T RE changes in British defence policy which have been inaugurated by Mr. ThorneycroWs arrival at that Ministry seem likely to give a new and more realistic look to our armed...

safest method of travel known to man with a casualty list of nil. At the weekend the Soviet Union put first one, and then a second spaceman safely into orbit. Lieut.-Colonel...

By JULIAN CR1TCHLEY, 11P M g. THORNENCR011 has done well to scrap Blue Water. His decision means that at long last an attempt is to be made to relate British defence policy to...

T HE anniversary of the building of the Berlin wall has come and gone not without ominous mutterings from the direction of Moscow. The wall stands, an ugly monument to tyranny...

T HE news that Governor Nelson A. Rocke- feller is already actively lining up for the Presidential campaign of 1964 should act as a spur to those Democrats who have consistently...

J HE expulsion of the Anglican Bishop of Accra and the Archbishop of West Africa from Ghana, though exacting sympathy, should come as no great surprise. If Ghana is to gel rid...

From SARAH GAINHAM T HE debate about European strategy continues in Germany to be lively, though with the usual disadvantage that those who analyse the situation are always...

The pooth Issue of THE SPECTATOR A Special Number

A S BOLSHENRKS to the execution wall and Italians to the priest, Americans seem to come for their final revelation to the public relations counsellor. After a decade of natural...

By HENRY FAIRLIE T EW costs of renovating No. 10 Downing Street have soared beyond the original estimates, it was announced last week; but the Labour Party shows little...

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Common Market may be, there can surely only • be agreement about the ethics of trying to enlist a revered elder statesman on one's own side...

T T is rather fascinating to note the way in which 'political movements run true to type. I should think that the rise and decline of CND is some- thing of a classic in the...

immortal verse : Nero and his sycophants Were violating their uncles and aunts. I never saw this distich in print until the recent publication of Edmund Wilson's Night...

events of the long night of Brussels flying to and fro be- tween the Foreign Office and the Quai d'Orsay, and at least one paper (a Sunday) succumbing to an obfuscating attack...

of the Anti- Common Market League got off to a flying start with a press conference last Thursday at which those present on the platform numbered five and the journalists to...

By J. JACKSON I N 1937, in the US, about 107 people died after taking a drug called elixir sulphanilamide. The active ingredient—sulphanilamide — is one of the well-known...

The death of Ralph Lynn brings back memories. Not that I was old enough to see the Aldwych farces in their heyday, but I was taken to some of the films made around them, and I...

By KEITH KYLE W HILE the Belgians are not prepared to stick their necks out any further than the British over economic pressure on Tshombe, they are most anxious to establish...

From MICHAEL ADAMS ROME R OME in August is a city under foreign occu- pation. From the beginning of the month, in a movement which reaches its climax on the 15th (the Feast of...

been reached, its opponents in this country will fall back on one final argument: that no decision should be taken until the electors have been able to pronounce on it, either...

SIR,—Perhaps I might add one more quotation in defence of T. E. Lawrence from John Buchan's autobiography Memory Hold the Door: I am not a tractable person or much of a...

SIR,-1 was struck again by the letter last week from John Terraine (whose past and present patriotism I do not doubt): how precious our nationhood and Empire now seem to be when...

The Lawrence Myth Anne Scott D on't Bank On It Frederick Street, Rev. Austin Lee, Lawrence Wright -One-Way Schemes G. L. Heygate IJS Passports W. D. Paden Not Talking About...

SIR,—Clearly (to use the cliché now popular in the weekly reviews and the posh Sundays) Miss Katharine Whitehorn, in her article 'Don't Bank On It' in the Spectator for August...

SIR, — Mr. Fairlie noted that the Annan Committ ee recommended that Russian should be offered in th e early stages of the curriculum in as many seconda r Y schools as possible....

