T O read the speeches in the Commons on the coal debate, and to try to relate them to earlier pronouncements on the subject of Mr. Nabarro, Miss Jennie Lee, the FBI, and the...

T HE news from Geneva so far is neither hearteningly good nor alarmingly bad, but almost exactly what might have been expected by those who did not look for miracles. The...

ESTABLISHED 1828 No. 6630 FRIDAY, JULY 22, 1955 PRICE 7d.

T 4 HERE is evidence here of extreme emotional tension of the accused woman as a result of which she did what she did.' Those were the words of Mr. Christmas Humphreys, the...

B Y the time that thisissue appears, the Secretary of State for the Colonies is expected to have announced a successful conclusion to his discussions with the delegations from...

Meanwhile, the negotiations are being followed with anxiety in both Western and Eastern Germany, where the not entirely happy coincidence of the opening of the conference with...

By 'HENRY FAIRLIE • M R. LENNOX-BOYD was flung into the Ministry of Transport at very short notice and in. the middle of one of the worst administrative mix-ups of those early,...

I HAVE ALWAYS believed that the Central African Federation was an experiment well worth making, and realised that its success depended on the statesmanship of moderate men like...

A Correspondent writes : T " 'interruption' of Cardinal Mindszenty's life sentence announced by the Hungarian government has followed one or two other recent acts of comparative...

at the election has been, received with satisfaction, I imagine, by Sinn Fein. This party—if so incongruous a mixture of idealists, thugs and informers deserves the...

BY CYRIL FALLS . F OR some time mention of Greece in the news has stood to all intents and purposes for Greece as related to the question of Cyprus. This aspect is manifestly...

reproduce this information : `Want something slick, rowdy, machine-tooled, guillotine- sharp, nonsensical? If so, hear Bill Haley and Comets in Razzle Dazzle and Two Hotind Dogs...

new English musical, Wild Thyme. In general it has been hostile. I think there are two reasons for this. In the first place, it strikes me as rather odd that music critics as...

BY DR. ALFRED BYRNE W HEN the results of the Salk vaccine trial were assessed statistically, the vaccine was pronounced to be effective, potent, and 'incredibly' safe. It has...

BY IAIN HAMILTON F 4 VERYONE has passed through Lyons. Few of you, if any, have stopped there. Nobody seems to love Lyons among the bold travellers going south to be jostled in...

BY G. M. CARSTAIRS T HE sport of athletics owes not only its name but many of its conventions to ancient Greece. The men's foot-race, the nucleus of the Olympia, was an .annual...

By JOHN BETJEMAN I WAS walking down Newgate Street with a girl in the hot weather of last week. She remarked on how unattractive men were. Looking at their clothes, I realised...

Images of Fear SHUDDER to think ' The phrase is nowadays not frequently employed. Just over fifteen years ago the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (General Ironside as he...

Mrs. Ellis was barbarous, I think you are wrong to assume that Home Office officials become coarsened or blasé about such matters, or that Englishmen delight in hanging. What...

Capital Punishment Cunard Dawson, Ludovic Kennedy, John W. Harvey, R. Marker and others Men at Waugh Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Spain, Nancy Mitford, Joan Werner Laurie and others...

me so indefensibly foolish that I am ceasing my subscription. I deplore hanging as much as you do---but so long as it is the law, a reprieve for R. Ellis would be an insult to...

Euston 3221

this subject, which is dealt with In a leading article on page 110. To include as large a selection as possible, cuts have been made in some of the letters.

has, 1 hope, brought a little • nearer the abolition of the revolting ritual of capital punishment. In the news that Mrs. Ellis was, after all, to be put to death, there was...

amalgam of enlightened wisdom forcibly expressed and an almost hysterical waspish rancour. With all you say so well on the general question of capital punishment, I believe that...

congratulate you on the recent nevi format, but view with regret the increasinelY arrogant manner in which you state you r opinions, which surely has reached its zenifo, in your...

reason : I must congratulate you on the democratic tone of your leading article on the execution of Ruth Ellis. Its absolute dogmatism was only equalled by its obscurantism....

is probably no MP who would deny that abolition is bound to come before long. It seems therefore reasonable to suggest that, in the period of delay before MPs have finished...

01 Ruth Ellis.'—Yours faithfully, N. C. F. BOWES Sunny Croft, Wayside Road, St. Leonards, Ringwood, Hants

venom and bitterness in Your excellent paper of late. Not only is this Unworthy of your standards and traditions, but must inevitably be accompanied by a deterioration in...

