Christopher Booker Kate Wharton Randolph S. Churchill Goronwy Rees Ninette deValois

T HIRE can be no doubt that President de.Gaulle's decision to recognise Com- munist China has hit the Americans hard. Not only does it appear a deliberate affront to the unity...

began with 'meet the party faithful' tours for the party leaders. Sir Alec Douglas-Home skipped through Swansea, while 2,000 Birmingham citizens paid two shillings each for a...

FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1964

By KEITH KYLE rrilE Afro-Shirazi Party which has been I brought to power by the coup dela in Zanzi- bar had been the party most favoured by the protectorate administration, by...

By DAVID WATT (HOME [aside]: I know not what to say; my title's weak. BLAKENHAM [kneeling]: Sir Alec, be thy title right or wrong, Lord Blakenhairi vows to fight in thy...

From MURRAY KEMPTON NEW YORK JOHN F, KENNEDY and his brother Robert came j first to the general notice of their country- men for their part in the Senate's investigation of...

From SARAH GAINHAM FRANKFURT T HE old city of Frankfurt, wrecked in the Nazi war so that it nearly resembled the Biblical threat of not one stone remaining upon another, has...

Tory Leadership,' are available by post from this office, price Is. 3d. each. If quantities of this issue are required, please apply to the Sales Manager, The 'Spectator,' 99...

From DONALD HORNE SYDNEY USTRALIA Goes into Asia' is what th e .,placards have said several times in the last twelve months as events continue to remind Aus- tralians that...

bolt bone. They have a•t best only half a point. What Mr. Amery told the House of Commons was no more and no less than President Ken- nedy had already said a few days earlier....

trying to stop a public whipping being carried out in his state next week. He takes comfort from the fact that 'the times have long since passed when we whipped people as they...

LAST Saturday, before I went to watch the England v. Wales match at Twick- enham, I was surrounded by the press. When they had given up hoping for any further information on the...

The liquid liberals are at it again. Here is Mr. Wayland Young in the Guardian last week, telling us all about the dangers of anti-Com- munism. Many anti-Communist...

The image of the main parties is now being projected on to the hoardings. The Labour Party has produced a very large poster showing Mr. Wilson surrounded by (I presume) devoted...

By RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL C ASSANDRA on Monday wrote one of those masterpieces of misinformation on which we can often rely when it comes to politics. He tells us that the...

By KATE WHARTON n NE of the joys in keeping up with magazines ki and newspapers today is the staggering amount of information one learns about oneself. It's all so splendidly...

By A. P. HERBERT T HE 'satire' slanging-match is suspended—not ended. The BBC, no doubt, are already planning ahead; and as one who helped to start Radio Rudeness (a better...

By GEORGE BROWN, MP I N my personal calendar 1963 is entered as the Melancholy Year. Apart from other claims to the title, it opened with the death of Hugh Gaitskell and closed...

Little Wonders By•NINETTE DE VALOIS A PICTURE of England be- fore the First World War, a kaleidoscopic vision of seaside places; small county towns and Sunday train...

he says `we were now proposing that . . . ILO one amongst the 363 members of the party in cite House of Commons was acceptable as Prime Minister.' Is it not nearer the truth...

will hearten many of us who were growing cynical about political honesty and sincerity. I have, in fact, supported the Labour Party and had hoped that my friend Hugh Gaitskell...

Stanley Alderson, Herbert Greene, the Boulting Brothers, Caron Kent, Frank C.Happold, Dudley Renwick, Anthony Grant, C. M. Lister Mrs. D. G. Thorburne Press Guides Conor...

Cabinet Minister and Leader of the Conserva- tive Party, which you gave up owing to a disagree- ment re the Premiership, to become Editor of the Spectator. By your recent...

is a very slow and tortuous process. The idea that the old books of history are closed is such a grand fantasy. It takes a man of courage and ability, as well as a man stung by...

of too great a loyalty to your colleagues? Wherever the most plausible interpretation of events is slightly Machiavellian, you do not even consider it. Merely by bringing...

your edition of January 17 refers to the purchase of a car by the Consumer Council. He implies that we bought the car on the strength of a recommendation in Which? In fact, we...

self-deter- minate sentence as the 'Cure for Crime' sounds delightfully simple, and not surprisingly it has been suggested before. It is also dangerous, because it obscures...

Clarendon, 10 Pitiville Lawn, Cheltenham *

over the years, have turned for guidance and information to the weekly comments on Fleet Street in various periodicals have instead been treated to a constant flood of crank...

visit to one of the subjects of his brother Chief Kaiser Matanzima in the Transkei, South Africa. George Matanzima claimed that, according to tribal custom, the man had an...

SIR,—In your issue of January 17 Mr. Randolph Churchill gives figures purporting to show the space devoted in various newspapers to reviews of his recently published book, The...