SIR,—Can it be that Mr. Kingsley Amis is going the way of his professors in Lucky Jim? 'The recent renaissance of the English stage is to me a closed book. . . ."I admit . . ....

except her objection to the listing of cheques by numbers on the statement. After thirty years under this system, I lately changed my bank to one which lists them by the payee's...

the Sunday Times how a virgin mind of sufficient calibre and natural uncorrupted penetration could get nearer a true interpretation of the events narrated in the New Testament...

my ground slightly, may I say that the question may be posed as whether the government of the United States confronts Communists with gaol (a) for their ideas, or (b) for their...

your money into an Irish bank (I mean a real Irish bank, the Republic, not the Six Counties). They couldn't be more helpful and courteous. Some three or four years ago I was...

Whigs, 1832-1886, thanks no doubt to my ba c ! handwriting, there has been an error which I fee', I ought to correct. I did not say, nor did Mr' Southgate, that when the Whigs...

to sneer at Mr. Marples's one-way schemes. But, as anyone who regularly drives in London knows, it was necessary to do something immediately to pre- vent the traffic stopping...

By CRA 1G MeGREGOR TODAY'S popular music has recently aroused many tempers. Knocking the pop, in fact, has be- come a kind of national pastime, one of the few blood sports where...

Social Dancing By CLIVE BARNES EVEN ballet's best friend would hardly claim that it was art with any particular social con- science. Governments could tremble, stock exchanges...

Mix Me a Drink By ISABEL QUICLY Mix Me a Person. (Columbia .) Now, as they say, I've seen everything: Adam Faith Plar ing his guitar in the cn e ' demned cell. It added just...

Playing the Lover By MALCOLM RUTHERFORD Domino. (Cambridge Arts.) NOTHING new in Lon- don. In Oxford last week, in Cambridge this, and in Leeds next, under Prospect...

Laughing Jeremiah By ERIC MOTTRAM 1.V hen the cancer completes its devouring, a great silence will descend, chaos will be 'the score li n P G n Which reality is written.' For...

Castro's Revolution, By Theodore Draper. (Thames and Hudson, 21s.) IN the course of his Cuban polemics, Theodore Draper has experienced to the full the usual frustrations of...

St, Ba rtholomew's Night. By Philippe Erlanger. ( Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 32s.) , 1: : I rn dr eary winter at my preparatory school a i t axe to 4- ., r paper darts was...

A Life of One's Own. By Gerald Brenan. (Hamish Hamilton, 25s.) THE first volume of Gerald Brenan's auto- biography takes him with thoroughness and painstaking honesty from his...

Collected Poems. By Hugh MacDiarmid. (Oliver and Boyd, 42s.) Smith. Hugh MacDiarmid: a Festschrift. Edited by K. D. Duval and Sidney Goodsir (Duval, 35s.) ONE by one, like...

The New Rythum and other pieces. By Rona ld Firbank. (Duckworth, 21s.) RONALD FIRBANK would, perhaps, droop a 1 1, 13 t white eyelid, aghast and amused, to learn his position in...

Gilligan's Last Elephant. By Gerald Hanley. (Collins, 18s.) The Sound. By Ross Russell. (Cassell. 18s.) Tur Hemingway obsession has a certain attrac- tion. Here in Spain, every...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT WHILE Mr. Maudlin is feverishly studying all the tendentious economic surveys which fall on his desk like autumn leaves—the latest re- view of the...

R ADIO and Television Trust Ltd. specialises in the field of radio communications and industrial electronics, in which there is enormous scope for the future. It is now in-...

° ri , r 7 ket go higher, partly because it seems to e , *S . '; made up its mind that a Common Market j r$I.Inent is in eight, partly because it feels ;. 'nal as the Government...

SIR PHILIP WARTER ON A WELL EQUIPPED OR THE 35th annual general meeting of Associated British Picture Corporation Limited was held on August 10 in London, Sir Philip Warier...

Consumer Groups By LESLIE ADRIAN WITH the Molony Com- mittee delivered of its monumental report, with the power of the con- sumer personified every But if social historians...

By CYRIL RAY DIDN'T think much of Iti °91 ,, questions addressed bY militia colonel in John b i tng's A Penny for a Song. 3 the Aldwych Theatre, to til e ,. crackpot dressed...