N ATU,RALLY we welcome a Budget which is so much along the lines of the policy we have advocated. The reform of the profits tax and of the purchase tax, the reduction in the tax...

SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828 - NUMBER 6773 - FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 1958 - PRICE NINEPENCE

T HE fall of the French Government following on M. Gaillard's decision to resume negotia- tions with Tunisia, on the basis established by the Anglo-American mission of...

The chief weakness of the country's transport system as, it operates at present is that there are no clear standards by which efficiency can be judged; and, therefore, few...

CRITICISING Mr. Heathcoat Amory has for some years now been rather like smoking , in church; even a drunken atheist would con- sider it disgraceful behaviour. There are signs—as...

Irish Number Articles, reviews and poems by Patrick Campbell, Desmond Fisher, lain Hamilton, Thomas Hogan, Brian Inglis, Maire Mhac an tSaoi, Kevin Nowlan, Edna O'Brien,...

ROBERT STEPHEN RINTOUL, who died a hundred years ago this week, was the founder of the Spectator. Its obituary notice of him said that 'even those subscribers who were most...

sensible. The party's present success is due to discontent with the other two parties, not to its own virtues, and its continuance depends upon it remaining prudishly aloof from...

read (though not, of course, in The Times) that Hugh Cudlipp had called it the 'Judas of journalism.' He was referring not to its appeasement line over Czechoslovakia in 1938...

his plan for an anti- Socialist front owed nothing to that of Mr. Martell, whose pamphlet he had not read. I am sorry. The plans were so similar I was deceived into thinking...

Times last week lamented the retirement at the next election of so many Tory MPs who represent a concentration of experience and mature political judgment. . . . Among the...

By IRVING KRISTOL* HE dead praise not the Lord . . .'; neither I do they care about the H-bomb. The point is worth making, because there seems to be a widespread assumption that...

opinions are no longer taken seriously. Certainly nobody I know in Fleet Street has any respect for that body; its pronouncements too often bear the seedy stamp of an old pot...

By ROGER FALK WEN1Y-ONE years ago I was the hesitant T candidate for an impossible seat in an over- crowded borough—a borough which was full of character (add still is) but...

By PAUL BLOOMFIELD R OBERT STEPHEN RINTOUL'S was a classic case of a Scot of obscure parentage and out- standing talent coming to London and making good. On leaving school—the...

By STRIX H ONOUR is a word still current on the golf- course and at the card-table. Corpses, normally male, are from time to time buried with military honours. My impression is...

Codes of Behaviour By ALAN BRIEN Dock Brief and What Shall We Tell Caroline? By John Mor- timer. (Lyric, Hammersmith.)— Any Other Business? By George Ross and Campbell Singer....

Cinema By ISABEL QUIGLY EUGENE O'Nuni.'s granite play about incest and child-murder in nineteenth-century New England, Desire under the Elms (Director of this film version :...

Only Connect By BASIL TAYLOR THE week after the march to Alder- maston was a particularly appro- priate time for visiting the RBA galleries. Here the Artists' Interna- tional...

Glimpses of Reality By JOHN BRAINE APART from a moment of déjà-vu boredom when, the police inspec- tor said, 'And I must warn you that . . (fill in the rest for your- self),...

Health Services By LESLIE ADRIAN' Although some of the larger hospitals have now introduced a sensible scheme of progressive appointments, many smaller hospitals still sum- mon...

SIR,-1 must apologise to Mr. Nockles, but I had imagined in my abysmal ignorance that the job of a Press and Information Officer employed by HM Customs and Excise was to seek...

SIR,—Last time I wrote to your paper I had just left a party, with the consequence that my letter con- tained errors which allowed Mr. Charles Curran to deliver a- knock-out...

of humour shown by the reactions to his spoof strikes a resounding chord. The Sunday Times of March 9 contained a leader called 'The Queen Mother,' the general tenor of which...

The liberals' Chances Randolph S. Churchill The Aldermaston March Philip Toynbee Jokes are Dangerous Kenneth Stern Chance of a Lifetime Robin Marris Converted Vans and Purchase...

SIR,—One way and another quite a lot of unwelcome publicity came my way in last week's Spectator. Some of it, in this unexpected context, from myself. (There is an old rule...

SIR, —The fact that support for Mr. Bonham Carter should increase during the Torrington campaign can be accounted for quite simply. At the beginning of the campaign the...

SIR, — The fact that your correspondent Mr. A. Comerford is by his own account both prejudiced and uninformed does not prevent him from rushing into print with a vaguely...

are increased many teachers in th,, c Sudan have fantasies about resigning and sending 05 rancorous articles to the British press. Some do reSig i and get as 'far as writing the...

APRIL 20, 1833 THE exhibitor of the Fleas is said to be greatly barrassed by the prevailing epidemic : so man) his fleas have been put to bed of influenza, that has with great...

The Limits of Conscience By D. W. HARDING T HE clamour of praise in America on the appearance of By LoVe Possessed* might s uggest the emergence of a remarkable new novelist....

Lytton Strachey: His Mind and Art. By Charles Richard Sanders. (0.11.P., 36s.) PROFESSOR SANDERS has not given us what academic critics like to call a 'balanced view' of the...

Advocate for the Dead: The Story of Joel Brand. By Alex Weissberg. Translated by Constan- tine FitzGibbon.and Andrew Foster-Melliar. (Deutsch, 15s.) THIS is a very...

Cabinet, Government and War, 1890-1940. 01 THE publication of the Lees Knowles Lectures for 1957 will be greeted with much interest bf, students of that neglected topic—the...

Gibbon and Rome. By E. J. Oliver. (Sheed and Ward, 12s. 6d.) POSTERITY has found it difficult to reconcile the life and work of England's greatest historian. There is, after...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT * * * In the very short-time-that he has been at the Treasury the new- Chancellor could not be expected to introduce sweeping budgetary re- forms, but it...

By CUSTOS UP to the eve of the Budget the stock markets had maintained a firm front in spite of the threat of strikes. Oil shares were particularly favoured, partly because of a...

By PHILIDOR No. 149. A. J. FINK (1st Prize, 'Los Angeles Examiner,' 1919) BLACK (14 men) WHITE (10 men) mitre to play and mate in 2 moves: solution next week. Solution to last...

Hysteria By MILES HOWARD LEVEN girls were taken to hospital lately at E i Nottingham for fainting attacks after a hockey match; carbon-monoxide poisoning was at first...

ACROSS 29 I There's something amiss in the wager, note that! (6) 30 4 An outing? Rather! for all three of us (8). 10 With this the hours go by with a bang (4-3). 11 Valerian is...

10 Outrage. 11 Stephenson, 12 Peal. 13 Col. 14 Love-in-a-mist. 17 Stage waggon, 19 Sad. 20 Orbs, 22 Pink- tipped. 26 Foam', 27 Thirdly, 28 RomillY, 29 Hurry up. DOWN.-1 Pacts....

'Programme: any assignment that can't be completed by one telephone call.' Competitors were asked to contribute lists of six definitions of this cynical nature dealing with...

such nice shoulders for crying on. (Ogden Nash) Competitors are invited to indicate, in not more than four lines of verse, the implicatiims of an,' other Christian name, male or...