Amery's Political Life THOMAS HODGKIN : Timbuktu, 1953 DESMOND HENN: The Lone Prairee GRAHAM DUKES : The Western Isles

No. 6 5 1 7 FRIDAY, MAY 22, 1953 PRICE 7d.

Forty-six deaths in riots in Kano, the commercial centre of Northern Nigeria, is depressing news. For the past couple of months Nigeria has been going through a period of...

G ENERAL MATTHEW B. RIDGWAY, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in Europe, is to leave Versailles for the Pentagon in August where , he is to be Chief of Staff of the U.S....

General Sir Gerald Templer's informal progress repoit on Malaya, made at a Press conference on Monday, was im- pressive. Both as a commander and as an administrator, he has that...

It has always been a little difficult to discover why, on purely economic grounds, members of the Labour Party, and Mr. Aneurin Bevan in particular, should have objected...

When Mr. William N. Oatis was released from prison in Czechoslovakia, after serving two years of a ten-year sentence for espionage, the reaction recorded in the newspapers and...

Mr. Lyttelton seems to have satisfied himself during his visit to Kenya that the emergency is coming under control at last, and one of the points he made to the Press before...

General Harrison has been spending the last few days in Tokyo getting new instructions and, it is to be hoped, a new public relations officer. Talks at Panmunjom will begin...

Commercial television is clearly on the way; the Television Advisory Committee's report to the Postmaster-General may be out in a week or two; and it should not be so very long...

A FRENCHMAN, commenting on the complaint of an American that Sir Winston Churchill does not meet the Press in this country, observed this week that the Prime Minister holds a...

What is the reasonable annual income of a dentist after costs, which amount to about fifty-two per cent. of gross receipts, have been deducted? On the basis of the Spens report...

W HEN two countries as fundamentally well-disposed towards each other as Britain and.the United States are plunged, as they were last week, into one of their periodic and...

a letter to , the Spectator, that Sherlock Holmes never said " Elemen- tary, my dear Watson," produced a Fourth Leader in The Times, and that in its turn gave rise to some...

for overseas visitors, the following letter, addressed to a high official, surely qualifies for some sort of consolation prize. " We " (write the authors from Calcutta) " intend...

upon, surely the oddest feature of the Korean war (I mean the oddest • from a purely military point of view) is the complete immunity of United Nations warships from attack by...

horses are an uncertain quantity on these occasions. They can be trained to ignore loud noises, waving flags and all the rest of it; but they cannot be made-impervious to the...

was held in -one of the better-known London halls, and I was greatly interested by my first view of the conditions under which musicians perform in public. The platform was lit...

who, when his wife informed him that a happy event impended, insured against triplets to the tune of £3,000. (There had been a recent case of triplets in his family and also, I...

riding was a universal accomplishment, and we are well accustomed to the idea that a Coronation procession will include a certain number of amateur horsemen. But On June 2nd the...

By GWENDOLEN FREEMAN I 46 T is not," writes the Children's Officer for Birmingham in his report of the Children's Department's first four years' work,* " the function of a...

By THOMAS HODGKIN I T was late at night and bitterly cold when I arrived at Timbuktu, It was also bright moonlight and the Prophet's birthday. So the town .was-full of the noise...

By GRAHAM DUKES A SPLENDID way to be introduced to Hebridean life is to take a seat on one of the big blue service buses which, several times in the day, pull out from the...

By DESMOND E. HENN The last time the Spectator published an article from Mr. Henn it received a number of unfriendly letters, some of them from Canada. So it wishes to...

The Guid Scots Tongue By ALASDAIR J. McKICHAN (Glasgow University) B RAXFIELD was on the Bench and the Court was crowded to hear the verdict. The trial had been long, the...

THEATRE Venice Preserv'd. By Thomas Otway. (Lyric, Hammersmith.)— Britannicus. By Jean Racine. Le Jeu de L'Amour et du Hasard. By Pierre de Marivaux. On ne Saurait Penser a...

The New Outlook. FOR the last fortnight the Royal Photographic Society have been enjoying an unusual experience. An exhibition staged at their house in Princes Gate has been...

Electra. (Royal Opera House.) Electra, revived after fifteen years in a new production at Covent Garden, has never been a complete success. The attempt to repeat the recipe that...

