T HE Egyptian Government is living uncomfortably from hand to mouth. It deliberately created the impression that abrogation of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty would lead to the...

Despite recurrent expressions of disgust and near-despair, most of them coming, curiously enough, from United Nations spokes- men, the Korean armistice negotiations have still...

The sense of confusion and exasperation which is apt to be produced by each new wave of terrorist action in Malaya must surely be dispelled by the statement which the Secretary...

The decision of the Minister of Commonwealth Relations to permit the return of Tshekedi Khama to his home in the Bamangwato territory on certain conditions does credit to Lord...

Much more significance than is immediately apparent attaches to the voting for the third of three vacant places on the Security Council at Paris. The two favoured candidates...

Opposition to Dr. Moussadek has. grown More vocal, not so 'much because his oil policies have proved a failure as because of his attack on civil liberties. There is no sign that...

It is a pity that the Minister of Education's circular asking local authorities to reduce their planned expenditure on main grant services in 1952-53 by 5 per cent. could not be...

M PAUL-HENRI SPAAK is a distinguished politician in his small country, and to some extent outside it. • but nothing in his present or his past qualifies him to lecture, not to...

political world, decided to run for Parliament in the first decade of the Century he went to R. C. Hawkin, secretary of the Eighty Club, and offered to take the most difficult...

spell, if spelling can be learnt, I am told that Archbishop Temple, at a Speech Day at a Yorkshire school, told the boys they need not worry if they couldn't spell correctly,...

the decision of his predecessor and announced that licensed-houses in the new towns are not to be State-managed. Little though any unnecessary State activity is to be welcomed...

or in village inns, little circles , form who (in the clubs, at any rite) lunch at the same table, take their coffee in some corner of the smoking-room and discuss the affairs...

published this week a very interesting account of Mr. Gladstone's last Cabinet in 1894, and in particular of the impas- sioned discussions as to the succession. It ultimately...

stimulating experience—and a much more cheerful one than when this cultured and intensely able man was last here con- tending with Mr. Gordon Walker. Tshekedi has no concern...

I T may be argued in some German quarters that Dr. Adenauer's visit to London did not bring any spectacular or even any " tangible " results. But there are diplomatic occasions...

By FRANCIS BOYD T O catch the true flavour of the new House of Commons, which ended the first month of its activity last week, one must contrast it with that of 1945. (The...

By RICHARD CHANCELLOR 0 NE day last week five men left Moscow to confer with Stalin at his isolated " Kurort " among the pines of Sochi, on the Black Sea coast. The identity of...

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P. D URING my lifetime, so far as I know, the favourite has lost the University Rugger Match only once. That, and here the letters begin to pour in,...

Going Up Late By N. E. BUXTON (Worcester College, Oxford) c UT haven't you left it rather late ? " The question was - often put to me before I arrived in Oxford, and it has...

- By HAROLD NICOLSON HE College of Preceptors in Bloomsbury Square provides three annual lectures in memory of Joseph Payne, a former Vice-President and the first Professor of...

play might be subtitled "Responsibilities." A deft plot leads the curious spectator through scene after scene of increasing com- plexity and thickening unpleasantness, calms his...

THEATRE "The Clandestine Marriage." By George Colman and David Garrick. (Old Vic.) Tins plain, brisk and noisily actable Garrick-Colman comedy is at bottom a comment on...

"Westward the Women." (Empire.)---“ Three Telegrams.* (Academy.) THE women going west in Mr. William Wellman's long and only moderately entertaining film are 140 females...

To most people in this country Egon Wellesz is little more than a name. Those who do know his musie rate him very high. Wilfrid Mellers, in an essay devoted to him in Studies...

THE Ballet Workshop's present programme is its tenth and also its best to date. This is not surprising, for two of the four items are choreographed by Walter Gore and a third by...

IT seems fitting that for its winter exhibition of Festival Year the Royal Academy should have gone back to the first hundred years of its existence, from 1769 to 1868. These...

THE usurpation in France looks baser and bracker the more closely it is examined. It has been carried into effect with wanton massacre, and is supported by fraud and lies. The...

In the Christmas number of The Derbyshire Countryside, Sir Osbert Sitwell refers to sickles being still made at Renisbaw for export to Chile and Peru. Before handing over my...

I Have received a number of reports of the wide distribution of fieldfares or " felties" this winter, and this week I saw a small flock in the pasture bordering my...

about the return of the wild geese to the Severn Dumbles writes me of the effect of a sudden thunderstorm in late November upon the abundant wild bird-life between Frampton and...

Let it not be fondly imagined that the mythopoeic faculty has been superannuated in the countryside by urban encroachment. Half a century ago there lived an old crone in the...

The surviving gander in my orchard is a portly old party whose chief pleasure in life is being mauled by my bull-terrier, a formidable-looking dog of the utmost amiability. She...

A prize of ES was offered for a translation of Joachim du BeHay's sonnet : " Heureux qui comme Ulysse. . . ." A large field of competitors, many of whom produced most pleasing...