1 think, for some comment from me. His statement that the films of the old British Lion company were taken over by the present British Lion Films Ltd. at a balance sheet figure...

D. G. THORBURNE

but her thought needs careful exami- nation. I agree men should not idle in prison and that demanding work may prove salutary. I cannot agree that proper work in prisons is 'the...

SIR,—May I use your post-box to inform Britain's poets and dramatists of two competitions sponsored by The Poetry Society in celebration of the Shakes- peare Quater-Centenary?...

all its pejorative undertones, seems a singularly inappropriate description of the defence of the frontiers of a fellow-member of the Commonwealth and one to whom we are bound...

Ivan's Childhood ('A' cer tificate) and Time of the Heathen ('X' certificate). (Both Jacey, Strand.) THE Russians are good at films about children and so long as Ivan's...

SIR,—You will not remember me, but you were a patient of mine, and almost a son-in-law of mine, between 1925 and 1930. At that time I was practising opposite your home in...

By CHRISTOPHER BOOKER 'Au,' remarked the senior BBC executive enigmati- cally, 'but it will all be better after the election.' 1.e Just what would be better and in what way, he...

SMALL emphasis in the wrong place makes a Strindberg play sound un- balanced and hysterical, which is why the author usually gave his producer accurate and lucid descrip- tions...

Dr. Bohm is small, benignly spectacled, convulsive in an amiable way and full of fire. In moments of Straussian stress he hops and makes little leaps, or bends double and...

IF any student bemused by the rhetoric of The Seven Lamps of Architec- ture asked me if there were a mind of comparable complexity I might sug- gest, surprisingly, the author...

The Forrestal Doctrine By GORONWY REES T may well be that when future historians 1 come to describe the political evolution of the world after the Second World War, they will...

Selected Essays and Addresses. By A. H. Smith. (Blackwell, I 8S.) WARDEN SMITH of New College was an indi- vidualist without arrogance and without vanity. He never sought to...

This, among the Romans was the raillery of Slaves!—Swift; Hints toward an Essay on Conversation. `PICARESQUE' was the word the reviewers found to describe Amis's Lucky Jim...

FERDYNAND ZWEIG'S studies of contemporary British life are unpopular with many of our academic social scientists for the very qualities which recommend then to the wider public....

The Strangers on My Roof. By E. Arnot Robertson. (Cresset Press, I8s.) The Snow Ball. By Brigid Brophy. (Seeker and Warburg, los.) Sleep Till Noon Day. By Richard Purslow....

'FLY west, Wystan,' Day Lewis wrote in 1933, 'my bully boy.' Seven years later, Auden, rather dismayingly, took this advice. The American universities romped round him like...

North Korea Today. Edited by Robert A. Scalapino. (Pall Mall Press, 27s. 6d.) The Centre of the World : Communism and the Mind of China. By Robert S. Elegant. (Methuen, 42s.)...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT I HE question of economic timing is beginning to exercise the professional investor, as it must be exercising Mr. Maudling. The managers of the huge life...

By,PHILIDOR By,PHILIDOR No. 162. C. MANSFIELD and G. F. ANDERSON . (First Prize, South African Tourney, 1963) BLACK (14 men) WHITE (9 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves;...

By CUSTOS T HE unresolved steel strike, the end of the resale price maintenance and the political uncertainty all contrived to put the equity market lower at the beginning of...

By LOTHBURY rrtiE chairman of Peachey Property states that I the political threats to residential landlords are most exaggerated. The company is rapidly building up its...

America by Bus By KENNETH ALLSOP A MERICA is a bogglingly daunting project for the amateur traveller. How can one expand one's puny resources--physical, mental - . and...

By ANDREW ROBERTSON r r HE frontiers of tourism are flung farther I every year. The year before last, when you had just made it to Mykonos, only to discover that it is a kind...

By JAMES MORRIS ABROAD is unutterably bloody,' Miss Mitford's BROAD Matthew thought, and only the other day Mr. Ian Fleming endearingly remarked about a journey round the...

By LESLIE ADRIAN No sooner are Her Majesty's mails relieved of the Christmas card burden than the ever thicker, ever glossier, ever more colourful flow of travel agents'...

By ALAN BRIEN For reasons which it would be too tiresome to rehearse, I found myself the object of the irra- tional and unpredictable hatred of a mentally unstable...

ACROSS 27 3 Puts in global investigators to a broken scat (12) 9 Tommy's foot fault? (3, 2, 4) 10 There are strings attached to this girl (5) 11 A hold-up in the course of...

Rotor. 10 Bacchanal. II Crawls. 12 Limber up. 14 Igloo. 15 Hand-basin. 18 Escalator. 20 Amman. 22 Explodes. 24 Decamp. 26 Dramatise. 27 Union. 28 Running. 29 Absence. DOWN.-1...