T HE question of the exact meeting-places of the Foreign Ministers' conference in Berlin having been settled by a compromise, the stage is set for at least the first three...

high, should have felt themselves obliged in the last phase of their difficult task to take account of what were no more than legalistic quibbles.. But the prisoners are being...

movement is left to manage its own affairs without interference. This is sound enough, but sooner or later the question of Communist-captured unions will have to be discussed in...

T HE Government could scarcely have fixed on a more inconvenient day, politically speaking, than Tuesday for the reassembly of Parliament. All the politicians could do was to...

Our Rome Correspondent Writes: Professor Amintore Fanfani's formation of a new Christian Democratic Government means a critical experiment in imposing some sort of movement on...

countries, and in the United States the standard medium for television sound transmissions. As for cost, it is estimated that the 75 transmitters needed to provide national VHF...

T HERE is a stirring of excitement in the industrial world, but none yet at Westminster. This quiet and uncertainty cannot last for long. Before Parliament rises in July the...

STRIX

W HEN foreigners commit acts of—as it seems to us— folly or intransigence, we are often able, and sometimes willing. to find among the national charac- teristics of the country...

When, more than twenty years ago, I wrote on a piece of paper the words "They do it because they want to. It suits them; it is their cup of tea," I could not foresee that the...

impressed by gloomy or anxious faces the margin is only a small one. We like kind faces, but an entire Cabinet suffused throughout with benignity would make us feel uneasy....

My statement in these notes last week that snake tasted like eel has brought sceptical letters from two readers. " Has Strix ever tasted boiled krait ? " asks Mr. J. M. Reilly...

0 Y IAIN HAMILTON OT far to the north of the Spectator office there is a large poster which displays the London skyline silhouetted against an atomic bomb-burst. If the t...

the ellective defences of the free world that the discussions now taking place about American military aid to Pakistan are concerned, In order to stop the gap properly,...

Visible Export By M. H. MIDDLETON A SOCIETY portrait painter reached the headlines just before Christmas by saying at a public luncheon that British art was being discredited...

The Spectator offers three prizes, each of books to the value of eight guineas, for articles to be written by boys and girls in schools in the United Kingdom. Entries should be...

THE prospect of war has called forth the patriotism of the sportsmen of England. Correspondents of the daily journals are suggesting the enrolment of volunteer regiments of...

Crime and Punishment. Adapted from Dostoevsky by Gaston Baty. (Arts.)— The Boychik. By Wolf Mankowitz. (Embassy.) ADAPTING a well-known novel into a play always poses serious...

Wordsworth and Prokoflev. THE Royal Philharmonic Society's pro- gramme on January 13th contained two English symphonies, a heartening thought for composers even if, in the...

CINEMA The Battleship Potemkin. (Continentale.) Hell Below Zero. (Plaza.)—Arena. (Rialto.) The Battleship Potemkin is one of the great screen classics. Made by Eisenstein in...

three years I have discovered a number of things about their behaviour. There are times when even a predatory fish will tylt respond to movement and will look at ford with no...

Old and New subjects appear to derive from mathe- matical and laboratory sources ; taken in conjunction with the unforced academicism of his manner they suggest nothing so much...

As I passed the holly hush, my foot was turned on a piece of rock on the path and I collided with the bush, whereupon a score of sparrows burst out and went whirring away to...

ALMO'T every newspaper I have picked up recently has carried news of what can be achieved with animals by the simple device of covering their eyes with one's hand and breathing...

IAN NIALL

Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas. (Stoll.) APART from the undeniable quality of its leading dancers, there is something I felt about the de Cuevas company the other night...

protest against one statement made by Sir Compton Mackenzie in his otherwise admirable discussion of salaries in the teaching professions. Sir Compton declares that the task of...

last week's ' Sidelight,' Sir Compton Mackenzie slipped past the real point of the AMA's threat to strike. This was to protest against just that equality or parity of esteem'...

January 15th does well to draw attention to the fact that the grievances of schoolteachers extend also to University staffs. What is not generally appreciated, however, is that...

TEACHERS' SALARIES U 1 ,-1 was delighted to read in your last number Compton Mackenzie arguing so downrightly for greater consideration for teachers and incidentally, I hope,...

SIR, — To my great amusement, a Mr. Anthony Hartley, reviewing my Gardeners and Astronomers, states: The last lines of ' A Song of the Dust' show a greater measure of...

Sta,—The news of " the premature decease of Scrutiny" in your editorial note on De:em- ber I 1th, 1953, shocked' and dismayed a number of us engaged in the teaching of English...

plete official list of the Courtauld Fund pic- tures. The Renoir ' Nude' did not figure on this list and in answer to my enquiries as to its fate I was told that it had been...

SIR,---Having read the recent correspondence on the Scottish situation I should like to put before you one or two viewpoints which . have occurred to me and which do not seem to...

ancient custom, with its accompanying ceremonies annually performed, such as the Dunmow Flitch or the Turning of the Devil's Boulder at Shebbeare. For the usual prize readers...

Competitors were asked to submit six rhymed couplets, each embodying in the first line a New Year resolution and in the second a debunking of the same,'somewhat in the spirit of...

writes over the signature M.A. in your last issue; but .: W hy should he feel injured or be deterred from because to find other possible candidates the selection board has...

CACTM in more or less degree „ I s not the fundamental reason why we are O a ttracting enough candidates for Holy ca :: e rs in the Church of England. The real pt. se has been...

HIS brutish word smog' has driven me into playing with the idea of founding a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to the English Language. The English have -a kind of...

Keats's Cat, Dante By JENNY NICHOLSON Rome T HERE is often something obviously curious about a famous city which literature and travellers forget to mention. Lycabetus, for...

WinterThoughts at Lord's By JOHN ARLOTT T HE outside of Lord's cricket ground is not impressive. The ugliness of its yellowish brick walls, darkened by the soot of the...

• . Royal V i ct ims By ROBERT GRAVES GENERATION ago Margaret Murray's Witch Cult in Western Europe and God of the Witvhes shocked sentimental historians who believed that...

The Men Who Ruled India : The Founders. By Philip Woodruff. (Cape. 30s.) Their shoulders held the sky suspended ; They stood and earth's foundations stay. HEROIC pictures of...

Science, Medicine and History. Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice written in honour of Charles Singer. Collected and Edited by E. Ashworth...

1 SHOULD have thought him a hundred years old," remarked one of his friends. Only six weeks later, on September 12th, 1806, ,, ron Thurlow of Thurlow, King's friend and ex-Lord...

Music in the Life of Albert Schweitzer. Edited by Charles R. Joy. (Adam & Charles Black. 16s.) FOR half a century Europe has followed the thought and the action of Albert...

Botteghe Oscure. Quaderno 12. Edited by Marguerite Caetani. (De Luca. 10s. 6d.) THE present frantic buzz of literary activity continues : The London Magazine, long awaited,...

A Bed of Roses. By William Sansom. (TheBogarth Press. 12s. 6d.) MR. SANSOM has taken the lout for hero. This lout is cruel. He locks his mistress in a cupboard, and not for the...

By NICHOLA S DAVENPORT • IT distresses me to find my financial col- leagues justifying the increases in bank dividends on the grounds that for the average shareholder the...

By CUSTOS of the national Press that they opened on Monday at 77s. 9d. and were quickly pushed up by eager public buying to 80s. 6d. before relapsing to 78s. 6d. I have often...

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for one guinea will he awarded to the sender of the first correct 1.4 Book token for one guinea will he awarded to the sender of the first correct noon week, February k, Febn...