T HE visit of the Soviet leaders to this country is nearly over. Soon the red flags will be put away, the plain- clothes policemen will go home to bed, and Pravda need no longer...

ESTABLISHED I828 No. 6670 FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 1956 PRICE 9d.

D ELEGATES swayed by Communists.' So The Times head - line ran. And the Manchester Guardian had 'Communists in AEU gain a double victory.' But is this true ' ? A glance at the...

T HE British Overseas Airways Corporation is to have a .gifted amateur of aviation as its chairman and a charm- ing and urbane civil servant as 'its deli : My chairman at a time...

By HENRY FAIRLIE T HE most important event of the week has been the fantastic dinner given by the Labour Party to Marshal Bulganin and Mr. Khrushchev. The sixty-odd guests...

still face many obstacles.' Mr. Bulganin admitted after the weekend; and hardly were the words out of his mouth than he and Khrushchev were up against a very formidable obstacle...

A MONTH AGO I criticised the Home Office's attempt to prevent the Empire News from publishing the memoirs of the former executioner, Mr. Albert Pierrepoint. In the same week Mr....

Oxford University take a rest from the everlasting roads controversy and bend his formidable charm on Messrs. Bulganin and Khrushchev. What with one thing and another, he had a...

that some more reasonable and unified system of selecting, appointing, and paying the coroners themselves was arrived at. At the moment it is totally haphazard, with the result...

BERTHA, who is 20 now, is engaged to a Dutch cabinet-maker, Johan Bernardus Wolkenfelt. They have no marriage plans yet, however, because Bertha's parents think she is still too...

Soviet New Times an illuminating article about 'The British Literary Scene' by V. Rubin. Since there have been no new books from 'some of the best-known English writers like...

in a railway compartment recently with a neighbour's son, a boy of seventeen whose elder brother had left Cranwell shortly before. When he read out what I had written about the...

of his lecture tour of Canada. When the chief librarian of Toronto said at a luncheon there that Mr. Priestley would autograph conies of his books. Mr. Priestley not only...

BY CHARLES CURRAN C ONTINUOUSLY since the end of the war, two questions have confronted every government in this country. Socialist and Tory alike. One is 'How do you get people...

By LORD ATTLEE 0 all of us who took part in the Gallipoli campaign there remain very vivid memories. It stands out as an unforgettable experience. This is partly due to the fact...

13y JACK DONALDSON T HERE is a traditional reluctance amongst British economists to befriend the cause of an expanding agriculture. , The origin of this is easily understood,...

BY CYRIL RAY I T was long before I reached Stratford—it was in the Chilterns, somewhere in the Rothschild country—that 1 saw a contractor's board outside a desirable villa...

BY JOHN BETJEMAN I NOTICE that last week's Spectator was an `Irish Number.' This week I have some Irish notes. I have just come back from County Waterford. The sun shone all the...

IL OOKING for something in a drawer the other day, I came across an unopened envelope addressed, in my own handwriting, to myself. To be exact, it was not addressed; it only had...

Sig,—On the occasion of the visit of the Soviet leaders in this country, we think that our views on the issues involved should also be made known to the British public opinion....

book by Mr. Brian Inglis, may 1 be allowed to make these brief points: (1) I don't agree that it is permissible to describe 'evidence' from Sinn Fein sources as...

SIR,—Many readers may recall the Spectator Experimental Company. It is just over 50 years since the*' Company was founded by the late Lieut.-Colonel Pollock—to be exact, the Men...

The 'Spectator' on Eire St. John Ervin, Poles in Exile Dolega Modrzewsk, and otheri The 'Spectator' Experimental Company Bernard Raperport Roger Casement Rene MacColl See...

Euston 3221

SIR,—The first issue of the Gloucester Journal appeared on April 9, 1722. Before that date there were thirty-six provincial newspapers published, and of those only six have...

SIR,—Your description (page 527, Spectator of April 20) of Professor T. D. Williams as 'one of the founders of the late lamented Cambridge Review might just possibly cause a...

SIR,—I at least do not see what Mr. Hancock means in his letter of April 13, nor would I suggest that it is in accordance with the standards one has come to expect from the , s...

Cash and Courage THERE now seems to be a widespread feeling that the financial situation of the arts in Great Britain is past praying for. As inflation deepens and economists...

THE visit of the Thatre National Populaire to London brings before an English public for the first time a theatre which has become an insti- tution in. Paris and in the French...

the best-written Elizabethan plays is now on view. Theatre Workshop, whose resources could scarcely be more limited, are to be congratulated—on the choice of play, on a highly...

AT the South-East London Art Gallery, wh ere the words 'The Source of Art is in the Life Q.( a People' are written on the floor in parrInen is an exhibition—'Looking Forward'...

performance as Shylock does not domi- nate our memories of this most agreeable pro- duction, for in Miss Margaret Webster's hands the familiar play provides more counter-...

WESTERN, musical, thriller, and potted musical biography—the week's films, all from Holly- wood, all in colour, are as representative a bunch as you could wish. To begin at the...

IF the theatre is life's mirror, and the cinema its camera, then one may, perhaps, argue that television is its pair of field-glasses. That may explain why the plays that we see...