Spectator, may I protest against Your article on capital punishment in this Week's issue?— Yours faithfully, FRANK JONES 16 Livingstone Road, Handsworth, Birmingham, 20

numerous readers of the Sunday Sadist or the Masochist Mail, but that does not warrant the statement that 'Hanging has become the national sport.' To many, irrespective of their...

the current issue of your Journal on the execution of Ruth Ellis. Ruth Ellis was unknown to me; I did not admire what I heard about her (save that 1 c uUld not but admire her...

as well as what you have published on earlier occasions on the same subject, may I just say : Bravo, Spectator. Keep at it I — Yours faithfully, HELENA BROUN 3 Magdala...

attack on the Home Secretary and its many confusions of thought, can hardly expect to pass without protest. 1. The Home Secretary, with his unenviable job to perform, simply...

SIR,—Mr. Carlisle's testimonial to Lord Noel- Buxton's sensitive scholarship and intrepid paddling would he more impressive if it did not appear in conjunction with that...

Spectator: 'Mr. Lloyd-George, the Home Secretary. has now been responsible for the hanging of two women in the past eight months.' What a monstrous statement to make! I could...

the war, but nothing to compare with 'The Execution of Ruth Ellis' in today's Spectator.—Yours faithfully, W. O. ROADKNIGHT 2 Woodland Way, Kingsgate. Broadstairs

but I have seldom read more unbalanced articles than you have produced on the 'Ruth Ellis' case in the last two issues. —Yours faithfully, R. M. VERITY The Vicarage....

of nationality?) delight in hanging, or that hanging has become a national sport. It is totally untrue that the extinction of a fellow-being has a fascination for the people of...

my visit to his house and now I have read Lord Noel-Buxton's account of the same thing. I would like to point out for what it is worth that the day after our visit Lord...

the shock and disgust that I felt on reading your leading article on the execution of Ruth Ellis. Many of us share your view that capital punishment is absolutely indefensible,...

congratulate you upon, your splendid leader on 'The Execution of Ruth Ellis' and the question of capital punishment. Seldom have I read in your columns an argu- ment more...

in your correspondence columns. As an editor, how I admire Mr. Waugh's swift and entertaining method of airing his concern, not just to his friends—as do most of us—but in the...

SIR,—In your leading article on 'HorsepoW e Politics' on July 8 you did me the honour 0 referring to the comment I made in the recce Road Traffic debate to the effect 0314...

SIR,—My attention has been drawn to an article by Charles Curran in your July 1 issue. I must point out that almost every point he raises in the first half of the article is in'...

petty and spiteful personal or literary feuds, which are continually cropping up in your columns nowadays? I myself thought Mr. Waugh's article of a really staggering un-...

worst example of bad manners to be granted space in your columns since the Sitwell correspondence.' I do not recollect the subject of the Sitwell correspon- dence, but I would...

Sm, — A recent report indicates that Bela Kovac, the Hungarian Liberal Leader, who was kidnapped by the Hungarian Secret Police some six years ago, and has not been heard of...

you for publishing two such adequate rejoinders to Mr. Evelyn Waugh's diatribe.—Yours faithfully, EDWARD ROBINSON Bleak House, Areley Kings, Stourport-on- Severn, Wares

think him the ridiculous 'predatory' bully pictured by Mr. Evelyn Waugh. Quite apart from his personal gentleness and scrupulous regard for the in- terests of others, he had for...

angels should fear to tread, makes the remarkable assertion, in the interests of good relations with foreigners, that it is not only incorrect but also most impolite to say...

Berlin Theatre How difficult it is for the critic to judge the quality of theatrical repertory performed in another country and another language. Coming to Berlin, where all...

8, page 52), that the Lion Asian in Professor C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia has most emphatically not the 'nature and functions' of an archangel, and for that reason has...

Henry Shackleton (1874-1922). The Antarctic explorer's family has kindly given us access to all relevant papers in their posses- sion, many of them unpublished. We are most...

I WAS brought up to think of this play (which I have never before seen on the stage) as a perfunctory, perhaps even a rueful hark- quinade : a sort of. Midnight Matinee in...

A NEW production of Aida at Covent Garden will not be an extravagance when it comes. The current one has done good service fo,r several years now, and has begun to look a hit...

LIFE WITH THE LYONS has something en- gaging about it. For all its platitudes of calf- love, brother-and-sister rows, male vanity. Mom's niceness, burnt food and parental...

WITHIN the limits of their small galleries, the AIA have arranged a most useful and interest- ing exhibition entitled 'Fitzroy Street Retro- spect' which celebrates those...

JULY 24, 1830 PARISH APPRENTICES.—A very infamous case of maltreatment of a poor child was tried at Cambridge Assizes on Friday last week. The criminal—a woman—was sentenced to...

Moore' , Leer. (General Release.)-- , -SOLD1ER OF FORTUNE. (Carlton.) M-G-M HAVE not given Moon fleet a full-scale London showing, and one can understand the reasons for their...

