million pounds for the Universities and goodness knows how much for the Blue Streak guided missile; encouraging noises from the direction of Zurich and confused ones from...

T HE differences over the Anglo-Egyptian agree- ment have produced surprisingly little re- crimination and there has been no tendency to use them as an excuse for resuming...

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1959

W HEN the four American army lorries de- tained at Helmstedt were eventually released by the Russians the other day they drove off to the West, reported the correspondent of The...

By DARSIE T must be a perpetual surprise to the political Irowdies that they are covered with flowers one day and contemptuously scattered by the police another. It was no doubt...

By IAN GILMOUR Geneva N o disarmament without trust, no trust without disarmament. The result over , the last few years has been neither trust nor dis- armament. At the Geneva...

Tituaso is almost literally as far away from Westminster as it is possible to get without actually leaving-the mainland. Neverthe- less in a few minutes we are go- ing there....

collection I mentioned last week. A reader in Bath thinks highly of, and quotes from memory, the News of the World's CHICKEN-SEXER WITH TWO FALSE LEGS ACCUSED OF BIGAMY But...

MR. LENNOX-BOYD, all thumbs in the Mediterranean, fre- quently shows dexterity in other parts of the world. He has done well, for instance, to promise the people of the...

strained : the fact that most newspapers are very unhappy that one of the nation's more important unions should be led by Communists produces inevitable stresses. I notice that...

from the one about Labour councillors and their rights of free speech. When the British Board of Film Censors refused their licence to an East German film called Operation...

that 'the real decision' on these matters is not that of the law officers, but that of 'a jury with a judge.' But the distinguished signatories of the letter to The Tittles who...

abstractions, 'the law' and 'literary merit.' In his letter this week 'literary merit' still holds its place, but this time it is opposed not by 'the law,' but by 'indecency.'...

open the 'continent a a hundred years ago it has been comfortably assumed in Britain that Africa was destined to be a Christian continent. Intensive mission propa- ganda with...

Swot or Bunk By GEORGE SCOTT through the green swing doors and ring the handbell for afternoon school. At home, l run to the bathroom, dab at the remains of custard and banana...

FEBRUARY 15, 1834 Some sensation was prodUced on Tuesday afternoon through Marylebone,. by several seizures made on householders for arrears of House . and Window taxes. A...

By KENNETH MELLANBY U NIVERSITIES, schools and research stations must build vast new laboratories in the next few years, if scientific progress in Britain is to continue. Many...

Swans 'You must not call it a charm school,' said John Douglas reprovingly. 'They learn a great deal more than charm here.' He explained the system : daytime model classes...

Just Fancy By ALAN BRIEN Madame De . . . and Traveller Without Luggage. (Arts.)— Progress To The Park. (Royal Court.) ANOUILII is often just a fashionable refurbisher of fairy...

America First By PETER FORSTER IN effect, you can view it all on Sundays—the big variety shows, quizzes, religious pro- grammes, interviews, the most terrible, the most...

The Thickest Paint in London By SIMON HODGSON Mr. Bratby is interested in two sorts of painting; intellectually he tries, and to my mind succeeds, in pattern-making on his...

Clocks belled twelve. Main Street showed other- wise Than its suburb of woods : nimbus- Lit, but unpeopled, held its windows Of wedding pastries, Diamond rings, potted roses,...

The Painter's Eye By ISABEL QUIGLY The Horse's Mouth, (CI a union t.), — Gigi. (Columbia.) THE deb who announced at the premiere of The Horse's Meath (director : Ronald Neame;...

Everybody's Diet By MILES HOWARD AT a dinner party the other night my hostess noticed that I took no potatoes and little other starch, and asked if I was on a diet. I replied...

Whisking Whiskers Away By LESLIE ADRIAN NOBODY has yet succeeded in making an electric razor to suit all kinds of beard and skin. Some people, therefore, who might find them...

By STRIX I FIND it di ffi cult to account for the malaise which the epithet 'top' arouses in me. When I read about top executives, top models and top people (especially top...

SIR,—it is a novel idea and one that does not stand up to investigation that the law officers who are 'charged with the defence of public decency should let themselves be guided...

S1R,—Regarding your television critic's notice pub- lished in the Spectator last week, I, too, think Henry Kaplan is a superb director—one of the very few capable of achieving...

obscene publications it seems to me that every- one is saying the same thing without coming to any conclusion. Lolita, obviously, is disgusting in the sense that it portrays...

