D. W. BROGAN JOHN ARLOTT SIR CARLETON ALLEN, Q.C., BERNARD DARWIN, REX WARNER, LUDOVIC KENNEDY, H. A. R. PHILBY, MARTIN COOPER, PENELOPE HOUSTON, JOHN HILLABY, ELIZABETH...

Yet for all its nightmare illogicality, a certain logic of an essential Russian variety is dimly perceptible in the structure of Moscow's reply. The first premise in that logic...

No. 6 5 3 6 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1953 PRICE 7d.

An Aeronautical Correspondent writes: One of the chief responsibilities of those international bodies which control speed records is to lay down a standard set of conditions....

Five months ago a change was made in the external appearance of the Spectator, with the introduction of a cover, in two colours, displaying the list of main contents. In this...

In 1939 the Air Ministry compulsorily puichased from three owners at Crichel Down in Dorset- 700 acres for use as a bomb- ing range. Three years ago this area, cleared at last...

Many people in this country will consider General Franco ithe most bizarre, the least attractive associate yet selected by the Atlantic alliance. Fascism's first cousin once...

The Council of Europe has never had much glamour for this country. Whitehall remains polite, remote, and slightly con- descending; politicians tend to regard Strasbourg as a...

T HE Labour Party's policy statement Challenge to Britain never at any time justified its title. Its central characteristic is its wary and restrained approach to the question...

A friend has just returned to London with a present which he bought for me in Tokyo. It is a very superior notebook, handsomely bound in leather, and in gilt letters upon the...

them off a popcorn dealer, is advertising three statues by Epstein for sale. He acquired them with the other assets of a Blackpool fun-fair, and they include the seven foot high...

improbability about Buchan's admirable stories, as there is about all thrillers; but it is sur- prising how often, and in what unexpected contexts, he slips into either...

The State is already far and away the biggest land-owner in the country. It is typical of its outlook both as an owner and user of land that it hasn't the foggiest idea how much...

I FIND it easy to undeistand why many of my compatriots want, and always have wanted, to own some land of their own, but very difficult , to understand—save in purely...

In his capital book Clubland Heroes, Mr. Richard Usborne touches on John Buchan's odd belief in the efficacy of disguise; he really did seem to think, judging by the frequency...

By D. W. BROGAN T HE Eisenhower administration is, it has been often said, the only business administration since President Hoover's! That is not, perhaps, quite the most...

By H. A.R. PHILBY The points on which agreement has been reached raise highly complex problems, which explain the protracted nature of the negotiations and which may yet...

By SIR CARLETON ALLEN, Q.C. T HE importance of the recent Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment is indicated by the amount of attention which it has immediately...

By JAMES POPE•HENNESSY T HERE is small magic in the words North Kensington, there is nothing overtly exotic about Earls Court. Indeed what part of London seems more commonplace...

A SURPRISING number of themes have been considered suitable for operatic treatment, from agrarian collectivisation to women's rights and birth control ; but none, on the face of...

THERE has been a good deal of talk recently about realism—socialist, socialite and other- wise. Josef Herman's new exhibition at Roland, Browse and Delbanco's prOvides an...

THEATRE The Devil's General. By Carl Zuckmayer, adapted by Robert Gore Browne and Christopher Hassall. (Savoy.)—Spring Song. By Bella and Samuel Spewack. (Erhbassy.) IT is...

Are We All Murderers? (Curzon.)—Back- ground. (Leicester Square.) Ride, Vaquero. (Empire.) CAPITAL punishment is much in our minds today, and Andre Cayatte's powerful film Are...

Grown granite-hard they stand in spite of buffets And eyes once mild have chilled to bleak precision, Broken and bruised their power of transmut- ing Bodies or bricks to glory...

IN a programme which began unpromisingly with Street Games—charmingly devised but too trivial to be worthy of its choreographer —and Tancredi and Clorinda, which loses some of...

On the morning after the gale I went along the path to the pighouse at the end of the kitchen garden. On a sunny patch I discovered the feathers of a small bird and at first...

Berries are more plentiful in the country- side round about than I have known them for many years and I cannot recall ever having seen hips of such size and fullness. Perhaps...

We have increased the family's pets by one. The increase is of a temporary nature, I have insisted, for rabbit - keeping is something of a tie and since the rabbit we have in...

THE weather forecast had mentioned a south- westerly gale and late in the afternoon, while I was on the hillside, the forecast proved correct. For more than an hour the wind had...

late varieties will be picked by the end of the month. This is the time to greaseband trees to stop the upward procession of parasites, and a good time to prepare the ground for...

Readers are asked to imagine that the theatre was "sponsored" in the reign of Elizabeth I and to re-write a passage from Hamlet, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice or As You Like...

The usual prize was offered for an extract from "The Child's Manual of Adult Psy- chology" by T. Nager. Although there was a fairly solid wedge of triteness in this entry, and...

SIR, — I did not wish to interevene in this correspondence; Mr. Davie's intelligent, un- favourable review pointed out faults I can correct, and I therefore found it helpful and...

unsporting to make him apologise again. He has, however, with enviable self-confidence, elaborated some of the points, rather abruptly made, in his review of Mr. Fraser's Modern...

planation of what he intended in his remarks about British Council and WEA lecturers is entirely satisfying. Perhaps in my turn I should apologise for the note of asperity in...

THE OXFORDSHIRE PARACHUTIST (SIR, —As the defender of the alleged spy to whom Strix referred on September 18th, I recall clearly the amazing coincidences. On July 1st, 1940,...

Sm,—I am not a miner, I have never been down a mine, and further it would require an armed escort to get me down. If the popula- tion of England were to depend on my effort...

