Adventure GEOFFREY FABER : Critical ,Times for Publishing IAIN HAMILTON: Sicily in Spring JACQUETTA HAWKES : The Human Roundabout CECIL DAY LEWIS : A New Poem PHILIP NOEL-BAKER,...

▪ HAT is the aspect of Queen Mary's personality which strikes us most as we think, naturally, of these latest and nearest years in which the youngest at any rate of her...

well with the European Defence Treaty. Its ratification by the Bundestag by the unexpectedly large majority of 224 votes to 165 must have the effect of strong moral pressure on...

want to give itself more time to consider the question of the Judges' salarirs , 1 but it is doubtful whether the problem will prove any more l tractable after Easter than...

The Soviet Union's devotion to the cause of peace has for a long time been expressed in words utterly unrelated to. and indeed frequently contradicted by, its deeds. The...

Nobody need blame the Continental members of the Organisation for European Co-operation for the fears, .which they were expressing only a week ago, lest the British Govern- ment...

That a Prime Minister of France should leave Paris. for the United States immediately after securing, by a mere thirty-one votes, the support of the Assembly for a measure to...

The danger that, after flood and tempest, the miseries of a Political storm might be-inflicted on a still suffering country, seems at last to have been removed. 'When the Prime...

The strike at Austin's Longbridge motor works has dragged itself out for nearly five weeks. The net results have been considerable hardship for, ten thousand men and their...

p ARLIAMENT paid its last tributes to Queen Mary on Wednesday, and having done so adjourned for the rest of the day as a mark of respect. The address which the House sent to the...

W ITH the division on Central African Federation in the House of Commons on Tuesday the die is cast. It is true that the project could still be brought to nothing by an adverse...

day on Monday. How much longer it is likely to continue I have no knowledge; no end appears to be in sight yet. But this is a jury case, and twelve jurymen have so far been...

Coronation souvenirs bearing the legend E II R are petulant, childish and inexcusable. All the same, and altogether irrespective of that, I feel increasingly that the intrusion...

Esher a week ago 1 took down from the shelf (because it happened to be the nearest book on the subject at hand) Stopford Brooke's Tennyson—part of a college prize quite a few...

Church Militant I reproduce the essence of the story as it appeared in one or two of Tuesday's papers.' It concerns the Rev. Richard Tydeman, vicar of St. John's, Woodbridge,...

majestic scale. The first volume, indeed, is written and will be out in • a few weeks. There are said to be two more to follow. H. G. Wells covered the history of the world in...

1 suggested that the disaster might possibly have been due to the car-doors in the stern being more vulnerable to heavy seas than the solid stern of an ordinary vessel. That...

HE Royal Commission on the Press was invited by some of the more strident critics of the " capitalist " newspapers to find that those organs were improperly influenced in their...

By SIR OSBERT SITWELL seems to have passed away, though in reality Her Majesty's long life covered several epochs, each very full for her of events and changes, of sorrows and...

By The Rt. Hon. PHILIP NOEL-BAKER, M.P. . OW that the heat of controversy is over, it may be useful to consider the proposal of the British Minister of Education at the last...

This is the winning entry in the " Spectator" competition for articles on this subject. The writer is compelled for professional reasons to remain anonymous. W HAT do people...

By JACQUETTA HAWKES , W E all have a rueful familiarity with the fact that man has a genius for frustrating his own endeavour. He builds cities for their amenity, and makes them...

By CANON CHARLES SMYTH T HERE is a story of F. W. Farrar who died fifty years ago this week at a dinner-party shortly after his coming to Westminster, when he was preparing to...

ny lAIN HAMILTON T the end of an uncomfortable winter and the beginning of a peevish spring which seemed until the other day little better than a continuation of discomfort,...

By C. H. BLACKER O NE of the most enjoyable parts of a ride at Aintree is talking about it afterwards.- In fact, I am inclined to think that the pleasure of riding over those...

