Relations between responsible Powers can hardly sink much lower than they have over the alleged bombing of the Kaesong demilitarised area. The curious invitation by the...

I T was always likely that there .would be some casualties among the 54 countries invited to attend the San Francisco conference on the Japanese Peace Treaty. Attitudes to Japan...

The part which Mr. Averell Harriman, President Truman's special representative, has played in the Persian oil dispute has been so valuable, and the part he can still play is so...

personal policy which the Con- servative Party might, with great benefit, swallow whole. Having disposed, in a recent speech in Dorset, of the notion that the Conservative ....

No European country's evoltition deserves closer study than Yugoslavia's, to which the recent visit of Mr. Harriman lends particular - interest. The strategic importance of...

The habit of rejoicing when a nationalised enterprise makes a smaller loss this year than it did last seems to be taking a rather strong, and rather disconcerting grip on the...

The British public has been made sufficiently familar, in the past ten years or so, with accusations by American Congressmen that aid which has been granted to this country has...

T HE new Labour Party statement of policy is a very useful document. It is not an impressive document. There is no justification for calling it even a competent document. But it...

new to me, though familiar enough, no doubt, to many readers of this column: " Peace upon Earth, Goodwill to Men So greet we Christmas Day! Oh, Christian, load your gun and...

has a more genuine or profound respect for the Royal Family than I have, I feel free to express the hope that the Press, particularly the popular papers, will let the Royal -...

Leicester captain went out on to the field " and presented the young Yorkshireman [Smithson] with his Leicestershire cap." I don't know whether any young Leicestershireman...

too frequent mention in this column of a university with which I have had some association, I will at least venture to suggest that a certain seat of learning which I will not...

of short - distance travel, we had better set about devising a suitable term for a helicopter landing-ground before some new barbarism gets ineradicably implanted in our...

'S NOTEBOOK M R. EDEN, by all accounts, has done a useful piece of national service in America and appears to have been scrupulous to avoid playing any kind of party game. I...

W RITING three years ago in the 'International Journal, published by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, Major-General D. C. Spry, the Chief Executive Commissioner...

By C. K. ALLEN, K.C. A MERICAN gangsterism, as we know it in film and fiction —which have scarcely exaggerated its enormities—has latterly taken on new forms, to which...

By HARRY FRANKLIN HE road had been long and dusty, running for hundreds of miles through Africa, zigiagging through mountains part of the way. On such roads there is little...

By D. W. BROGAN Q UITE a long time ago, after the First World War, I was a candidate for a fellowship at an Oxford college which shall be nameless ; then it had four...

BySTRATHEARN GORDON I E was doodling moodily at a table before the business started, a youngish man in an excellent brown tweed suit, down in the arena among the nondescript,...

The Children of Omar By COLIN SHAW (St. Peter's Hall, Oxford) T HEY were small and shy and looked at Western life up a slight slope. They came aboard late, and I found them in...

readers are urged to place a firm order with their newsagent or to take out a subscription. Newsagents cannot afford to take the risk of carrying stock, as unsold copies are...

By HAROLD NICOLSON I T is easy to get to Brighton. One takes a train at Victoria and, after being shaken for sixty minutes in a Pullman car, one arrives at the marine terminal....

CINEMA Meurtres." (Academy.)—"Fuga in Francia." (Continentale.) — "I Was A Communist for the F.B.I." (Warner.) — " His Kind of Woman." (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.)...

VERY little in the West End at present is mare stylishly funny than this. Not only Shakespeare, but his creditor Plautus, must be wagging their heads for delight at the...

20th and caught a large and appreciative audience, still holiday-minded and very well suited by Wolf-Ferrari's School for Fathers. The temper of this music and the sort of...

Notice outside a charming little East Devon village shop: "Owing to ill - health, this shop is closed on. Tuesday mornings, also on Friday mornings. Tradesmen and goodi delivery...

I REACHED East Devon, which I used to know only in patches, by way of Dorset, which is pretty familiar to me. What 1 did know of the former was confined to the epic coastline ;...

The gardener's headache is now the ripening of his plums. No difficulty about my cherry-plum and greengage trees: eat and give away and leave the rest to the wasps. But I have...

Camp between the Valleys of the Axe and the Otter, a Dumnonian Iron Age citadel with single fosse and ramp in a sparse coppice outlying dense woodland and with so charmed an...

NEARLY all our " art," wrote Roger Fry, is made, bought and sold merely for its value as an indication of social 'status. Two new Festival exhibitions have cast a fiendish eye...

I speak of the interior to which thereafter I confined my journeys. What I found most satisfactory about it was the extent and inviolability of its mixed woodlands whose timber...

