Persian Plot and Counter - Plot JOHN D. HILLABY A l Good Guys and Space Rats ISABEL QUIGLY: Americans in Paris J. P. W. MALLALIEU: Fifth Test Lucky REX WARNER: Aegean Sky

T HE duplication of Russian notes on Germany may be merely another symptom of the schizophrenia which seems to have been Stalin's legacy to the Kremlin: it may have been...

The recall of the French National Assembly is confidently expected for next week, and M. Laniel is not , going to be in a strong position to face it. Throughout the last few...

The unpleasant trade in horseflesh which was so exhaustively recorded by the Aland/ester Guardian last year shocked the Civil Service and Parliament into quick action. The...

While the French government is struggling with the strikes, a crisis has developed in Morocco. lntrigues by El Glaoui, the pro-French Pasha of Marrakesh, culminated last week in...

The dismissal from office twelve days ago of the Prime Minister of Kashmir, Shaikh Abdulla, by the Head of State (the son of the late Maharajah whom Shaikh Abdulla himself...

Conference on the Nigerian constitution should be played to a finish, with no fixed time limit, there seemed some prospect of a decision being reached this week. Now the...

T HE differences between British and American policy for the Far East have found strange, metaphorical expression in New York. Should the Korean political conference be round or...

R ED Indian Chief Howard Skye of the Ohsweken Reserve . in Canada has sent up a plaindve smoke signal about the motion picture industry's propensity for producing films in which...

troubled by the accusations of profligacy levelled at the A.A. As far as he is concerned, Lord Teynham, his committee members and officials can bathe nightly in champagne if...

a Nottingham engineer, when he attempts to walk across the Channel on water skis. I once placed my feet in two boat- like structures which were supposed to carry me safely over...

every man but every woman to do their duty—which was to know the score. GLAUX

the square in which I live were requisitioned after the war for the use of bombed-out families. Although internally they may, for all I know, be in perfect trim, their exteriors...

fingers and a thumb the news of Senorita Montserrat Escarvidol's prodigious feats on her machine is a further humiliation. A typist in the Barcelona police department, she...

are being lifted tenderly from the sea, laboriously washed feather by feather, given a coat' of lard and some lunch, then taken by road to purer waters. In Scotland birds are...

By H. A. R. PHILBY T ETE fragmentary reports issuing from Teheran leave little . doubt that the di ff erences that have split the anti- Communist forces in Persia during the...

By PETER WILES I N the Soviet budget the same categories apply as elsewhere. There is expenditure and revenue, surplus (always) and deficit (never), . direct and indirect...

By ISABEL QUIGLY " ORTY million dollars," shouted the elderly gentle- F man, who looked like a Southern general. " Forty million dollars we've sent you, and you think I'm trying...

By JOHN D \ HILLABY F OR a day or two the whole affair seemed rather a waste of time. It was a congress in Zurich which ended recently. The subject was astronautics, a vague...

By JAMES POPE-HENNESSY S OME sixteen years ago, when I was first working in a publishing house in Paternoster Row, I began to make a systematic lunch-hour exploration of the...

ART Drawings by Old Masters, 1953. -(The Royal Academy.) " BEAUTIFUL colours are for sale in the shops of the Rialto," said Tintoretto, as quoted by Ridolfi, " but good drawing...

The Royal Danish Ballet. (Covent Garden.) SINCE the inevitable excitement of the Royal Danish Ballet's first night in London, we have seen two further programmes and are...

The Sinner. (Cameo-Polytechnic.)—Roman Holiday. (Carlton.) —Let's Do It Again. (Leicester Square.) The Sinner is a German film written and directed by Willi Forst in a familiar...

Set by John Barlow The Times' unquestioned "ownership" of Everest having now been confirmed by the ascent of May 29th, readers are invited (for a prize of £5) to allot other...

Report by Edward Blishen An anthology of cricket verse has recently been published. But w should all the songs he sung of outdoor games and the humbler thril of the parlour be...

