IAN NIALL • AN autumn afternoon seems to hang heavily when there is mist and the dying leaves drip with moisture. I went up to the little wood yesterday, hoping to pick a few...

The calling of handyman is commoner in the country than in the town where tradesmen naturally congregate and, of course, there are handymen and handymen. One can make a fair job...

By PHILIDOR No. 121 J. PERIS (1st Prize, Magasinet, 1953) RI %C . (7 men) WWII. (8 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next week. Solution to last week's...

'It come dark an' still Jack's boss wouldn't stop at none o' the 'otels, but whet' poor Jack said 'e were so dry 'e couldn't go no farther 'e stopped an' said, "You get a good...

By CUSTOS TUESDAY saw the end of one of the most disastrous accounts the Stock 46 .% Exchange has ever experienced. Forced selling drove down some of the best shares—slim, for...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE volume of expert criticism hostile to the Chancellor grows. It , s is probably fair to say that the whole of the Oxford school of e conomics is ranged...