Man on a Tightrope. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) Adorables Creatures. (Curzon.)—Tonight We Sing. (Odeon, Leicester Square.)-- KAREL CERNIK, the Man on a Tightrope, is a Czech circus...

Ballet Workshop. (Mercury.) PETER DARRELL'S new work, Les Chimeres, now being performed at the Ballet Workshop; is an extremely pleasant little vignette. A simple theme—hunters...

Constable. (Victoria and Albert Museum.) WHAT an iceberg is the great mass of art accumulated in this country ; how small that part with which we are familiar ! Let some...

an affair of much greater magnitude, geographically and politically. Every new report prepares us to expect the speedy downfall of the Tartar dynasty, and the establishment...

Report by D. R. Peddy A prize of £5 was offered for an extract from a diary maintained during the last three years by one of the following: Queen Victoria, Mr. Pooter or E. M....

Set by Mervyn Horder The usual prize is offered for the stage directions and the first four speeches front Act One of a newly discovered play by any one of the following : Oscar...

Going to the Cricket By. J. P. W. MALLALIEU T T 9.43 p.m. precisely the chairman said : " And now it only remains for me to thank you for yoiir attendance and declare the...

S1R,—The world price of wheat is of immense importance for millions of farmers and bread-consumers. On the question of price, their interests are in conflict. So are those of...

S1R,—Your .readers may be interested in some first-hand impressions. of Argentina in the throes of its present crisis. On the surface there is little to see for it. The streets...

Politics in the Bathroom your recent editorial comment on "Labour Policy in June " you say with great significance that the decision to nationalise water will not set the...

should not be overlooked that neither the Institute of British Photographers nor the Royal Photographic Society is representative of the best in British photography, for many of...

SIR,—May I be allowed to express my disagreement with the the° r Y put forward in the article, The Haworth Moors, and also with a n article published by you some years ago which...

SIR,—Many people have never realised that in the Battle of Britain twenty-five per cent. of the fighter pilots were Empire volunteers, nr that 5,000 out of the 20,000...

A friend who had a fine lot of strawberry-plants last season ° 15 , puzzled when he picked little fruit. Half-way through the ripe 011 ,; he put' down strawberry mats, and...

A newspaper cutting that came to me from l3rechin described 1 10 a gamekeeper trapped and extracted two vixens and their cubs fro° one fox-hole, and 1 was interested in the fact...

Hares in March will fight their shadows. 1 am convinced of III although I have never seen them set about any but their own 1 0 °, and that in a somewhat half-hearted way. A few...

In most of the lakes I visit there are tremendous numbers of minno 0 and in one in particular they are so numerous at the moment that " blacken the water of every little bight...

I BELIEVE that there are two kinds of air, the air of the valley and the air of the mountain. My wind is sound because I do not smoke. but I like to go slowly through the trees,...

Mind and Temperament T HE world of letters is, according to Cyril Connolly, a disappearing nne; it might thus seem dubious to say, as one would have said, that his Position in...

My Political Life. Vol. One: England - Before the Storm, 1896-1914, By the Rt. Hon. L. S. Amery. (Hutchinson. 25s.) To hitch your waggon in youth to the star of a single idea,...

Two questions are often asked : " What is philosophy ? " and ' Why has modern philosophy become so different from the philo- sophy of the past ? " This great and original book...

TERROT REAVELEY GLOVER—the bearer of the name was sometimes , and in some eyes, almost as uncouth as the name itself—taught classics at Cambridge, preached constantly in...

THESE two books by distinguished archaeologists are interesting examples of the , different ways in which exploration of the past has been regarded since it ceased in the last...

ALL the evidence goes to show that people read more novels, as they consume more jam and more biscuits, than ever before. But the composition of the novel-reading public is...

C. A. Burland. (Penguin Books. 4s. 6d.) THE Mexican book, a "King Penguin," is reproduced in strong colour, the pictures being taken from some of the deerskin folding books...

suggests an intention 'on the writer's part to probe the causes of the events which he deals with, and Mr. Vivian Ogilvie does not do so. Nor is he directly concerned with...

THE immediate interest of this book is its convincing description of Russian life in war and peace ; the dangers of prison-camp life and the luxuries of, banquets and favoured...

By CUSTOS FROM the present state of the market many investors would seem to be observing the old saw, "Sell in May and go away." With the Coronation and the holiday season just...

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