17 AUGUST 1956, Page 7

THE EASIEST WAY, I find, to overcome feelings of impatience

or resentment against the Egyptians is to remind myself that it is only four years or so since they were liberated from Farouk. When I was last in Egypt the show tourist attractions. after the pyramids and the 'Cairo museum, were the royal palaces—kept for visitors in much the same state as Farouk left them, with his sixty-inch-waist uniforms still hanging up in the wardrobes. A draft guide book to the palaces was available. A friend of mine still has the copy he was given by Colonel Mahmoud Younes, now Vice-President of the seized Canal company. Among the attractions it describes are :

On the right of the bed and over the silk is a painting of a nude symph with her hair long, lying on a bed, is hug. Were it not for the gold plated frame, it would have been very difficult till whether it is a painting or a livingbody. . . . Close to this wing we find a delicately agonised dental clinic. . . .

the clinching argument for visiting the royal palaces : 'when the American tourists saw it they exclaimed "Now we know why we did not have monarchies at the States." '