APRIL 30, 1831 IN London there are a thousand aristocrae ic '' n ' great and small, each of which is monopoly, and on a system of grades, wi lt ' j teaches men to crawl and...

Churchill as Historian BY HENRY FAIRLIE L ORD SALTER has recalled that he once heard Lord Haldane remark of Sir Winston Churchill: 'So clever, so brilliant; a pity he has never...

bYLAN THOMAS IN AMERICA. By John Malcolm Brinnin. (Dent, 18s,) Alt s title, as well as the press quotations which followed its earlier American publication, had indicated that...

THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE. By T. D. Kendrick. (Methuen, 210 Tuts account of one of the greatest natural disasters to o vert a European city makes comforting reading, for it shows...

tch MR. CRANKSHAW spares his readers very little in his gr ues h a, book Gestapo. It is the latest in the series of books whic" h „ come out year after year since the war to...

THESE two books taken together pose the problem of popular exposition in an extreme form, and do not solve it. Professor Webster's publishers claim that his book is of interest...

THE PIT AND THE CENTURY PLANT. By Pati Hill. (Gollane -, 1 CRISIS COTTAGE. By Geoffrey Willans. (Michael Joseph, 12s. ,.0 IN the 1940s the American musical comedy went rural...

Co N , h, ° Pening chapters are autobiography, cast with a completely tol;"loral effect in the form of answers to often ridiculously thetlived questions. Although much that is...

Muir. (Faber, 10s. 6d.) [ co 410 1 : . N1 um is not the kind of poet whose latest work invites 10 b e ris ons with his earlier; one does not expect his recent poems ail...

run sub-title, 'A history of psychoanalysis and the American Drama,' increases fears aroused by the title; and the preface, revealing that the material was 'first gathered and...

JUDGING by results, certain popular American novelists might plausibly claim that they had rallied under a leader with the slogan, 'Come, let us make lust ludicrous!' Is it now...

Si IF the poems in Patric Dickinson's T lje o r of 7'hings (Chatto and Windus, 7s. 6d) h ., elicit wild enthusiasm, they never cau50 on through poor taste or bad Craf tS 1 t...

T. E. HULME had a genuine originality, even if it was limited and also somewhat objection- able in kind. His impact on the Pound-Eliot generation, and thus on all of us, came...

THE 'Eagle Argent' of Donald Hall 5 (Eagle Argent; Methuen, I8s.) refers l e) arms of Abruzzo, that relatively unhaa ri part of Italy north and east of Montees s Mr. Hall is an...

LiKE Its predecessor, Medkeval Lincoln, J. W. F. Hill's Tudor and Stuart Lincoln (C.U.P., 32s. • 6d,), is an admirable example of local history written in a non-provincial way....

THE latest addition to the 6 Great O r 6 Great Poets, by Aubrey de San ° (Hamish Hamilton, 10s. 6d.), makes claim to profound, original scholarship , does it try to compress too...

VALUABLE though the Pelican histories of art certainly are, there might, perhaps, be a reconsideration of their form and pattern. The Art and Architecture of China, by Laurence...

WHEN The Dialek Affair, by Stewart Thomson (Allan Wingate, 15s.), came to me for re- view I thought to myself, 'Here's just another of the many books that have been written...

DAVENPORT : 11 By NICHOLAS °Ile en ough disinflation to cause a fall in tidustrial equities. After all, he had gone ril r t ° ° Pe, I imagine, could have been more r Prised...

By CUSTOS THE sharp rise in ordinary shares which followed upon the Budget had its origin, as I have explained, in the technical posi tion of an over-sold market. At the begin-...

House-hunting is not only a problem for humans. Birds seem to have the same trouble, and some of them face it every spring. I have been watching a pair of jackdaws trying to...

farm workers wore old army tunics. They made satisfactory working jackets even if they didn't quite blend with more conventional clothing. One looked at those tunics, tattered...

Aphis of one sort or another is the night- mare of many a gardener, for greenfly and blackfly are to be found on all sorts of plants and trees. Nicotine and derris are among the...

BY IAN NIALL tI ,ERE is some official concern, I read, about 'e security of rabbit hutches. It may be that i careless and irresponsible person will g ild loose his tame rabbits...

By PHILIDOR No. 47. .1. HARTONG • BLACK (5 men) WHITE ('I men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next week. From 'Selected with Comments' in The Problemist,...

Set by R. Kennard Davies A schoolboy of my acquaintance s ta i ,,1 in an examination that Charles 1, 1 4 married to 'Catherine of Uganda. petitors are asked to imagine that...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 321 Report by A. M. 0. S. A prize of six gidneas was offered for a definition of 'journalist' as it might be or might have been described by any one...

883 ore: MRS. WHITSFIELO J eG Victoria Road, Penarth, Glam., and Miss. WITHLRINOTON, Sum Hayward's Heath, Sussex.

ACROSS 11 Stirred ale would make the bird pink 4 1)1 : e is apparently short in the old cinema (8), 9 'To-day the Roman and his trouble are ashes under -' (Housman) (6). 10...