Rev. Herbert R. Barton Litter C. C. Miller `No Fixed Abode' James Ormerod The Rumbotham Saga John Marlin The Middle East • Daphne Slee 'Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat' L. S....

a quality which can be possessed by a book which possesses nothing else. In the case of a work of fiction the quality is used in the service of telling an imagined story. The...

again on the subject of jazz! Again he succeeds in wedging both his 'pedal extremities' (as the late Fats Waller would have said) very firmly in his articulate mouth. Would...

SIR,—After reading Mr. Wilde's letter to you in your last issue, I am forced to the conclusion that he simply does not know what the litter scourge amounts to. To talk of litter...

SIR,—England did not 'forestall rather than passively await' attack by Hitler. She said that she would de- clare war on him if he attacked Poland; and he did and she did. If...

SIR,—It is stated that British Railways in their programme of new carriages are now ceasing to build coaches with compartments for second-class passengers. Open saloons are...

Wales was to 'see for himself,' his memory must be as short as that of the average party stalwart. This was his second visit within nine months (not counting that holiday at—was...

SIR,—The letters about Sir Winston Churchill's im- mortal offer of 'blood, toil, tears and sweat' remind me of another Prime Minister and of another phrase less happily linked...

well served by Leslie Adrian's article 'Worm i' the WOod.' Apart from many factual errors it is disappointing to see encouragement given in a journal of the standing of the...

Peter's, Reforms By CHRISTOPHER HILL K LYUCFIEVSKY, greatest of Russian historians, died in 1910. Here is a new translation of the fourth volume of his History of Russia.* It...

In Defence of the Earth. By Kenneth Rexroth. (Hutchinson, 15s.) The Next Word. By Thomas Blackburn. (Putnam, 7s. 6d.) The Cocks of Hades. By C. A. Trypanis. (Faber, 12s. 6d.)...

The Motor Industry. By George Maxcy and Social Economics. By Walter Hagenbuch. (Nisbet' • and C.U.P., 12s. 6d.) To the g eneral public, Cambridge economists are probably best...

The Vet's Daughter. By Barbara Comyns. (Heinemann, 13s, 6d.) A Woman Besieged. By Desmond Stewart. (Heinemann, 16s.) A Way of Love. By James Courage. (Cape, 15s.) THIRTY or...

LiissING is perhaps a critic's critic; he retains his classical status without being much read by the world at large. Why is Laocoon a classic? It is a short but untidy and...

Faintly Rebecca-ish piece abon strange New England household, in which , hu band and beautiful young wife are at mysteriou' daggers drawn, and it seems that mischief wit be...

(and proof - reading), but humane and humorous anecdotal account o fourteen years as District Attorney in remoter Michigan, with some rollicking rural rapes, murder or so and...

The Evil Eye. By Boileau and Narcejac, (Hutch inson, 12s. 6d.) Two contes in one cover, by th diabolically ingenious authors of The Prisoner: one a taut little piece about a...

into Hungary and Bul• garia a couple of years ago, and didn't like the people much or the regimes at all. No reason , whY he should, but his fictionalised account (in which he...

amiable Fred and Bessie get a job looking after an old man, and the old man dies, as had others. The smart-aka lawyer Arthur Crook, as flamboyant as ever, but much more...

The Shakespearean Ethic. By John Vyvyan. (Chatto and Windus, 18s.) The Shakespearean Ethic. By John Vyvyan. (Chatto and Windus, 18s.) MR. VYVYAN undertakes to refute A. C....

13s. 6d.) The mur- dered man had spurned his mistress, flouted his wife, insulted his secretary and inexplicably asked three old enemies to come and stay. All had motive,...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT REJon . ING in the City over the divestiture of the Capital Issues Committee has been loud and universal. It has been the most hated of all the agencies...

By CUSTOS rr HE market position is unchanged. Gilt - edged 1 stocks are out of favour-although, with bill rate down to 3 per cent. the case for a 34 per cent. Bank rate, which...

L EYLAND MOTORS have, like ACV„, experienced a difficult trading year to Sep- tember 30, 1958. The booming conditions in the motor industry for private car manufacturers have...

At Question Time in the House of Commons a Minister has been known to read out, as the answer to one of the questions put to him, the reply prepared for a different question....

basis. 10 Harris. 12 Patrico. 13 Rcntier. 14 Reformations. 17 Afterthought. 22 Holster. 23 Pivotal. 24 Litter. 25 Spurious. 26 Troyer. 27 Gladness. DOWN.-1 Champs. 2 Near-to....

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 467: Report by Russell Edwards Competitors were asked to suggest the opening sentences of the as yet unwritten book they would read without hesitation...

ACROSS 1 Hard to summon us about noth- ing (7) 5 ' He is a —; let us leave him; pass ' (Shakespeare) (7) 9 Put her on the river (5) 10 Cowboy film addict? (9) 11 Ruins the...