SIR,—Although a part of the quotation from Don Marquis in my letter on "The Vice of Work " makes a pretty enough puzzle as rendered by the printer, perhaps it may be worth...

OCTOBER 1st, 1853 AUSTRIA.—The grand ceremony of receiving the long-lost crown of St. Stephen, and the accompanying insignia of royalty, was per- formed at Vienna on the 19th...

an edition of 1893, a sketch of the author's life is included. This sketch contains the following extract, which is in Cobbett's own words. " I placed myself ready with a red...

" Londonisation and Scotland " you have made a sincere effort to understand the com- plaints of the Covenant Association. Never- theless, your concluding sentence, in which you...

W. Orr's unkind and con- temptuous attack on musical amateurs in your issue of September 18th. I do not know if Mr. Orr would class him- self as part of " the cream of London's...

the machine of earning that bruises the soul and leaves the mind empty. I should like to leave a letter stamped on some indestructible material for the first generation of...

SIR,—Mr. Vernon Bartlett's letter is a kindly one, and I am sorry if I misinterpreted him in any way. But even if one accepts the somewhat restricted Oxford Dictionary defini-...

By E. ARNOT ROBERTSON LL the foreign phrase books in this country date from the time when the British abroad could afford to dispense with popularity : having prestige and money...

By JOHN ARLOTT T HERE are few more draughtily deserted places than a football ground when the play is over and the crowd has pressed its jostled, shoulder-to-shoulder way, out...

T , HE notice outside the waterfront café was pathetically eloquent: "Service a l'interieur." It was raining on the C6te d'Azur. It was no isolated phenomenon. If the newspapers...

By SHEENA MACKINTOSH* S UMMER has slipped away; the heat has gone from the sun; and ahead of us lie only the damp and dreary months of winter. Yet these months can hold the...

- .ft. - .No ••• Apotheosis of an Unhappy Hypocrite By EVELYN WAUGH T HE latest study of Charles Dickens* has already been published in the USA. It comes to us with very high...

By RICHARD HUGHES I N a recent issue 'of the New Yorker, it is written : " It has always been a little difficu't to understand the high prestige that Desmond MacCarthy has...

The widest prairies have electric fences, For though old cattle know they must not stray Young steers are always scenting purer water Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires....

By SIR ERNEST BARKER 0 NE sometimes wonders who are the Greeks of the modern world : which is the nation, in the Western world, that now wears on its shoulders the mantle "of...

British Sports Past and Present. Lawn Tennis. By Brigadier J. G. Smyth v.c., M.C., M.P. (Batsford. 16s.) "A BOOK on lawn tennis would indeed be dull," says Brigadier Smyth, "if...

Andre Malraux, and the Tragic Imagination. By W. M. Frohock. (Oxford University Press. 32s.) Andre Malraux, and the Tragic Imagination. By W. M. Frohock. (Oxford University...

Journey Into Wonder. N. J. Berrill. (Gollancz. 13s. 6d.) AFTER the Creation, the sea is the oldest theme in English poetry, and since the war it has been a perennial theme of...

Limbo '90. By Bernard Wolfe. (Secker and Warberg. 15s.) IT was inevitable in many ways that an American should re-create Ulysses. Leopold Bloom, that most earthy hero, is very...

A Century of London Weather. By W. Marshall. (H.M.S.O. 15s.) WHY London ? Weather surely belongs more to the open country than to streets and houses, and even among...

Journey with Genius : Recollections and Reflections concerning the D. IL Lawrences. • By Witter Bynner. (Peter Nevin. 18s.) MR. WITTER BYNNER, who is an American poet, has built...

BOTH these books tell the story of a fantastic but true ruse de guerre ; that of the dumping in the sea off the Spanish coast in 1943 of a corpse, dressed as a Royal Marine...

Fingers of Fear. By Philip MacDonald. (Crime Club. 9s. 6d.) " WHO cares," Mr. Edmund Wilson acidly demanded some years ago, " who killed Roger Ackroyd ? " As the formulae of...

away With every thought a backward step for them And all excitement echoes. Others who Would turn the future into an escape And so assembled it before it came F oun d n othing...

The Foolish Immortals. By Paul Gallico. (Michael Joseph. 12s. 6d.) IN Lebanon Paradiie, which is the name of a fashionable seaside hotel just outside Beirut, Mr. Atiyah...

history and civilisation have not unnaturally been regarded as primarily a domain for the specialist. In seeking a form for a memorial volume to two great British scholars in...

may easily be taken as a textbook by all who are interested in the theatre and in one of the oldest theatrical families of this country. Miss Fleetwood rounds off her book in...

on the chase of the Bismarck. Mr. Woodward's book derives its theme from the fact that there was never a similar chase of the Tirpitz. For the fate of her predecessor, and the...

6d.) BONHOEFFER was one of Germany's Christian martyrs. A pastor of the Confessing Church, he was arrested in April, 1943, and hanged two years later in the Gestapo prison of...

THE MONTH'S REPRINTS A HANDSOME book has been made of Hans Andersen : Forty-Two Stories (Faber & Faber. 25s.), a reprint of the translations by M. R. James published in 1930....

By CUSTOS THE new account opened on the Stock Exchange this Wednesday in an atmosphere of astonishing optimism. Practically every market was higher and some industrial shares...

1,4 Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week. October 13th, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...

OINEIda ammo mnnnenm p nmn anionminon oliwnS Solution on October 16th The winner of Spectator Crossword No. 748 Is ME. PETER C. liseNer, Beverley House, Skipton Road, York,