Cues A. Alvarez Spectator

IF HE SUDDENLY breaks into 'Hello, Dolly,' or starts on one of Shirley Bassey's songs, you know everything's all right,' quoted the Sunday Times on George Brown. But Mr. Brown...

T HIS week's Spectator is largely about France. It appears at a time when the whole question of Britain's relations with Europe is once again coming under serious discussion and...

Friday February 26 1965

Geneva Spirit VANYA WALKER-LEIGH writes from Geneva: Mr. Callaghan's announcement to the House last Monday that the 15 per cent import sur- charge would be cut by 5 per cent...

DAVID BUTLER Can an Incomes Policy Work?. RALPH HARRIS

MURRAY KEMPTON writes from New York: Malcolm X lived with us white Americans for thirty-nine years—whether in love or hate he does not seem ever to have been quite able to say...

Officiil Secrets? By CHRISTOPHER BOOKER O N Sunday, with a tremendous roll of drums from its leading article, the Sunday Times announced yet another 'major departure' in...

OUR MOSCOW CORRESPONDENT writes: There is little doubt that a meeting will take place on March 1. Absent from it will be prob- ably at least seven of those invited: China,...

It will surely come to pass, Says Lord Snow, That the Lower Middle Class (Vide Snow), Will go by general rule To a Comprehensive School, Where the cultures can be mixed And the...

By R. A. CLINE O NE, of the most remarkable 'things about Mrs. Fordham's gripping story of the great mail train robbery is that she was able to write the book at all. She has...

Will Harold Hang On? By ALAN WATKINS Im's Department, like Jim's Inn (the passing J of which I, for one, regret), is a happy, straight- forward, innocent folk-land where...

tour south-west France is certainly an im- pressive one, not least because of the inclusion of Ken Jones and Ray McLaughlin, respectively the best centre and the best...

the spirit of the Nanny State fights on. Next Tuesday the LCC is to consider a recommendation that the Home Secretary be invited to introduce legis- lation so that smoking could...

little does) that the front cover of this week's Spectator is different from its predecessors. There haVe been a number of such changes in the paper's long life, but we are...

The United States Information Services have a ninety-minute documentary film about John Kennedy's Presidency. It has been shown so far in Luton and the House of Commons and...

Short of ordering handwriting tests for the entire population, it is hard to see how an anony- mous postcard could constitute a breach, of privilege. But one sentence used by...

l r seems against nature for doctors to strike, and I hope that , this latest dispute, the most serious since the National Health Service began, will end in peace. If it does,...

By TERENCE BENDIXSON M R. LEO D'ERLANGER, the chairman of the Channel Tunnel Study Group, believes that a tunnel could be open by 1970. Mr. Ernest Marples, when he was still...

The State of Relations ELDOM is the destiny of two peoples so inti- mately linked as has been that of France and Britain for centuries. For a long time, it is true, our common...

From DREW MIDDLETON PARIS H ow does he do it? General de Gaulle rules France with an authority unequalled since the early days of Louis Napoleon's Second Empire. He makes...

postage) by surface mail to any address in the world. OVERSEAS AIR MAIL RATES: £4 12s. to Europe, North Africa, and Middle East; £5 10s. to South Africa, East Africa, West...

By BERNARD CAZES ALL national planning is a combination of medium-term aims and policies, geared to a final year (say) four or five years ahead. Yet in drawing up a medium-term...

By DANIEL OSTER rr HE end of the Algerian war and the vote of 1 confidence in the technocrats together put an end to the immediate participation of French intellectuals in the...

By ELIZABETH DAVID J UST two leaves of tarragon, two and no more, are to go into the butter and herb stuffing for a dish called poulet au reveiL 'I say two leaves only,' wrote...

Front: E. Tangye Lean, Christopher Hall, Harry Cohen, M. H. MacPherson. Major-General J. R. Hartwell (Rtd.), Frank Auerbach, Ralph Intone, Evelyn King, MP, Findlay P. Murdoch,...

SIR,—May I clarify one point in Mr. Christopher Booker's analysis of the ills of the Sun? Mr. Booker refers to the theory that the Inter- 'national Publishing Corporation would...

Sta.—One may sympathise with Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien's distaste for mystic interpretations of Whittaker Chambers's character. But the validity of Chambers's evidence does not...

SIR,— I was delighted to read Isabel Quigly's pro- test against the grant of a 'U' certificate to the film Lord Jim. My wife and 1. who are infrequent cinema-goers, attended a...

