General Ridgway has the power to decide, and his decision has not been announced at the time this is written, whether to aot on the Washington recommenda- tion that the original...

T WO developments in Egypt during the Christmas interlude tend respectively to increase and/to lessen anxiety—if indeed there is real ground for optimism in the surprise...

Some readers of The Times must have been a little shocked when they read in its correspondence columns a few days ago a letter from a member , of the committee responsible for...

The recent talks on disarmament have been invested by cynics with an air of unreality. But all observers who keep in mind the two fundamentals—first that the common aim is...

Everybody in this country will wish good fortune to the latest recruit to the family of nations—the State of Libya, which came into existence on Christmas Eve. The recent...

The decision of the International Court of Justice in the pro- tracted fisheries dispute between Great Britain and Norway has several points of interest and some of importance....

may see a turning-point in our national fortunes at home and abroad. It is accepted doctrine that if Russia does in fact contemplate the desperate throw of an attack on Western...

T WO pieces of news, differing in importance according to the point of view. One is that PresidentTruman has definitely appointed Mr. George Kennan to be American Aniba - ssador...

National Trust to prevent the erection of posts for overhead electricity lines on the Malvern Hills, particularly as litigation which it was undoubtedly right to initiate must...

his Ministers. When he acts on his own be is likely to be very well advised. Rarely was he more so than when, with the world knowing nothing about it, he conferred a C.B.E. on...

into the closing of piers on the Clyde with Denis Brogan's article, " Doon the Water," in a recent Spectator swinging back into memory. I have heard a good deal since then of...

talking of graves. For it looks so far as if the zebra crossings had caused more accidents, some fatal, than they have averted. However that may be, it is quite clear that the...

har at St. Peter's in Rome may be that of St. Peter himself, and the bones found therein actually the Apostle's bones, is manifestly of great interest, though an archaeological...

By BRUCE RENTON p ERHAPS the struggle between water sand land on the Adriatic coast of Italy has its best symbol in , Venice, where a fantastic armistice was struck long ago...

By the RT. HON. PHILIP NOEL-BAKER, M.P. M UCH has been said in recent weeks, in the House of Commons and elsewhere, about the harm done by acrimonious international debates in...

By S. D. BAILEY T HERE was something rather magnificent about the way Air-Marshal Chang suddenly appeared from behind a boulder and held up his hand. He looked like the paiody...

Ey WALLACE TANNER T HE island was other-worldly in its Mediterranean beauty. TO the shades of its palms and its umbrella pines flocked the fired, successful poets of Western...

By WILSON HARRIS I AVING long held that both history and geography should, like another most laudable practice, begin near home, I have of late been investigating, not very pro-...

64 R. GENTLECACKETT," cooed the minister over the telephone, "has arthritis in his fingers. Could you . . . ? " I forbore from commenting that such was the impression he had...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I SUPPOSE that, if one wishes to make a success of life, it is necessary to string the bow of ambition with the single gut of concentration. People who have...

THEATRE " Indian Summer." By Peter Watling. . (Criterion.) THERE is a certain emptiness about this play. We are aware of dexterity, and sometimes of perception, but the...

“Mr. Denning Drives North." (Leicester Square.)--- ,, Never Take No for an Answer." (Rialto.)--0 Only the Valiant." (Warner.) — “ Elopement." (Odeon.) DIRECTED by Mr. Anthony...

SEVERAL of Hindemith's post-war works have been heard in London recently, but it is only now that his Piano Concerto of 1945 has been publicly performed in this country, by...

Below are printed the answers to the Christmas Questions pub, fished in the Spectator of December 21st. I. a. Calcobar (" Iskander " by J. E. Flecker). b. "In the High- lands,...

BY the death of Turner, not the English school alone, but art generally, loses one of its most remarkable professors. The gap which was felt last season at the Academy in the...

Set by Ronald Lambton - It is deplorable that in this modern age there should be occupa- tions still lacking the dignity of corporate status. A prize of £5, which may be...

Report by R. J. P. Hewison A prize of 13 was offered for a macaronic New Year carol. Spenser is sometimes called the poet's poet ; this proved to be a competitor's competition....

