p ERHAPS the expulsion of that questionable character Dr. Cort indicates that McCarthyism has penetrated to high places in the Home Office. Perhaps the conviction of Captain...

• The appearance of gentlemen called Oberlaender and Preusker in the administration of the Federal Republic is one symptom of a return to normality. The strikes in Hamburg and...

No. 6 5 8 1 FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 1954 PRICE 7d.

The agreement on Persian oil under which an international consortium will operate Abadan on a forty year lease from the Persian Government appears to save everybody's bacon. (It...

Featured on the back page of The Times, in the next picture to five, strapping, brown Egyptian channel swimmers, Mr. Attlee, Mr. Bevan and Dr. Summerskill looked sadly under-...

• On Tuesday night, M. Mendes-France won a vote of con- fidence on his bill for special powers to carry out his economic programme, and he won, with a bit more of a struggle, a...

The signature at Bled of the Balkan alliance between Greece. Yugoslavia and Turkey, although it does not carry with it any- thing more than a consultative commitment on the part...

Nineteen hundred dockers at Southampton went on strike last week-end because there was work to be done on Saturday afternoon. Saturday afternoons are for football. So passengers...

N OW that a ' relaxation of tension ' prevails, for the moment, in the cold war, colonial skeletons come jangling out into the open to keep the West on the hop. Here the...

Some people I know employ a chauffeur who discovered, on the eve of his holiday, that a mistake' had been made and the seaside lodgings which he thought he had booked were not...

for Two Farthings will remember that thp kid in question had one horn and was believed by the East End urchin who acquired it to be unicorn. A film of the story is now being...

I am going away for the next three weeks. During two of them these notes will be written by Mr. John Betjeman, the well-known speleologist and man-about-town. Next week they...

The Whitgiftiatz records that the following Old Whitgiftians have burst into print during the past year: K. H. Jacksbn (1920-28), Professor of Celtic Languages and Literature at...

I do not know how many alumnae of Smith College, in Massachusetts, there are altogether, but I believe it is the .world's largest college for women, so there must be a fair few....

I F SEATO, in one form or another, comes into being, its military forces will presumably be placed under a Supreme Commander, who will—again presumably—be either American or...

A small, round, rather prim man sat next to me at the snack counter; when he had finished his steak and kidney pie he asked for some biscuits and butter. Certainly, sir,' said...

BY THOMAS HODGKIN Asmara T O arrive in Addis Ababa from Nairobi is like finishing a highly organised nightmare and beginning a vague but pleasant dream. The only people in...

By KINGSLEY AMIS I T seemed funny that the first Press button ever to become fixed to my lapel should have on it, not ' Press.' but ' Y Wag.' - It seemed funny in a different...

By A. H. BARTON p URBRIGHT was.drinking a glass of Melbourne bitter with his next-door neighbour, who was leaning over the wall, and with his fellow-Englishman, Cranmer, who was...

By SIR CARLETON ALLEN D AILY it is borne in upon me that there is something incorrigibly wrong in my attitude towards nature and ' the conquest of environment.' When thousands...

To make sure of receiving your Spectator when you are on holiday, send us your holiday address and we will post the paper to you—at 81d. per copy. Instruc- tions to: Sales...

ONCE upon a time there was a little girl who was the daughter of the chauffeur to, a very rich family living in a very rich house in a very rich part of Long Island. One day her...

Gerhard Marcks. (Arts Council Gallery). WE know very little of German sculpture in this country; for this reason—and, it may be, correctly: neglected knowledge must be...

(Tubil8, 2nd century A.D.) Theon to his father Theon greetings. An- other Fine thing it was, father, not to take me to town. I will not write, or speak, or settle down, Unless...

THE radio play would, it was confidently asserted, be one of the first casualties from the competition of television. So far this has not happened; and the straight play on...

The pond in Mr. Murplc's yard, I feel it in my shoes ' • Deep in my shoes I feel the pond In Mr. Murple's yard. And how much wiser will I be When I am in the pond? When over...

I MUST confess that I usually face an evening's folk dancing in the theatre with prejudice and apprehension. I strongly believe that so much of the charm and appeal of country...

long film to no good purpose, The Caine Mutiny is a finely rounded, compact piece of work, intelli- gently written, admirably acted and directed with the minimum of fuss....

SIR, —Mr. Maurice Cranston writes that surely if you enjoin a mu - se not to not tell ( 1 .e. deceive) a patient you enjoin her to tell.' Surely this a blunder. Deceiving is not...

SIR, — The note on old people's problems in the Spectator of July 30 raises once again the question of providing suitable accommo- dation for them. After the publication of my...

VIX AND THE VASE Darsie Gillie does well to draw attentioti again to the Vix Burial, now housed for all to see in the little museum at Chatilion- Sur-Seine. It was Mr. Gillie...

SIR, —In his article ' The Abdication Story to Date ' Mr. Curry adds curiously little to that which is already known; and your own some- what supercilious note at the beginning...

