rela- tions shivering into near-frostiness. American De- fence Secretary Mr. McNamara came to London but with no Christmas gifts for the British Government. Instead he prepared...

M R. DEAN ACHESON'S speech hardly justifies the reactions which it excited in the United Kingdom. The former Secretary of State did little more than point to the evident...

XCEPF for the last slanging match het" een George Brown and Enoch Powell. the t ' vti : day debate on the London Government Bill g aV ; little foretaste of the battle royal that...

T HE uncertainty which surrounds the future of the Skybolt missile has thrown a further shadow of doubt upon Britain's ambition to re- main an independent nuclear power. By the...

D ESCRIBED by the late Sir Waldron Smithers as 'pink socialism,' but overwhelmingly adopted by the Conservative Party Conference in 1947, the Workers' Charter for Industry...

A correspondent writes : THE troubles in Brunei should not have come as such a great surprise. It is early to unravel all the contributing trends—local nationalisms, C ommunist...

From our Common Market Correspondent BRUSSELS What does this really amount to? The answer is not so clear-cut as one would like. There is cer- tainly a large element of...

F rom MURRAY KENIPTON B URIED somewhere beneath the flood of words occasioned by Mr. Dean Acheson's speech to the West Point cadets lies a grain of truth which irritates the...

Owing to the holiday period, the Spectator will be published a day early next week, i.e., on Thursday, December 20.

U NEIL two months ago the Yemen was the most inaccessible country in the world. Fewer than fifty Britons had even visited the Arabia Felix of the ancient world, that moun-...

From SARAH GAINHAM BONN C HANCELLOR ADENAUER has, almost unbe- lievably, agreed to retire, and implicitly, by the inclusion of Economics Minister Erhard among those re-forming...

By ELISABETH STOCKWELL* T HE London Government Bill has just had its second reading in the House of Commons. As the early debate foreshadows, it will have a stormy passage...

. I think that the Postmaster-General would be tll-advised to heed voices asking for steps to be taken about the BBC's late-Saturday-night fun and game s What strikes me about...

T klE report by the International Commission of twists on Spain and the Rule of Law Prove s a• ;ni g ht be expected. that the only rule in Spain is Franco's wishes. [here are...

There's nothing like the Varsity Match to bring on an epidemic of one-day flu. The tor- rential rain at midday on Tuesday must have kept some of these flu victims at home in...

proverb puts it, Ziu prbvishnioglik vr ntnynopil- monsgripiye kvk lotnniaposcgur nionutikrgyliober- iZic, which roughly translated means, 'Shop Early for Christmas.' But what...

I have always thou g ht of the Salem system of education for boys as neither more nor less than the English public school pushed still farther towards absurdity. Dr. Kurt Hahn,...

phuric acid and coal dust, I found myself wonder- ing, during last week's blackout, why we attach SO little urgency to the suppression of such a lethal phenomenon. In the great...

By DAVID MITCHELL \FrEa. a short stay in Britain, most of the i Tristan da Cunhans cannot wait to get back to their lonely rock and the sanities of a sub- s:sterice economy....

Sin,—Starbuck's reminder about anti-Semitism is timely. The ex-liberal anti-liberal cynic is on the WaY to becoming a more formidable enemy of progres - sive thought in this...

A. Phillips Griffiths, A. E. Tomlinson The 'Observer' and Cuba. Lou is Blom-Cooper Gentility Kingsley A mis Company Directors Sir Richard POWell, A. H. Jollific Unesco David...

SIR,—Mr. R. J. Rees asks how one man Can :!c t as a director of so many—perhaps fifty—compan ies at the same time. The explanation is quite simple- Confusion arises because of...

the heading: 'Over to the Offensive! The impression that Tory writers always try to give is that the Labour Party is 'averse to change.' As a matter of fact the situation is...

Sta,--In the course of Starbuck's faint-hearted apology to the Observer for his earlier criticism of that paper's comment on the report of the Inter- national Commission of...

. 1 is strange that no use appears hitherto to have i been made of Article 52 of the Rome Treaty n the Present Common Market negotiations over agricul- ture. This article...