SIR,—May 1 point out to your readers the crucial part played by the Liberal Party in awakening the steel 'rebellion' within the Labour Party which Alan Watkins so interestingly...

strategic conception has evidently guided US tactical inertia in the protection of their static perimeter camps, such as Pleiku and Bien Hoa. Close-in routine patrolling 'along'...

SIR,—Quoodle rightly points out Lord Snow's in- consistency in publicly advocating comprehensive schools while privately supporting (or going to sup- port) the No. I public...

SIR.—Mr. Nevile Wallis misquotes me in his un- favourable review of my exhibition (Spectator, February 19); the phrase about not being able to do anything clearly or purely,...

SIR,— I would be greatly interested to know in what way the American forces in South Vietnam are defending essential freedoms or putting the Asian people in the way of doing so....

SIR.—There are respectable and humane grounds to be urged in defence of immigration. The one ground that seems to me deplorable is that used by Quoodle, seeking to remind us...

is obvious that the Vatican, in its present efforts to prevent the stage performance in Italy of The Representative, has a most guilty conscience over the refusal of the late...

Gillian Ayres c c"lAREFREE is the modern artist who has never fretted himself over the pace and complexity of scientific developments. Jack Yeats was natur- ally such an...

In Search of a Hero • By ADRIAN BRINE M ALRAUX has made the outsides of the French theatres shine. Formerly soot- caked, the Odeon, the Opera and the Comedie - Frangaise now...

Show Business Much Ado About Nothing. (National Theatre.) F RANCO ZEFFIRELLI'S glittering production at the National Theatre certainly respects the play's title: there can be...

Ian and Ena • UMAN kind,' said T. S. Eliot, 'Cannot bear very much reality'; something like nine million people view Coronation Street from epi- sode to episode. This thought...

By A. ALVAREZ I r' the English have little taste for ideas dis- guised as literature—and not much for ideas at all—the French have even less for creative work without theories...

How far can present Gaullist attitudes and Policies towards the 'Anglo-Saxons' be explained by contretemps between the General and his allies in the early years of the war? Mrs....

Daily Life in the French Revolution. By Jean Robiquet. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 36s.) MOST of the world is still fighting the French Revolution. Nationalism and Communism were...

The Merry Muses of Caledonia. By Robert Burns. A collection of bawdy folk-songs, ancient and modern. Edited by James Barke and Sydney Goodsir Smith. (W. H. Allen, 30s.) `Bums's...

The Bay of Pigs. By Haynes Johnson. (Hutchin- son, 40s.) MR. JOHNSON has not written the definitive his- t9rY of the disastrous invasion of Cuba in 1961, but he has thrown some...

THE publishers claim that this book is 'the definitive book on Suez, the one that at last tells the complete story of the crisis.' This is a large claim, and one on which the...

The Stormy Life of Laz Roitshvantz. By Ilya Ehrenburg. Translated by Alec Brown. (Elek, 25s.) The Man Who Was Not With It. By Herbert Gold. (Seeker and Warburg, 25s.)...

The Theatre of Protest and Paradox. By George E. Wellwarth. (MacGibbon and Kee, 30s.) MARTIN ESSLIN's The Theatre of the Absurd now has a couple of companions: manuals which...

Budget Drama or Tragedy By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT T HE great drama of the budget is being mounted on the political stage and the prin- cipal actors are busy rehearsing their...

By CUSTOS T tie threat to the private sector by way of heavier taxation, which was implicit in Mr. Callaghan's statement in the Commons on 'the budget estimates, caused a sharp...

Le Shopping By LESLIE ADRIAN In England today, with,the exception of a few honourables such as Pruniers, Chez Victor (Wardour Street) and Mon Plaisir (Monmouth Street), one is...

By PHILIDOR 219. J. L. MILLINS (Observer, 1920) BLACK (8 men) WHITE (9 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves ; solution next Week. Solution to No. 218 (Richardson): Q—Kc 3,...

By MARY HOLLAND A FRIEND of mine was approached in a Hamp- stead pub recently by a Of course, Hitler consulted an astrologer and so does Mrs. Bandaranaike, and let's hope she...

By ALAN BRIEN Is it possible to be a Don Juan today? I do not mean that Don Juan impure and simple such as I described last week (who embodies plain sexual gluttony) but the...

ACROSS 1. A sailor of note (7, 61 9. Our fit pet owes eferything to a delicious little biscuit (5, 4) 10. 'Earth has not anything to show more fair' than this primrose! (5) 11....

SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD No. 1158 ACROSS.-1 Corrupt. 5 Grabbed. 9 Could. 10 Market day. 11 Aviary. 12 Westward. 14 Genoa. 15 Imperfect. 18 Expedient. 20 Idris. 22 Cocktail. 24...