A SOBER man might be forgiven for letting the peals of boyish laughter from Marshal Bulganin's diplomatic parties go in at one ear and rapidly out of the other. Not that there...

ESTABLISHED 1828 No. 6633 FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 1955 PRICE 7d.

T HI • silly season having put the lid on home news for the time being, newspaper readers and writers during the last week have divided their attention between the shape of...

BY HENRY FAIRLIE s OME attention must be given to the persistent stories which are now circulating in London tha't Sir Anthony Eden is worried about the way in which the Geneva...

THE DAYS are past when editors permitted their more egregious columnists to announce in August that simply nobody was left in London. But it is a fact, now that most of the...

had gone to press last week that William Leighton had been re- prieved. But I still find it disturbing that a man who has been found by a jury unfit to plead should two years...

`NOTHING GUIDES Russian policy so much as a desire for friendship with the United States.'—General Eisenhower, November, 1945. 'IN THE PAST [i.e., before 1945] relations of...

Socialist leader of Coventry Council which last year refused to run Coventry's Civil Defence—a refusal which naturally pleased the Russians, who royally entertained Mr. Stringer...

where he has been making a film. 'Would you boys,' he said to the technicians, 'mind if I blessed this electronic apparatus before we start?' They didn't mind at all—the...

the magazine began, is returning to America in the autumn. He should not be allowed to go without being congratulated on his part in seeing Encounter through its first difficult...

BY WILLIAM TEELING, MP I BELIEVE that the best chance the supporters of the anti-hanging campaign have of success is to show to the public, where possible, that so-called...

BY T. D. WILLIAMS* 0 NE of the things which puzzle the reader of histories of the Second World War was the reluctance of the belligerents to accept valuable intelligence...

BY JOHN ARLOTT * C RICKET, perhaps from its very nature, has produced relatively few players who have been what Hollywood calls 'box office.' W. G. Grace was, because he was an...

BY NABO ALBARICOQUE A brave man in his pride Confronting murderous men. . . . W. B. YEATS ITTLE did I think when I visited England in '1950 and saw my first cricket match'...

been heard of a proposal put forward by the architect, Lord Mottistone, in the House of Lords two years ago about the preservation and repair of old buildings. He suggested that...

Contrary to my expectations, I found myself in Cowes this year during Cowes Week, and actually visited the Squadron lawn, wrongly dressed in a London suit and a yachting cap....

BY JOHN BETJEMAN W HENEVER an English monarch visits the Isle of Man, a mist hangs over the island. The late King had to be diverted from Douglas, where he was expected to land....

The Accessories of an Addict I SUPPOSE we all of us have problems in our lives which we recognise as soluble but know that we shall never solve. My problem is what to do with...

Years the Crossword Ate R. Parsons Eric Swainson The Riddle of the Sands W. P. Brooke-Smith G. M. Knocker Little Dorrit John Wain Motor Accident Insurance C. C. Miller The...

Euston 3221

be bloomin' well dead?' was associated, for my brothers and me at least, with another, the harrowing tale of 'The Nancy Lee'—`The ship that got shipwrecked at sea.' To quote Mr....

read Mr. Trilling's The Opposing Self more carefully than I have, is no doubt right. But he has failed to learn the essential lesson that it has to teach. I took Mr. Trilling...

Childers's The Riddle of the Sands, reviewed by Ian Fleming (August 5). I suppose I must have read the book about thirty times in as many years and it never loses its...

SIR,—Isn't it a fact that, apart from the melo- dramatic Dollmann and his daughter, The Riddle of the Sands is absolutely true in its account not only of a small yacht's cruise...

as a fairy godmother will probably find a few crofters to say that South Uist welcomes the prospect of being turned into another Peenemunde. Before writing this letter I have...

SIR,—In his article on the subject of accident insurance, Mr. Levin makes the assertion that insurers constantly and 'energetically support the cause of road safety. If this is...

August 14,1839 LONDON IN AUGUST.—Next to the devo- tion of the people of Paris to the good of their country, is the patriotism of English journalists, who devote themselves to...

SIR,—Your issue of July 8. received today, has me completely 'burned up.' Your 'Portrait of the Week' tells your readers that 'Henley provided its now expected number of...

SIR,—Accused by me of indulging in light- hearted venial deception, the Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Party now boasts that : no, he was being deliberately misleading! To...

SIR,—Just after reading Strix's query whether 'our hair does raise and stir when we are frightened.' I met this statement in a letter, dated 1790, from Richard Lovell Edgeworth...

pose the question : 'Is a Christian in favor [I] of remaking this old world and so in favor of the United Nations?' The answer given is, 'No. The true Christian is not for...

SIR,—Mr. John Betjeman is surely in error when he writes (Spectator, August 5) that 'there is no legal power over a parish to force it to put its registers in safe keeping.'...

SIR,—I think many readers of the Spectator will be interested to learn of the formation of an Arnold Bax Society. A group of music lovers who wish to honour the memory of the...