Village and small town building tradition is as plain as the forms and contours of the countryside, the mode being rectangular houses and cottages of plastir stucco over brick...

Report by Ronald Lambton A Trize of f5 was offered for a State poem on the Festival of Britain by one of the former Laureates, Dryden, Wordsworth or Tennyson. A vigorous and...

by R. Kennard Davis There must be many ideas for which at present there is no single word in the English language, and which therefore have to be expressed by circumlocution. A...

issue of August 17th, particularly with your view that, to counteract the Communist influence on the youth of the world, the Western nations must outplay the Communists at their...

were a number who went not as active supporters of the political aims of the Festival, but individually or as representatives of their college unions to observe the Festival and...

What Way for Youth ? Sul,—It was not until 1 had visited Germany this summer, and attended the third session of the international youth camp held at Lorelei on the Rhine, that...

Berlin with the deepest interest. As a result of a visit to Germany last January, I recently had a party of German boys over here on a visit. The letters which I have received...

on the article Rhine Army Today in the August 17th issue. It was an excellent article in the main but I would like to comment on three of the points raised. As a result of the...

SIR,—I would like to say how true, how near the mark, is the context of Mr. Ronald W. Clark's article Rhine Army Today. Obviously Mr. Clark's tour of B.A.O.R. was extensive ;...

Stn,—I should like to express my personal sympathy and agreement with your article, Wrong Ways with Russia (August 10th). .It is care- fully considered and statesmanlike in its...

Stn,—In July a new President of Portugal was elected. All who care for liberty will be interested in a few facts about this election and the general politic - Al situation in...

SIR,—If you and I want to gild a lily I cannot see why William Shakespeare or Sir Norman Birkett need interfere. English is a free language. For my part 1 consider lilies merely...

SIR, — Your correspondent James Overthrow certainly has a liver, and he apparently delights in bowling body-line stuff " with more than usual vigour. It may interest him to know...

THE Queen, having left London two hours after noon on Wednesday, is now enjoying the entire seclusion of Balmoral. The " progress " was as uneventful as the most loyal could...

SIR, — Many years ago I used to copy extracts from articles in the Spectator. This week I turned up the following, taken from the issue of April 30th, 1910:— The Discharge of...

Test Match commentators, but surely he was unjust to E. W. Swanton in ascribing: " No, no, Jim ; there was never a run there " to Brian Johnston ? The incident, as I remember...

and clothed them as I may never hope to do. One pertinent query I would like to put forward: Why, oh why, this exasperating use of Christian names, when a perfectly good surname...

SIR, I agree with everything else in Sir Edward Pease's letter ; but I ask to be allowed to protest against his statement that a hundred, or even sixty, years ago England lived...

like Burrs," wrote Bunyan in his Apology for Pilgrim's Progress. It would seem that in the last years his allegory has lost some of its powers of sticking in the mind. Children...

War in the Atlantic The Cruel Sea. By Nicholas Monsarrat. (Cassell. .12s. 6d.) THE Battle of the Atlantic has been over more than six years, and Mr. Monsarrat, who fought in...

THIS is the latest of the three volumes in which Mr. Quennell has revived Mayhew's classic, London Labour and the London Poor, for a new generation of readers. It was an...

THE many readers of Mrs. Hawkes's A Land, the predecessor to her preSent book, must be on their guard against an unwarrantable sense of disappointment at not finding herein the...

Schubert. By Alfred Einstein. (Cassell. 2ss.) Schubert: A Thematic Catalogue. By 0. E. Deutsch. (Dent. 4ss.) THERE has long been need of an adequate monograph on Schubert, one...

Russian Purge, and the Extraction of Confession. By F. Beck and W. Godin. (Hurst and Blackett. r es. 6d.) Russian Purge is a composite work by a Soviet historian and a German...

A REVIEWER of what the blurbs call " hilariously funny " books has to be careful with his liver and lights, or, as Harold Nicolson puts it, level of consciousness. My level...

THE bland scientific disregard by psycho-analytic theory of most of the chief taboos of our society has for years infuriated a large public. A smaller, not quite so vocal,...

THE DISENCHANTED is of extraordinary interest to an English reader. Set in the 'thirties, it tells at great length the story of the heyday, decline and - fall of Manley...

By CUSTOS WITH characteristic stoicism investors have stood up well to the double blow of the breakdown of the peace talks in Korea and of the oil talks in Persia. All that has...

winner of Crossword No. 639 is Mits. M. HUGHES, Beacon View, Mathon, Malvern.

LA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week. Envelopes must be received not later than first post...