T HE inherent difficulties of the Persian situation are well demonstrated in the fate of the British Note to the Persian Government which was delivered last week-end. The Note...

If there are two European countries which deserve more than others the gratitude of the Western Powers for the stand they have taken against Communist expansion they are Greece...

Mr. Morrison's visit to the German Chancellor was extremely opportune, and so—perhaps even more so—was his invitation to Dr. Adenauer to visit London. So, perhaps most of...

The sixth report of the work of the Children's Department of the Home Office, published this week after an interval of thirteen years, covers a period of intensive development....

If there is one field of action in which thorough planning is ' both necessary and possible it is the training and supply of teachers. This fact alone presented an attractive...

'‘ The shorthand phrase which has been used to describe the I disturbances that have taken place first in Barcelona, then in the Basque Provinces and Pamplona, and now in...

Some of the problems which have led to repeated unofficial strikes at the London Docks will take a long time to disappear. The Committee of Inquiry which has just reported has...

I T is bald to see how the State Department at Washington can disavow Mr. Dean Rusk without discarding him. That is the State Department's affair, or the President's—at any...

in and around London (or indeed elsewhere) should be called into service for ceremonial purposes, and it was no doubt no more than an undesigned, and probably unnoticed,...

D.M.I. (Director of Military Intelligence) at the War Office to Principalship of the Working Men's College at St. Pancras, with which his grandfather Frederick Denison Maurice...

week, Mr. Paul Hoffman remarks that armaments do not spring into being ready-made "like Minerva from the head of Job." From the tale of the patriarch's sufferings as recounted...

A NY journal, even a journal of comment like the Spectator, likes to be first with the news. It has been left to the Hon. Edward Martin, Senator from Pennsylvania, to vindicate...

Oxford for the first time deserves special notice, if only because Merton's history is longer than that of any other college at Oxford or Cambridge. Merton was founded in 1264,...

day installing its new Chancellor, Lord Tedder) conferring honorary degrees on the usual company of distinguished people, among them General Omar Bradley. What gives me, and...

By D. IL GILL1E Paris T HE curse of French politics for the last 160 years has been that the very framework of the country's political life is constantly in question. Something...

B . , BRIAN INGLIS Dublin A LITTLE over three years ago Mr. de Valcra's party, which had held office for sixteen years, made an unsuc- cessful visit to the country, returning to...

By SIR EVELYN WRENCH F IFTY years ago there were many who declared that the twentieth century would probably ' belong " to the Anglo- Saxon Powers and would witness a further...

By JAMES CALLOW .66 ARS proceeding to the Company General Office should no longer use the inward exit... . ." It is true that any road turning away from the river seemed to go...

Man of Many Parts By MICHAEL GILL (Edinburgh University) It happened because the appropriate union will not allow its members, the opera chorus, to take non-singing parts. In...

THE SPECTATOR readers are urged to place a firm order with their newsagent or to take out a subscription. Newsagents cannot afford to take the risk of carrying stock, as unsold...

By HAROLD N1COLSON T this season of the year, more acutely even than in the first weeks of autumn, we are reminded of the imper- manence of beauty and of the irreparable...

Bonavent u re." (Leicester Square.) - Call Me Mister." (Gaumont.) I CONFESS I do not know a single nun, and yet an inner voice prompts me to believe that neither Miss Claudette...

(Vaudeville.) THE TITLE of Mr. Home's historical piece is from William Dunbar. That poet, one feels, would not be entirely flattered. Whatever the age of James IV was, it was...

THEATRE 44 Antony and Cleopatra." By William Shakespeare. (St. James's.) IN tragedy, as on the trapeze, height is a factor of the first impor- tance. It is not enough to fall...

MR. GUINNESS'S Hamlet enlists rather,than compels our attention. It is far from being a great performance but it is a very intelligent one, and on the night when I saw it little...

week have shown how well the building rewards really fine playing. On May 17th Halina Stefanska played Chopin's E minor concerto there with the London Philharmonic Orchestra ;...

"Paul Draper." Ballet Workshop. (Mercury.) BALLET WORKSHOP, in their Sunday-night programmes at the Mercury Theatre, are giving a very rare treat in the presentation of Paul...

Britain, as it unfolds, is revealing many surprising and delightful pleasures, but is unlikely to show anything nearer perfection in its way than the reconstruction by the...

Now that the National Jubilation is in full blast, every community in the land has come out in cross-garters. On Whit Monday night I went up to our hill-top village, where the...

permissible this week, for the spring flowers, in defiance of the unseasonable wind and temperatures, are abundant in their glory. I have never known such a season for...

IT is perhaps ungracious to admit that my expectations were not fulfilled by the second open-air exhibition of sculpture in Battersea Park, for one must always be grateful for...