THE Festival Ballet gave the second of this season's novelties on August 8, when it pre- sented a fresh production of Harald Lander's Etudes, previously danced only by Copen-...

A RATHER drearier week of television than usual starts off this last stint of television criticism before the cataclysm of the ITA. It may be the darkest hour before the dawn :...

Theatre WAITING FOR GODOT. By Samuel Beckett. (Arts.) Two tramps are sitting by the roadside waiting for a M. Godot to come and employ them. They exchange odds and ends of...

VALUE FOR MONEY. (GRUMOIli.)---WE'RE No ANGELS. (Plaza.) Value for Money is very nearly an excellent comedy. Its hero is a Yorkshire rag merchant who has just inherited his...

REALISM AND ABSTRACTION Two important exhibitions have brought into view the Scylla and Charybdis of present art criticism—Tour French Realists' at the Tate, and a...

Samuel Deronda BY JOHN WAIN Samuel Deronda, on the threshold of manhood, is faced with the ruin of his attempts to woo Minnie Stroney, the office belle. This situation is due...

Thomas the Rhymer BY KINGSLEY AMIS A PROSPECT of the Sea* stands a good chance of being the last volume of Dylan Thomas's previously un- collected work to appear. It includes,...

THE PROBLEM OF THE PICTS. Edited by F. T. Wainwright (Nelson, 21s.) THIS book is the outcome of the first Scottish Summer School organised on behalf of the Council for British...

THE STORY OF AUSTRALIA. By A. G. L. Shaw. (Faber, 15s.) WAINEwRIGHT IN TASMANIA. By Robert Crossland. (O.U.P., 22s. 6d.) 'HERE was an almost boundless extent of the richest...

IN his sensible introduction to this study of partition Mr. Sheehy reminds us that all modern communities are bastards begotten by conquest. However intolerable the original act...

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF RHYS DAVIES. (Heinemann, 18s.) His Collected Stories are a monument to Rhys Davies's immense integrity. At one time or another almost every writer of...

ONCE UPON A TIDE. By Hervey Benham. (Harrap, 18s.) FROivi Defoe to Dickens, or the two centuries which lie just beyond the reach of memory, is the period covered in Once Upon a...

THE CAPRI LETTERS. By Mario Soldati. (Hamish Hamilton, 12s. 6d.) As it emerges in books and plays, the society of the American Deep South seems as remote as that of provincial...

Deusen, reviewed last week, is distributed in this country by Geoffrey Cumberlege, on behalf of the University of Penn- sylvania Press, price 40s.

issue of the Spectator the rate of interest offered by St. Pancras Building Society was inadvertently printed as 31 per cent. This should have been 3 per cent. The correct...

While it is wise to renew a strawberry bed with virile stock, it is sometimes expedient to replace old plants with runners that have come from them. The new plants should be...

It was just past noon and I sat on a rock eating my sandwiches when my attention was taken by a trout that was rising as he cruised round the little bay. He seemed a big fish,...

By John Dos Passos. (Robert Hale, 25s.) Tuts combination of a distinguished subject and a distinguished writer promises more than in fact it offers. John Dos Passos's technical...

LAND, 1823-29. By James A. Reynolds. (Yale University Press. Geoffrey Cumberlege, 30s.) Ir is odd that historians have paid so little attention to the campaign for Catholic...

BY PHILIDOR No. 10. W. GEARY Solution to last week's problem by fences, e.g. 1 . . . Q-Kt 6; 2 Q x R. 1 . . . B-R 6; 2 Q-B 3. 1 . . . B x P; 2 Q-R 5. Note also 1 . . . Px R;...

'Scientific minds have bent themselves to the problem of water divining. Here is a quotation from Theodore von Karman's Aerodynamics (1954), p. 160,' says Mr. A. E. Boyd, of...

THE drought continues and, although the sky has been overcast once or twice, looks like remaining for some time. Not long ago caravanners were reported to be coming to blows...

THIS is a sound, thorough and illuminating account of a chaotic period, which neverthe- less produced works that speak to us over more than a century more appealingly than they...

submit a set of rules for the guidance of competition setters and judges. Sarcasm is not ruled out. Verse : not more than six couplets. Prose : not more than 150 words....

34 Vicarogc Road, Birmingham 15, and MR. J. G. SKINNER, 150 Brighton Road, Purley, Surrey.

• SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 284 Report by Cinna Competitors were invited to write about 'My Daily Express' for the Archbishop of Canterbury; 'My Tatter,' by Aneurin Bevan; 'My...

ACROSS 1 The copy-writer's production is down to earth (8). 5 I separate the warrant-officer from self, or do I? (6). 9 Study the undertaking with success in view (8). 10...

By CUSTOS IT must be difficult for the layman to keep up with the stock market's vicissitudes. After dropping nearly 10 points at the end of last week the index of industrial...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT CONFUSION reigns in the stock markets. Things have come to a pretty pass when investment is turned into speculation, when the Stock Exchange becomes a...