BETWEEN the Wycombe-Oxford road and Abingdon occurs a slightly elevated belt of open corn-country overlooked by the twin mounds of Whittenham Clumps or, as the Celts called...

help noticing about our con- ' temporary civilisation ; not the fields but the roads that pass through them are of primary importance to it. It is vehicular, not agrarian ; the...

Just outside Stadhanapton in this area I saw three of these ricks in line, and each of them was crowned at the apex with a corn-dolly in the shape of a straw cross that swung...

miles west of Oxford, I was just too - late to see a waxwing, a rare and sporadic winter visitor, so named from the curious knobs tipping the shafts of the secondary feathers...

No Orchids Sm.—There is one point of view in the controversy over air farm that will not have come into Professor D. W. - Brogan's purview of the subject, and, indeed, does not...

Sta.—Many will be amused by Mr. H. A. C. Evans's praiseworthy and prizeworthy rendering of current and obsolescent American' slang in Competition No. 92. But, in the interests,...

sm,-4 was interested to read the letters on this subject. I know it is only natural that the housewife will buy the good clean fruit, even if it is imported, and refuse the...

SIR,-1 contend that English publishers and their agents in Toronto are charging too much in Canada for books printed in England. Messrs. Macmillan & Co. sell Smart's The Origin...

SIR.—When our youngsters were at school (some twenty years ago in the case of the youngest) they made costumes for their plays with such assistance as they could get from...

Sm.—" If you cannot punctuate you cannot think." Archbishop Temple's dictum, ziuoted by Janus, is interesting. Had his Grace been addressing an audience of clergy he might well...

SIR,—As the headmaster of a large Indian secondary school, where the teaching of basic English has recently been introduced, with results that have been commended in the...

SIR,—Mr. Harold Nieolson writes "when Burke and Hare were hanged." Hare was not hanged ; he turned King's evidence and . was released, living for many years. Long after, a mob...

of the great qualities in historical writing is zest. Mr. Blunt's biography of Mulai Ismail, the seventeenth-century despot of Morocco, possesses this quality, as well as the...

A Humanist on Prehistory THE virtue of Mr. Coates is that, while having the whole range of the archaeological date of prehistory at his fingers' ends, he is not a professional...

Fresh Woods. By lan Niall. Wood engravings by Barbara Greg. (Heinemann. ios. 6d.) IN a familiar passage Richard Jefferies has told how, after he had gone about with a gun almost...

Robert Graves. (Cassell. 7s. 6d.) "A VOLUME of collected poems should form a sequence of the intenser moments of the poet's spiritual autobiography," writes Mr. Graves in the...

The Age of Wren. By Ralph Dutton. (Batsford. 42s.) SINCE the bicentenary of Sir Christopher Wren's death came round in 1923, several biographies of the great architect have...

Family Kingdom. ts. 6d.) MANKIND in general has rejected polygamy ; some thinking it irre- ligious and others finding it expensive. But scruples and indignation have often been...

Teresa of Avila. By Kate O'Brien. (Parrish. 7s. 6d.) ' LIKE many another writer not primarily interested in saints and mystics, Miss O'Brien has fallen victim to the compelling...

Westminster Hall. By Hilary St. George Saunders. (Michael Joseph. 2 ISO THE author's recent death lends a melancholy interest to the latest, and it must be feared the last, of...

The Single Woman of Today. By M. B. Smith. (Watts. 6s.) THAT spinsters in this gentler century are no longer said to be heading for an eternal friendship with an ape in hell is...

Victoria's Subjects Travelled. Edited by Herbert van Thal. (Arthur Barker. 25s.) THERE are many sagging shelves supporting evidence that a suffi- ciency of Victorian ladies and...

OF course, they are not " essays " ; they are, irremediably, "talks." _They are very good talks, alive with the unmistakable aliveness of Mr. Grigson in all his familiar roles...

Come Again. By Sarah Campion. (Peter Davies. 9s. 6d.) A Chorus Ending. By Ernest Raymond. (Cassell. tn. 6d.) _My Heart Shall Not Fear. By Josephine Lawrence. (Heinemann. ti...

By CUSTOS MARKETS are rounding off an eventful year on a note, if not of despondency, certainly of great restraint. Now that prices have fallen so severely the pressure to sell...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, Yanuary 8th, addressed Crossword, 99 Cower Street,...

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