Fifth Test Lucky The Oval, Tuesday. By J. P. W. MALLALIEU FEW minutes after six o'clock this evening, the Ashes were assuredly ours. Laker and Lock on a dusty wicket had spun...

While I was hanging over a wall in a little village that is divided by a stream, I found myself overlooking a derelict garden where a few blackcurrants struggled to keep their...

Some people find it hard to make cuttings, while others can strike a slip of almost any bush or plant with such case that they earn the reputation of having green fingers. It...

HAY and harvest are close together in our locality this year. It is not often that one sees hay being carted in one field while corn stooks are being set up in the next, but...

'Sometimes I find it hard to be tolerant. Standing by the falls— a famous beauty spot—I overheard a sightseer expressing his admira- tion for the scene. He was one of a party of...

every year just at this time. After the lifting of the potatoes and the start of ploughing, some of them will come back. Most of the birds nesting in the cottage chimneys and in...

SIR, —The undergraduate article, " Going Down," by Mr. R. G. W. Theobald printed in the Spectator of August 14th, presents a somewhat distorted picture of current Cambridge...

SIR,—Your correspondent, Mr. N. H. Fitzherbert, says, " I haven't got a copy of the immortal work at hand, but I feel sure Mr. Horace Wyndham has misrepresented it." If he were...

Unwilling SIR,—Your correspondent Glaux, in " A Spectator's Notebook," deals with how and why wills should be published. She begins with an unfortunate analogy when she says it...

FRANCE.—The fete-day of " Saint Napoleon," the 15th August, has been kept in Paris this year with magnificence unequalled. The Emperor, it is said, dictated the programme to the...

SIR,—Mr. Martin Cooper in his very interesting remarks about opera librettos did not mention Metastasio, whose librettos enjoy the unusual distinction of being widely read long...

Aegean Sky By REX WARNER T RAVEL books can be interesting and instructive with- out making the reader long to visit the people or the countries which are described in them. We...

Christianity, Diplomacy and War. By Herbert Butterfield. (The Epworth Press. 8s. 6d.) THOUGH not so entitled, this little book is another set of sermons on the Christian...

Richard Wilson. By W. G. • Constable. (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 70s.) ENGLISH Landscape painting is as unique as the English weather— and indeed the two are closely connected....

The Story of Axel Munthe. By Gustaf Munthe and Gudrun Uexhiill. (John Murray. 18s.) THE authors of this memoir quote a Swedish writer who once remarked that had the Czar and the...

French Life and Landscape. Volume Two : Southern France. By Alfred Firth. (Elek. 18s.) Normandy and Britanny. By Ralph Dutton. (Batsford. 18s.) The man who undertakes to write a...

Private Life of an Indian Prince. By Mulk Raj Anand. (Hutchinson. 12s. 6d.) Now or Never. By Wayland Hilton-Young. (Cresset Press. 10s. 6d.) MR. MULK ANAND'S villainous hero,...

YOUR " SPECTATOR " Please )s.rite : — THE CIRCULATION MANAGER, " Spectator," 99 Gower Street, London, W.C.1.

TACKLE gets finer but fishermen are un- doubtedly becoming more coarse. Tench are taken with a nylon filament ; trout, according to an awful rumour, are not averse to a March...

THE English are, on the whole, shamefully uninformed about Australia ; they have heard of the " bush," they probably know that Sydney has a beautiful harbour, but they wrongly...

is over twenty years old. Although life in the northern snow deserts may seem to be timeless and dateless, in point of fact such a degree of isolation need never occur again,...

English Radicalism, 1886-1914. By S. Maccoby. (Allen and Unwin. 42s.) THERE is a great gap in British historical writing which I had hoped this book might fill. "Radicalism"...

THIS is not the best issue of a review which has rightly achieved a high international reputation. It contains too much writing which is merely esoteric and too purpose- fully...

By CUSTOS STOCK markets are still in good form, but it remains true that activity is still largely centred on speculative issues. The latest news from Persia, of course, has...

IA Book' Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, September lit, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...

The winner of Spectator Crossword No. 742 is Mg. II. H. DAVENPORT, " Old Ways," North Lancing. Sussex.