- SIR.—Mr. John Arlott, writing on ' Euphonies V. Crakes' says, with reference to ' an old Wisden': ' It was intriguing to obey the in- struction of the entry " Blayds, Mr. E....

Regimental Lore' in your issue of July 30 'it is stated that ' there are now no Camp- ; hells of Inverawe but the family is represen- ted by Angus Campbell, the 20th Hereditary...

the discovery of whose name in an early Wisden caused your correspondent Mr. Arlott to speculate on the possible reasons for the change of name, was clearly a kinsman of ' C. S....

intelligent assessment of The Cantos of Ezra Pound. The failure of most contemporary criticism to tackle this admittedly difficult' problem is disheartening. It has some...

E. Brown will doubtless acknowledge that the sinequa e t ion of all intelligent discussion is the d ^ i- tion of one's terms; yet in his letter ofTmi 23 this is what he fails to...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 232 Report by E. W. Fordham ' Come into the garden; I want my roses to see you.' Could a more graceful conaliment be paid to anyone? A prize of £5 was...

MANY thousands of people dream of retiring to the country and finding some quiet corner where they can spend their days in peace. A large number never realise their dream. A few...

At the cottage the pheasant hen is about with two chicks now. Looking out of the cottage window, I could see the three birds moving along the side of the garden among the tall...

There was a time when I could make my way to a fairly secluded hollow not so far from the road and pick a quantity of wild raspberries which, if they are smaller than the garden...

prize of £5 is offered for a translation itt similar form of the following sonnet by Jacques Grevin: Nous disons que les Rois ne demandent que guerre, Qu'ils y ptiennent...

I N the year 1898 what was called ` The Crisis, in the Church of England ' was being proclaimed by some of the news- papers as acute. A preposterous little Tappertit of a...

Critics Cauterised By C. B. FRY M EDIOCRITY ex vi termini is not permitted to first- class cricketers any more than to poets. Still less to Test match cricketers, who being the...

The entry for the competition for a review of Sir Osbert Sitwell's new book The Four Continents Was sufficiently good, both in quantity and quality, to justify the setting of...

Territorial Thespians By ANTHONY THWAITE (Christ Church, Oxford) I 6 T'S cushy, mate. You're just a flaming actor.' My companion had been kipping—that military activity...

Several overseas readers have written to the Spectator to ask if books, which they had difficulty in obtaining, could be sent to them. The Spectator will gladly arrange for...

1. a. Tirana. b. Juneau. c. Djakarta. d. There is no official capital. e. Windhoek. 2. a. That slid into my soul. Coleridge. b. And palms before my feet. G. K. Chesterton (from...

.Israel Zangwill By WOLF MANKOWITZ I SRAEL ZANGWILL'S father was sent to England to escape the military conscription imposed upon Jewish children in Tsarist Russia. When...

little - daunted at being confronted by yet two more travel books? We have recently had sagas from Sardinia, Greece, Mexico, Sicily and many other places, and such a host of...

Ambassadors and Secret Agents. By Alfred Cobban. (Cape. 21s.) IT is a pity that Mr. Cobban has embellished with so blood-and- thunder a title what is in fact tt - most patient...

A Spring Journey and Other Poems of 1952-1953. By James Kirkup. (0.U.P. 8s. 6d.) The Birth of Venus. By John Smith. (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d.) Two different moments govern the...

The Four Continents. By Osbert Sitwell. (Macmillan. 25s.) SIR OSBERT SITWELL'S new book takes the shape of `discursions on travel, art and life'; that is, it has no formal...

District Commissioner. By Kenneth Austin Dobson. (Museum Press. 10s. 6d.) The Soldier at the Door. By Edith Pargeter. (Heinemann. 12s. 6d.) The Welsh Sonata. By James Hanley....

Barney's pelagic paramour was the abalone, the only mollusc, aside from the chambered nautilus, that has inspired both verse and song. WHAT is this, Aldous in an aqualung?...

(Cassell. 25s.) THIS is the last volume of the series and con- tains fifty-four short biographies of compo- sers born since 1860. Britten is the youngea inclusion but...

a companion to Edward Conze's Buddhism and contains a width of illustrative material designed to interest both the student and the general reader. The names of the editors arc a...

Circe and Ulysses. By William Browne of THERE has been a confluence of talent in the production of this book. The printers have given us a physical object of great beauty. The...

same spirit of the age: both are concerned with setting the emphasis on content rather than on form, and with finding universality through the particular rather than through the...

confessed Mrs. Templeton While visiting a noisy milk-bottling centre in Parma; but she must have been very happy Writing this book, for she keeps up a remark- able garrulity for...

line drawings by Oscar Mellor. (The Fantasy Press. 35s.) FROM (roughly) Howell's translation of the `fable of Narcissus' in 1560 to the mammoth composite translation of the...

By CUSTOS THE present high activity on the Stock Exchange is unprecedented for an August, but so is the weather which is delaying 'summer' holidays. The Persian oil settle-...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE market rightly took the view that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company had done very well out of the Persian oil agreement, that it had secured a deal far...

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