ONE of the best things about the Chelsea Flower Show is that its title exactly defines its function ; it is a show of flowers. Vegetables hardly-intrude, and even flowering...

CHARLES KfNGSLEY must have been either mad or wicked, that he could write a poem in praise of the North-East Wind. Only a mood of masochism could have driven him to it. Week...

Determined to enjoy myself out of doors for a while, even though in an overcoat and scarf. 1 went for a stroll the other evening after sun- down. The half-moon was high, and its...

Set by John Clarke 44-prize of 0, which may be divided, is offered for a description of the closing stages in the trials of one of the following—Mary Queen of Scots; Charles...

Report by John Usbornc LAndor's fire of life, it must be imagined, flared up, and he found himself anything but ready to depart at the age of, say, 85. The reason : a boyish...

editorial expressions of opinion, but a suggestion made in your News of the Week note under the above heading in your issue of May 11th should not pass without comment....

"the New Feminism" may turn out to be, and on the pressures to which it will be subjected. We have had a representative of those who want not so much to remain women as to...

The New Feminism Sia,—Ever since this correspondence started (with my review of Mrs. Amabel Williams-Ellis's The Art of Being a Woman) I have been expect- ing the irruption...

EPSOM RACES IN point of numbers, the attendance on Epsom Downs on Wednesday, the seventy-second anniversary of "The Derby," was the greatest iner seen. The "Exhibition year" at...

of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, Saul's daughter, looked through a window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord ; and she despised him in her...

SIR,—I have just seen Mr. W. P. Jackson's letter in the Spectator of May 4th, in which he forcibly points out my error in interpreting the last scene in Christopher Fry's play...

in Proverbs vii an interesting tale reminds one of the celebrated suggestion that the Day of Judgement might be called a pretty sight.— Yours faithfully, W. F. LOFTHOUSE. Old...

slander of this ancient scat of enlightened humanism as a sort of hostelry for " profo- sional education." And how much it pains me, after three year's residence in the capital...

Sta,—May I ask you to record my appreciative grin at Mr. J. B. Broad- bent's contribution, Englishman in Exile ? I have read all the Under- graduate Pages and, confess to a...

SIR,—lanus's selection of Proverbs vii for entertainment must surely bear the palm. The History of Bel and the Dragon, for our generation that loves detective tales, must be...

SIR,—In his Spectator's Notebook of your last two issues Janus has raised an interesting point about the attribution to Voltaire of a quotation which, although very close in...

C OWPER could discover in Johnson's Lives only one poet "whose mind seemed to have the slightest tincture of .religion." His name was Collins ; Cowper had never heard of him...

Henry Fuseli The Mind of Henry Fuseli. Selections Irom his Writings with an Introductory Study. By Eudo C. Mason. (Routledge and Regan Paul. 25$.) The Drawings of Henry Fuseli....

Peace Can be Won. It% Paul Hoffman. (Michael Joseph. 8s. 6d.) No book with such a title needs much bush. If there is anything that all Europe this side of the Iron Curtain, and...

Jan Masaryk: A Personal Memoir. By It. H. Bruce Lockhart. (Dropmore Press. 23.) THIS is a beautiful tribute paid by his friend, Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, to Jan Masaryk. It is...

THIS is by far the best book on French Government that has appeared, either in French or in English, for a long time. English- Men are apt to regard the complexities of...

The Old Book of Wye. By G. E. Hubbard. (Pilgrim Press, Derby. 1 23. 6d.) Country Neighbourhood. By R. W. Ketton-Cremer. (Faber. iss.) IN our age, when the autocratic...

A Vagrant. By David Gascoyne. (John Lehmann. as. 6d.) THE underlying theme of David Gascoyne's latest poems is that of a man who has moved outside the normal stream of...

Capability Brown. By Dorothy Stroud. (Country Life. La. 2. o.) THE life of Capability Brown, here told strangely enough for the first time, makes the most unqualified success...

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. By I. J. Donnelly. A modern revised edition edited by Egerton Sykes. (Sidgwick and Jackson. 28s.) largAnos J. DONNELLY was a strange man. He...

Mout' twanty-five years ago H. G. Wells wrote a novel in the form of a film-script. It was called The Man Who Would Be King. I thought it entirely successful, and wondered then...

By CUSTOS Goon dividends and handsome scrip bonuses are now fighting it out with international politics for predominance in the stock mar- kets. As I forecast last week, there...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution of this week's crossword to be opened alter noon on Tuesday week, lune 5th. Envelopes...

The winner of Crossword No. 625 is the REV. DOUGLAS KErrE, M.A., 182 Littleton Road, Lower Kersal, Salford, 7. SOLUTION ON JUNE 8