I T is a rare privilege to meet Mao Tse-tung and this has now been bestowed, one may be sure not carelessly, upon the British Labour Delegation in Peking. On this occasion,. the...

No. 6 5 8 3 FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 1954 PRICE 7d.

All the personal, political and economic elements of a typical Latin American crisis were present in Brazil this week when a group of senior military and air force officers...

Until all the important papers are available here it will be difficult to see just what was achieved at the fifth International Congress on Mental Health, which came to an end...

The general council of the Trades Union Congress is a weighty body and its annual report is usually marked these days by a sense of responsibility and moderation. This year's...

in against the perceptible loosening, which followed the death of Stalin, of the ideological shackles binding Soviet authors and playwrights. The brilliant Ukrainian humorist...

arisen. The sovereignty of Cyprus is indisputably British and there is not the slightest evidence that the ordinary Greek- speaking Cypriots would have it otherwise. Are they,...

The red-hot atmosphere of Washington has cooled some- what, and the Administration, by determined action, has avoided being landed with a kind of anti-Communist Bill which would...

T HE British, American and German Governments have decided that this is not the moment to admit that the European Defence Community is dying, any more than it is the time to...

One of the first things I hope that the reorganised British Railways will do is restore the names to the old companies. They might give back the Great Western its name and...

A UGUST has known few sadder sights than the seaside towns of England this year. I was in Devon last week, that once beautiful county now heavy with the scent of petrol and...

I was standing in an old country church these holidays when two elderly men in shorts and with walking sticks and haver- sacks came in to examine it. One was smoking a pipe and...

At my public school the most unsympathetic schoolmasteg it has ever been my misfortune to come across, said to 00 when returning one of my essays, Betjeman, do you want tf end...

the heart of that city and is, as it were, the St. Martin's-in-the-Fields of those crowded industrial streets. The church is in good repair and has an adequate endowment and...

By STEPHEN TOULMIN HEN Dr. H.. V. Evatt, QC. Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition in the Australian Federal Parliament and of the Australian Labour Party, appeared before the...

By A. D. C. PETERSON R ESIGN—Boycott—Hartal (stoppage of work), tha familiar watchwords must by now have a somewhat nostalgic ring for the Nationalist leaders in the newly...

By JENNY NICHOLSON D E GASPERI is dead. The glass coffin is for a public life. The rosary -twined through his fingers for his godliness. The business suit is for his concept of...

Several overseas readers have written to the Spectator to ask if books, which they had difficulty in obtaining, could be sent to them. The Spectator will gladly arrange for...

a larf, coves on a ship Ketches a uge seaburd, a helbatrawss. A hidle type as mucks in on the trip By follerin the wessel on its course. Theyve ardly got im on the deck afore...

By ANSELM CHILWORTH T HE South owes much to the Scots. They founded the Empire and administered it. Without them the engines of the merchant marine would putter out into a long...

PIPE-BANDS marching along Prince's Street. miles of tartan in the shop windows, St. Andrew's crosses proliferating from a multitude of flags (which one Englishman took for...

first created for—and partly by— Diaghilev, in honour of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. La Boutique Fantasque and Le Trlcorne are familiar pieces; the novelty is The...

NEVER quite certain, rightly or wrongly, of its box office, Edinburgh has this year not risked the British, let alone the world, premiere that its establishment as one of the...

THE transmission of music was in the beginning of it and still remains the only completely satisfactory excuse for the invention of broadcasting. It was 'music in the air' that...

Flame and the Flesh. (Ritz.) The Black knight. (Gaumont.) ANTHONY AsQurnt is a fine if not infallible director, and The Young Lovers, by George Tabori and Robin Estridge, suits...

By PHILIP OAKES Facing the North To invoke the north is a necessary pain When winter.trims the marrow in the bone, A whistle in the right quarter Raises a wind to chap the...

SOMEWHERE between the last work of Cezanne and the early work of Picasso Seven hundred years of European painting Were turned upside down. Yet who shall say whether that...

Gutted of clay, the marl pit Is the mesa where the bad men wait; Tomorrow, no-man's land, alert With partisan patrols and next week Planetary station one, Where rockets break...

letter whose terms we in Scotland know almost by heart, lamented the past failure of Scottish Home Rule Bills even when sup- ported,. ostensibly at least, by many Scots MPs. For...

in his reply to Sir Compton Mackenzie must inevitably evoke a strong measure of disagreement from Anglo- Catholics. There is no evidence whatever that the Thirty-Nine Articles...

memory must be playing him some tricks. He and I are much of the same age, and his references to the past concerning ' The Crisis in the Church' circa 1898 are quite familiar to...

W. James, in your issue of August 20, in defence of Mr. Kensit. Sir Compton Mackenzie went a great deal too far in what he said, parts of which are entirely without foundation...

LORD RUSSELL AND THE GERMANS SIR,—In his article Lord Russell and the Germans ' Mr. Healey makes a frivolously inaccurate statement which calls for immediate and emphatic...

contributions to the current discussion, upon the subject of Scottish Nationalism which have appeared of late in the Spectator. My bewilderment springs from the indifference...