THEATRE THE stage, when the curtain rises, is seen to be dominated by an enormous gilt pergola : the sort of thing that, if you were a wealthy eccentric and had plenty of wire...

The Cruel Sea. (Leicester Square.)—The Medium. (Academy.) —Bwana Devil. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) The Cruel Sea, adapted by Mr. Eric Ambler from Mr. Nicholas Monsarrat's...

An elegant, shabby, whitewashed house With a slate roof. Two rows Of tall sash-windows. Below the porch, at the foot of The steps, my father, posed In his pony trap and round...

So Dufy, who was among the first six or eight of that great and long-lived generation of Parisians, has gone—a few short months after receiving the grand painting prize at...

Boccherini SUPERLATIVE quality is, by definition, rare, and it is only when we meet it—in a person, a horse, a steak, or a work of art—that there is borne in upon the mind...

The Human Head As though to compensate for a deficiency of humanism in its inter- national sculpture competition, the Institute of Contemporary Arts' current show at its own...

Apparitions. (Covent Garden.) THE welcome given to Margot Fonteyn when she returned to Covent Garden after a six-months illness was one of the most touching ex- pressions of...

People, scattered on the ground like bulbs, grown here complete in coloured scarf and coat, borne on a tide of blue-veined crocus float through the lawns, swirling about the...

Crocus was legend then, primrose hearsay like talk of old women, the gossip at winter's gate. Sun is a new age now, a golden tale of explorers and kings, the leaf in stone and...

Set by Lucilio The usual prizes are offered for an address by a postman to the much-bombed E II R pillar-box in Edinburgh, or for a• complaint by that unfortunate pillar-box...

Report by Joyce Johnson Prizes were o f fered for a soliloquy by any well-known statue in a public place. A good entry, both in quality and quantity. Numerically, Nelson beat...

Freedom of Choice By J. P. W. MALLALIEU I N one of his books—was it The Economic Consequences...? —Keynes etches the 1913 world as it might have been for . those who had...

SIR,—The naïveté of Mr. J. W. S. Hearle's exculpation of the McCarran Act, which only epitomises the routine contempt for cultural and diplomatic traditions endemic on this...

Central African Federation SIR,—Could I be permitted to make a few belated remarks after reading Mr. Vernon Bartlett's excellent and well-balanced article on Federation? To...

Sik,—The contributor of a book-review which appears in your issue 0 1 March 13th states that the streets of Scottish cities in the eighteenth- century were as filthy as a...

Sta,—In criticising my description of the Alberta Social Credit Govern- ment as " a form of experimental Socialism," your correspondent, Mr. Eugene Forsey, is merely...

SIR,—In your edition of 20th March, your critic, Mr. Martin Cooper, writing of.Sutermeister's Romeo and Juliet, asks why Juliet was dressed in " funeral black " on the...

SIR,-1 should like to try to express what I believe are the feelings of the . " average man," making little claim to art-education, but forming the great 'bulk of the population...

SIR,—Janus hopes Granta will issue an anti-Coronation number. I am glad to think that few of us would agree; but many would agree that a ducking in Granta might wash some of...

balanced article on the protest at the Tate, remains like most unprejudiced lovers of contemporary sculpture, I imagine, frankly bewildered, if not a trifle dismayed by the...

SIR,—May I ask the help of the Spectator or of its readers in the following trouble ? One of my friends here is working on a new Czech translation of The Pickwick Club. He...

Camberwell, 16th March, 1853, SIR,—The Income-tax is just now a topic of sufficient interest and importance to excuse my troubling you with another short communi- cation on...

SIR,—It has been pointed out to me that there is a danger that a Miss Quigly, at present employed by. the American Command in Florence, may be confused with me as the author...

WE came through the village slowly and quietly, Impressed with the sleepiness of the place. A ewe and her lamb came down a side-street. A second ewe wandered along the middle of...

