i T was inevitable that the Government's policy towards the dispute in the docks—essentially absurd though that dis- pute may be—should in the first instance be one of ' wait...

There is nothing alarming In the Independent Television Authority's interim report. In the autumn of next year there will be three independent stations (London, Birmingham and...

The Lords debate on land requisitioning succeeded in making the issue between individuals and the State even plainer than the Crichel Down case had made it. Old Socialists and...

T HERE have been times since the war when the House of Commons has bored the public by calling attention to itself as an institution too often. The Government is running into...

In constitutional terms Pakistan is an unconscionable time in being born. Last spring Mr. Mohammad All pointed with some satisfaction to the efforts of his Government to speed...

These are days of secret police and open diplomacy, but there are parts of the world where events still move in archaic patterns. The recently created kingdom of Libya is such a...

I UST when Professor Toynbee has finished A Study of History - we are busy, it seems, with a new chapter; and again, as statesmen and correspondents paint with large strokes the...

him for an Englishman. He was a remarkable traveller, and his wide knowledge of Asia and of Asian languages wag gained in the remoter parts of that continent. He once very...

for the first (and theoretically the last) time of the American Cabinet in full session upon the television screen. I find it difficult to believe that all those present at this...

seats to which I referred last week appear in the correspondence columns. While we are on the subject of British Railways, it seems worth recording the experiences of a man I...

T HE March of Progress has in many ways facilitated the pursuit of power by the individual. Microphones, tear-gas and automatic weapons have had on the career of the modern...

H Y WALTER TAPLIN T HE month of October, 1954, was a particularly instructive time to be in Germany. The London Nine-Power con- ference had just ended, the Germans knew that...

By SIR MORTIMER WHEELER O N October 26 a collection of archeological relics was opened in the Assyrian Gallery of the British Museum under the title of From the Land of the...

BY D. R. GILLIE I T seems a long time ago that M. Pierre Mendes-France was elected Premier (it was June 18) on the basis of an improbable bet to stop the war in Indo-China...

A LDERSGATE STREET STATION as our fathers and grandfathers, and, for younger readers, great-grand- fathers knew it, is to be destroyed. That noble cast-iron roof which made the...

JUDGED by the general reaction at the Stoll on the second night, the reason for the lack of any very enthusiastic response to - the Bergman-Rossellini Joan of Arc at the Stake...

Neapolitan Fantasy. (Marble Arch Pavilion.)—Mad About Men. (Leicester Square.) Erroair GIANNINI'S Neapolitan Fantasy is the , most confusing and extraordinary as well as the...

Love's Labours Lost. By William Shake- speare. (Old Vic.)—Book of the Month. By Basil Thomas. (Cambridge.) STARTING with the small-time stuff, the Old Vic has chosen Love's...

THE exhibition of Bavarian rococo at the Victoria and Albert Museum is admirably selected, admirably displayed and admirably breaks new ground for most of us in this country....

Get Out the characters did not have con- vincing enough reality to stand lengthy close examination. Brevity is the wit of television. The problem of TV comedy haunts any number...

1789. Agreed, too, that its prospects are in- adequately reflected in Professor Michael Oakeshott's melancholy anarchist-toryism. But does Mr. Henry Fairlie come any closer to a...

SIR,-- Professor Oakeshott, so much wiser than Mr. Fairlie, saw the origin of conservatism M a state of mind rather than a set of prin- ciples, and was not surprised that the...

I am heartened; although I must confess that until I reached the word ' feudalism' in Henry Fairlie's article on ' True Conservatism' I was on the wrong track. Perhaps if one...

made his maiden speech, realises how bad it was. But, humble or not, I feel that Mr. D. J. Hurst's letter in last week's Spectator must not be allowed to go un- answered. The...

October 20. Arriving late, I noticed that the remaining corner seats had labels on them, though the seats were not filled. Coming back the next evening, I and another person...

in your issue of October 22 full enquiry has been made into this matter. I am satisfied that there was no irregularity whatever in the allocation of scats on the 11.45 a.m. from...

Conquest by Man in the Spectator of Octdber 22, your reviewer, Glyn Daniel, criticises the author's style and then adds in parenthesis, ' unless he is totally misrepresen• ted...

that I am in general agreement with what he wrote in last week's Spectator. However flippant and cynical we may appear, we are— some of us—naive enough to believe that the Union...

under the above heading has touched an anxiety that many people feel. One wonders whether the present policy in Kenya deals with symptorn' only or does it get right down to the...

THE recent spell of mild weather may have sapped the energy of those who wilt in such conditions but it produced a carnival of flies, bugs, beetles, spiders and moths, such as...

A prize of £5 is offered for a set of six thoroughly depressing parental, conjugal, school-magisterial or boss-class-in-business remarks, e.g., 'But it doesn't need sugar,...

menus of Lyons Corner Houses used to offer 'Pain Grille (National Wholemeal).' Gastro- nomical snobberies culled from a recent continental trip included, from Paris, a pot of...

0 N a Saturday afternoon in March, 1895, I came away from a matinee of Hengler's Circus to catch one of the red Hammersmith buses in Piccadilly, and on the black and orange-buff...

On Being a Racehorse Owner by C. H. BLACKER T HIS season I go racing as an owner and not as a rider. There are many advantages to this; I can enjoy my luncheon; I can remain...

Historical Consequences and Happy Families By \LAWRENCE STONE W ITH this further nine pounds weight of closely printed text, Dr. Toynbee's great work* is virtually complete,...

`stern Cromwellian figure' of Field-Marshal Mont- gomery and, the pious tight-lipped host of his imitators after El Alamein can efface England's cherished caricature of the...

World Population and World Food Supplies. By Sir John Russell. (Allen & Unwin. 50s.) The Challenge of Man's Future. By Harrison Brown. (Seeker 5c Warburg. 21s.) EXTINCTION has...

Painting in Britain in the Middle Ages. By Margaret Rickert. (The Pelican History of Art. 42s.) ONE of the essentials about the art of the mediaeval period, whether Saxon,...

The Rare Adventure. By Bernard Fergusson. (Collins. 12s. 6d.) The Feast of July. By H. E. Bates. (Michael Joseph. 10s. 6d.) The Rare Adventure kept me reading. It starts off...

THIS appears to be the first attempt to grapple with the entire Bach dynasty, biographically and critically, within a single volume. To make such a survey palatable to the...

The History of English Literature by Emile Legouis and Louis Caza- mian is a work so well-known as to be called simply 'Legouis and • Cazamian,' as one says' Liddell and Scott.'...

FOR £4 10s. it is possible to buy 900 pages recording the activities of the United Nations and its specialised, U lieencies during 1953. .. The N itself during this per was...

terested in dancing comes across one of to °se illustrated books, which arc the pride every public library, and discovers Bali. lag Or weeks afterwards all the sylphides and...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT ' BRITAIN Gives Lead In Management' was a headline in a Sunday newspaper reporting an industrial conference at Torquay which was attended by 1,200...

Br CIJSTOS THE dock strike and bearish talk of no specific significance combined to bring the bull' market on the Stock Exchange to a temporary halt. There was some disap-...

Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary New Version, is recommended for Crosswords ACROSS: I Tom-tom. 4 Old times. 8 Ditty box. 10 Planer. 12 Orlon. 13 Edwardian. 14 Elves. 16...

RI S i6 awarded each - week - a copy of the D. Lure edition of Chamberes Ta entieth Cen- tury Dictionary and a book to kr re for one guinea. Thew will be awarded to the...