Set by Richard Usborne A prize of ES, which may be divided, ii offered for a notice, suitable for insertion in the Classified Advertisements columns of the Spectator, offering...

have been very interested in the letter of " S.M." and that of Mr. H. J. Massingham in your recent issues. No import duties, quotas, restrictions or voluntary marketing boards...

Srit—I write as an admirer both of the Spectator and the Guardian, and I write with real regret -to answer the paragraph in your Spectator's Notebook of December 7th. The...

SIR,—A few weeks ago I invited, in a Spectator CompetitioN imitation circulars from the Ministry of Education " explaining " the curious anomaly that boarders at maintained...

The Future of Cyprus Sut,Owing to absence from London I have only today read the article under this title appearing in your issue of November 23rd. Even if I cannot entirely...

to escape the attentions of secret police in Eastern Europe. I have found the following technique adequate in several countries. Mount a tram, noting that no one mounts with...

Mr. Ascoli of the Idehurst Press for having thought that the colour-photography, colour-blocks and colour-printing of the Library of Great Painters were American and not...

born in .1867. I am now 84: time-span 149 years. My father's earliest memory was being taken on his mother's knee and told, "We have won a great battle and lost a great hero"...

regret that by a typing error, I made Senator Taft's proposal less serious than it was. He proposed a grant of $1,000,000,000, i.e., a

the question where the 2,0 1 ) million pennies now in circulation go." May I refer him to the article on page 766, of the Spectator, December 7th. 1951?*---Yours faithfully.

rises above the level of gossip or goes beyond the events of last week) has, for a long time, been bedevilled by abstractions. When it escapes vulgar realism, it becomes the...

BEr.morrr is "the seat of Portia, on the continent," and the music the last act of The Merchant of Venice. The music is Greek and golden. The Provost of King's is disposed to...

Mission with Mountbatten. By Alan Campbell - Johnson. (Robert Hale. 2 SS.) Loan MoutsrraArrEN OF BURMA went to India early in 1947 with a mandate to hand over to the Indian...

WILL somebody find me a windmill and lend me a cap ?—Here goes, then I I adore Ardizzone. For years I have loved my Love with an A, and this year, with Tim and Charlotte...

The East End of London. By Millicent Rose. (Cresset Press. 315. 6c1.) I SUPPOSE impartial writing is horribly dull. A healthy hate is certainly salt and pepper to a...

Some I Knew Well. By Clifford Bax. (Phoenix House. US.) HERE are pen-portraits and memories of two dozen or more characters, most of them famous, whom Mr. Bax has chosen from...

French Painting'. By Basil Taylor. (Thames & Hudson. 42s.) THE WO great art movements of our millennium occurred in the Italian Renaissance and during the later half of the...

Alexander Pope. By Bonamy Dobree. ..(Sylvan Press. i2s. 6d.) - PROFESSOR DOBREE would be 'the first to accept the description of his brief study of Pope as a "slim volume," in...

tos. 6d.) IN a 30-page essay on Perez Galdos in his recently published Literature of the Spanish People, Mr. Gerald Brenan calls him "far the greatest of Spanish novelists"...

Nikolaus Pevsner. (Penguin Books. 3s. 6d. each.) THIS series is as essential as the Ordnance Survey map for any walker, cyclist or motorist with an eye for buildings. In it he...

Company. 455.) HERE, at last, is a book on cookery and household management which is no mere shadow of Mrs. Beeton, Good House- keeping Institute's Home Encyclopaedia has a...

Berthold Biermann. , (Peter Owen. 2 Is.) EXCELLENT though this book is in concep- tion, it is ruined by the poverty of its translation. The selection from Goethe's letters and...

The Squire of Piccadilly. Memories of William Stone in conversation with Henry Baerlein. (JarroIds.ifs.) "An ! That reminds me of the ladder we used to have .. . as we sailed...

(S.C.M. Press. us. 6d.) FLORENCE ALLSHORN was not widely known outside a limited circle. Dr. Oldham is, and the fact that he has thought it worth while to write her life is...

and sympathetic account of one of the most complex periods of our literary history. Mr. Scott-James is well qualified to - write about it, as he has played an active part in it,...

with a Supplement. Revised by Anne Ridler. (Faber and Faber. 125. 6d.) WHEN Michael Roberts died, he was about to undertake - the revision of this best of modern anthologies,...

write:— THE CIRCULATION MANAGER, "Spectator," 99 Gower Street, Loudon, W.C.I

equivalent of doll or clockwork-train, a safe last-minute buy as a Christmas present for the literate. A compendium such as this, which aims at having a little bit of something...

the finan- cial implications of Mr. Butler. After the sharp break this week long-dated gilt edged stocks are practically on a 41- per cent, yield basis and industrial ordinary...

111E1 non MIMPIr11.7=1 rrri EIPOPEIMCIC2 &1121111315121MIGIENna e! PI El K1 n FINEIMOISI E.1 Mr rg n iranclmraNsagn ; i n 13 a P-1 SOLUTION ON DECEMBER 28 Laburnum The winner...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Monday week, December 24th, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...