SIR,—Your readers may be growing weary of the exchanges between Mr. Cranston and myself; and this must be my last contribution, If Mr. Cranston thinks that nurses who keep...

SIR.—I am anxious to trace the whereabouts of childhood work (before the age of 15) of the following celebrated artists: Sir David Wilkie, Sir Thomas Lawrence, and Pierre...

SIR,—Glaux's amusing comments in A Spectator's Notebook' on the lines of Dr. Isaac Watts do less than justice to this - eighteenth-century hymn writer and poet. Although the...

SIR,—Your correspondent Mr. W. John Tristram, of Colwyn Bay, does not agree with part of my recent criticism of the critiques of some of the critics' of cricket, who in my view...

SIR.—I n the article ' Dilemma ' _svhich appeared in the Spectator on August 13, Sir Carleton Allen surely introduces some confu- sion by failing to distinguish between science...

has revealed that the Russians have a Disinformation Service, whose task is the dissemination of misleading information. A prize of £5 is oftered JOr an extract from the report...

the behaviour of a blackbird which has nested near my house ?' writes a Coventry reader. Recently a continual tapping on the window attracted my attention. It was the male bird...

a letter from Mr. W. A. Thomson of Newtonmore, Inverness, and bears out my belief that, with animals not accustomed to being hunted or injured by man, it is the jerky or excited...

As far away as New England they know the summer kitten, I am told by Mr. Earl Daniels of the Department of English, Colgate Uni- versity, Hamilton, N.Y. His grandmother used to...

compost in advance so that it Is matured and ready for use when the time comes to put bulbs in bowls and pots. Coarse silver sand is a good constituent with peat moss, light...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 234 Report by Allan 0. Waith SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 234 Report by Allan 0. Waith An American ballad, 'The Big Rock Candy Mountains,' gives a picture...

A FTER the declaration of war on Germany in 1914 a despicable campaign was promoted by a part of the English press to impugn the loyalty of Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg....

ift. GRAHAM DUKES (University College Hospital) I HAVE been to an Exhibition of Industrial Art. It was a depressing experience, full of wardrobes with legs askew and knobs awry,...

Murder on Saturday T Piccadilly Circus they told us to mind the doors. 'If I could take my cap off I'd be able to stand upright. But where'd I put my cap ? ' said" an American...

By ANTHONY HARTLEY W HAT do most readers mean when they talk of ` modern' poetry ? Not the founders, not Eliot or Yeats. Not the more recent representatives, not Dylan Thomas...

The Life of Lord Roberts. By David James. (Hollis and Carter. 30s.) THAT the heroes of two generations back are rarely admirable to their descendants is a truism barely worth...

Colour Bar. By Learie Constantine. (Stanley Paul. 12s. 6d.) WHAT with the policy of Dr. Malan's government and Mr. Constan- tine's cricketing fame and popularity, most people...

Betrayal of an Ideal. By G. A. Tokaev, with an introduction by Sir David Kelly. (Harvill. 21s.) COLONEL TOKAEV is a veteran Caucasian Communist in his mid- forties who fled to...

The Collected Poems of Mary Coleridge. Edited by Theresa Whistler. (Hart-Davis. 15s.) Wrrx the work of Mary Coleridge we are back in the world of private poetry, a world where...

The Darkness Under the Earth. By Norbert Casteret. (Dent. 15s.) 4,000 Years Under the Sea. By Philippe Diole. (Sidgwick & Jackson. 18s.) Two countrymen of Jules Verne, leading...

The Wife of Ronald Sheldon. By Patrick Quentin. (Gollancz. 10s. 6d.) The Cat and Fiddle Murders. By E. B. Ronald. (Gollancz. 10s. 6d.) The Wife 'of Ronald Sheldon confirms...

This is a competent piece of book-making, aimed presumably at the tourist trade. - In so far as it pleasantly recalls scenes of enjoyment, it is likely to be welcomed and form...

The Rural Muse: Studies in the Peasant Poetry of England. By Rayner Unwin. (George Allen & Unwin. 15s.) THE tenor of Mr. Unwin's book is an even one; there arc no surprises, but...

LIEUTENANT-COLONEL SCORESBY gets into a dust-up with his superiors for refusing, without being given the full story, to remove from his command a certain Captain Creedy, an...

By CUSTOS THE generally quiet time the Stock Exchange is having at the moment—to the great relief of the over-worked clerks—is not preventing some excitement in 'special...

INVESTMENT DAVENPORT By NICHOLAS Victory for Hire-Purchase Finance The repression of United Dominions Trust had therefore become, as its chairman, Mr. Gibson Jarvie, remarked...

I 1 ■ 3 ■ 4 5 ■ 6 ■7 ■ 8 1 1 1$ 19 2.3 ■ 1 ■ 1111 I 0 I . 16 17 1 I /4. ■ 1 Nee o 1 Lira of Tiv. Mei and t o , one The awe, Arm first solu efts Tue Sep...