Years the Crossword Ate BY HENRY FAIRLIE 1N'T it grand to be bloomin' well dead?'—and in ten years many of them were. Is there anything more to be said about Britain between...

OVER THE BRIDGE. By Richard Church. (Heinemann, 18s.) FROM the dingy miasmic depths of the lower middle classes few voices speak. As Richard Church is now one of the few, that...

THREE prizes of eight guineas each are offered for the three best original descriptive reports (between 500 words and 750 words) of any notable event occurring between July 1,...

GOVERNMENT BY COMMITTEE. By K. C. Wheare. (The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 25s.) OUR common understanding of a political community, not only as a collection of human beings calling...

HOGARTH'S PROGRESS. By Peter Quennell. (Collins, 25s.) WILLIAM ,HOGARTH'S life story makes oddly dissatisfying reading. It was a success story that turned sour. His energy and...

THE TEMPTATION OF ROGER Hutton. By Edward Newhouse. (Gollancz, 12s. 6d.) THE CRUISER. By Warren Tute. (Cassell, 15s.) THE SUMNER INTRIGUE. By Frank Swinnerton. (H utchi nson,...

Edwin Smith. (Hutchinson, 21s.) Tuts is, I suppose, the sort of book that will infuriate connoisseurs; for this reason—they will find pictures of the precious objects which...

BY PHIL] DOR No. 7. R. GEVERS BLACK WHITE to play and mate in 2 moves: solution next week. Solution to last week's problem by Andrade: Kt-Kt 7, threat Q-B 4. I ... Kt-K 5; 2...

There was a record bag of salmon on our local river last month. More fish were caught by rods than in the same month of the best seasons since records were kept, and a record...

THE ITALIAN INFLUENCE IN ENGLISH POETRY FROM CHAUCER TO SOUTH WELL. By A. Lytton Sells. (George Allen and Unwin, 30s.) THAT English poetry between Chaucer and Southwell was...

BOOKS on aesthetics tend to fall into two classes —those which are really philosophy, and have little to do with tangible manifestations of art, and those which deal with works...

We almost added a hedgehog to the house- hold the other day. It was a young one and the children came marching in with it on a coal shovel, but after someone had pointed out a...

at the moment and with a vengeance, although how long it will last no one knows. As I write, the scent of newly cut grass is in the air and the swifts are high. Almost a week...

Summer pruning is a matter for the man who believes in it. The method is to shorten new shoots on apples and pears to help the forma- tion of fruit buds at the base of the...

of the famous who speak out for''My Daily Mail.' For the usual prize competitors are invited to write about 'My Daily Express' for the Arch- bishop of Canterbury; 'My Tatler,'...

1 To give up one's franchise, as it were? (6) 4 Obviously not in the style of the author of 'The Conquering Worm' (8). 8 It was owned by both after a Scots negative (8). 10...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 281 Report by Mervyn Horder A prize of f5 holiday inquiry was offered for the most amusing reply in 'English' to a frotn'the keeper of a small inn...

EDWARDS, 9 Glen. hurst Avenue, London, N.W.5, and Mas, A. WOODS, 41 Glamis Crescen,, Hayes, Middx.

NICHOLAS DAVENPORT QUESTIONED in the House of Commons this week Mr. Butler did not deny that currency matters might be discussed at the forth- coming meeting of the...

By CUSTOS WHAT is going on in the extraordinary boom in equity shares is not always appar- ent to the public outside Throgmorton Street. The average market is quietly firm, but...

Fifty-Third FINANCIAL SURVEY Contents THE FINANCIAL OUTLOOK A Correspondent ENGLISH BANKING, 1955 Nicholas Lane PROBLEMS OF FOREIGN BANKING F. G. Dyson GROWTH OF ACCIDENT...

B Y ' A CORRESPONDENT I T is disturbing that so shortly after the Conservative victory in the election there should be widespread uneasiness about the economic future of...

BY NICHOLAS LANE B ANKING has at least two faces. The man in the street reads the word as meaning the habit which induces him to pay his bills by cheque (or perhaps to put...

BY F. G. DYSON T HE vital importance to our densely populated island of a flourishing overseas trade has become increasingly obvious since the war. Last year the combined value...

Insurance By J. W. J. LEVIEN A CCIDENT insurance today is the biggest single class of non-life business transacted by the British insurance market. In 1954 the accident...

BY HERBERT ASHWORTH wi R. HAROLD MACMILLAN has left housing for foreign affairs and, distinguished as the new phase in his career may be, it is fairly certain that in the course...

By D. R. WOODGATE A , FEW weeks ago Lord Mackintosh, Chairman of the National Savings Committee, remarked on the encourage- ment offered by some life assurance enterprises to...

MR. Aylmer Valiance has written a fascinating guide to crime in the board room. On the last page he expresses the hope that it will not be used as such, but that is already too...