Why do frogs select a particular pond for spawning and avoid others ? Do the water and mud contain weed or some special ingredient that makes them particularly suitable for the...

A correspondent in America, writing to me about the reluctance of people in this country to eat our native funguses other than the mush- room expresses surprise that puffballs...

A lime-sulphur spray should be given to prevent leaf curl on peaches, nectarines and almonds. It will soon be time to disbud peaches and nectarines, and the process should be a...

The good old-fashioned village policeman had to be an exceptional man. He was slow and red-faced and perhaps not over-alert, but he maintained law and order in his own way,...

CRITICAL TIMES FOR PUBLISHING By GEOFFREY FABER H AS there, I wonder, ever been so much anxious, public speculation about the future of books as during the past three or four...

Divided Image " by Margaret Rudd, and Edmund Ulunden "Shelley: The Last Phase " by Ivan Roe.

An Introduction to Welsh Poetry. By Gwyn Williams. (Faber. 25s.) WELSH poetry has a history which goes back to the sixth century, and it remains a part of Welsh life today....

The House of Mirth. The Age of Innocence. By Edith Wharton. (John Lehmann. 12s. 6d. each.) Two things have been chiefly responsible for the dimming of the reputation of Edith...

HERE is an admirable translation of one of the great books of French literature. Vigny's passionate and clear prose offers a challenge to translators in exacting measure. In the...

The Stranger's Son. By John Keevil. (Geoffrey Bles. 21s.) DR. KEEVIL has chosen for this fine book an awkward and allusive title which cannot be understood without explanation....

Lilies in Their Homes. By Alice C. Maxwell. (Collins. 16s.) MANY books have been written about lilies, but within my reading experience none with a more richly compact...

Evolution in Action. By Julian Huxley. (Chatto & Windus. 9s.) THE role of populariser is often despised. But reading this book one sees how Dr. Huxley brings qualities of...

Marginal Land in Britain. By W. Ellison. (Bles. 25s.) Tins is not an easy book to read. Many of those who, perforce, are interested in its subject will find it necessary often...

EVER since the late H. J. Massingham told me that it was his favourite book, I have been eager to read The Private Papers of Henry Rye- croft by George Gissing, and so I was...

CAPTAIN COUSTEAU is a pioneer who may perhaps prove as important as the Wri g ht brothers or Anthony van Leeuwenhoek. His tech- nique of free divin g , as independently as a...

The Lost Tradition in Music. By Fritz Rothschild. (Black. 63s.) EACH year that carries us further from the nineteenth century carries us also further from the nineteenth...

IT is scarcely conceivable that the poets of the 'nineties will ever find readers again; not because of their sordid lives, their sexual perversions, their drink, their...

The Spectacle. By Rayne Kruger. (Longmans. 10s. 6d.) M. PEYREFITTE'S novel has been widely reviewed and is being widely talked about. One can easily see why. The story of a...

NUMBERS of books inspired by the Coronation are appearing this spring. Members of the. Royal family, Royal homes, and Royal gardens, the British Court and character studies of "...

Graybeards their long faded gowns worn lightly Take the air of early evening as it cools The foot of the Tartar Wall. A few climb To stand among the rubble where ten men have...

A FIRST-CLASS production of such a play as A Doll's House or The Lady from the Sea reveals many " moments of truth "—those deep and rewarding flashes of insight which both...

mixed company of young middle-class intellectuals, in rebellion against the formalism of eighteenth- century culture. The usual source for our knowledge of them is Goethe's...

By CUSTOS Some hesitancy has been seen in the stock markets this week. The approach of the Budget and the Easter holiday; the weekly revenue figures showing an overall deficit...

IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, April 7th, addresses! Crossword. 99 Gower Street,...

km AIM RA In CI In n_ • N n erg rg3 IEICHWIll Marin Solution on April 3 The winner of Crossword No.. 721 is: Miss E. M. Ausi km, 217, Aylesbury Road, Wcndover, Bucks.