Alchemist at the Old Vic contains so many inaccuracies that I am obliged for the first and I hope last time to write, as a member of the cast, daring to criticise the critic;...

attention last week to the publication by Unesco of What you have reason to describe as 100 per cent. Soviet State-sponsored propaganda. A thorough in- vestigation into Unesco...

Sire,—In Western Germany the VVN ('Association of Victims of Nazism') is threatened with proscrip- tion as a 'Communist' organisation. The VVN has four presidents. Dr. Rossaint...

cards and messages of support to those who are persecuted because of their opposition to apartheid. A list of those under house arrest and other political prisoners is available...

not to write such silly statements as that the former Chancellor restricted the price of the car a managing director may ride about in. It's not his business, nor ours, unless...

Wagnerians By DAVID CAIRNS THE ravens have been seen over Covent Garden; 'this Ende" is at hand. For the 'rumour is that Hotter is to re- tire and become intendant of a major...

A Kind of Hero By ISABEL QUIGLY P r ehensibly remote by what has .come since. To People of his own generation or' even of the one straight after it there was nothing suspect...

Moneywise By BAMBER GASCOIGNE Semi-Detached. (Saville.) THERE is some deep nation tic law governing people' s ( reactions to satirical comedi es about family life. Plays...

Dancing to Truth By CLIVE BARNES It is now nearly a decade since Graham gave her solitary London season. It met with financial disaster and, although few enough recognised it...

Reg Butler's Ideas By NE VILE WALLIS SPECTAT OR. DECEMBER 1 4 , 1 962 powers of discovery,' he tells students, warning them also against acquiring a set of trick% clichés like...

Oversize By CLIFFORD HANLEY Still . . 'distinguished' author . . . Maybe the adjective implies that Signor Pugliese is also a draper manqué, and this possibility is streng-...

LEWIS NKOSI Who is Africa? IT had seemed, until very recently, that the granting of political freedom and independence to Africans would solve most of the problems facing...

Lord Byron's Wife. By Malcolm Elwin. (Mac- donald, 45s.) ANY biographical work on Byron must be measured by the distance it goes towards recon- ciling us to the burning of the...

The Quiet Canadian. By H. Montgomery Hy de ' (I-famish Hamilton, 25s.) Central Intelligence Agency. By Andrew Te ll)( ' (Arthur Barker, 21s.) MONTGOMERY HYDE'S account of the...

I WILL state my objections to Mrs. Zinkin's book, Reporting India, right away, but I hope this won't put anyone off reading it, for, in spite of the objections which I make, it...

And so, my homosexual friend, Goodbye. The leave-taking has not been all we wisheu* My plans were modified, your plans were (O il ed ' l Marriage, they say, makes children of us...

The Iperess File, by Len Deighton (Hodder and Stoughton, 15s.), is a very fine thriller indeed with a beautiful air of authenticity, and I don't want anyone writing in to say...

Best Fantasy Stories. Edited by Brian W. Aldiss. (Faber, 16s.) Winter Tales 8. Edited by A. D. Maclean. (Macmillan, 25s.) Pick of Today's Short Stories. Edited by John Pudney....

Imitated from the Chinese The moonlight on my bed keeps me awake; Living alone now, aware of the voices of evening, A child weeping at nightmares, the faint love. cries of a...

By CUSTOS B A:vie rate is not now likely to be reduced till s month. With all the window-dressing $Fbic 1 1, goes on in the financial world at the end 0 ' this month, the first...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT IT is really useless to discuss unemployment in the North without discussing the rate The Conservative Government has been run- ning the country on too...

p onths's, the holiday-camp group. produces excellent accounts for the year to March 31, 1962, with pre-tax profits of £368,398 against £ 1 41,136. These include for the first...

By ANGELA MILNE A LOT has happened to the English language lately. For example, there was what the beatniks did to it. They did plenty to clothes when they reduced their own to...

Tear-jerkers By LESLIE ADRIAN TEARS around the Christ- mas tree are not caused only by over-eating or over-excitement. The howl that went up from one small boy of my ac-...