M ONSIEUR MENDES-FRANCE has scraped through up to the time of writing, but his majorities on the two votes of confidence so far taken, though enough to avert defeat, cannot undo...

N0. 6 6 0 1 FRIDAY, DECEMBER, 31, 1954 PRICE 7d.

BEFORE 1955 ends the Conservative Government will probably have appealed to the country and the events of the year which has now ended indicate what the pattern of the general...

Recent events suggest that the Conservatives may yet live to regret the day when tea was included among the food- stuffs to be subsidised and rationed, so that its ' essential '...

The case of Vlado Dedijer shows that Yugoslavia continues to preserve a nice balance between eastern and western political methods. It is best not to contemplate what would have...

The man who appeals against the verdict of a court, only to find that the court of appeal is presided over by the judges who sentenced him in the first place, might be forgiven...

No doubt the executive of the National Union of Railway- men imagines that it is impressing the rank and file by refusing to call off the threatened strike pending the court of...

I T is posterity which shapes the past. Whether, in fifty years' time the year which is now closing or that which is about to break will be seen as belonging to the after- in ....

Exciting without being frightening, charming without being arch and original without being disconcertingly. so. Listen To The Wind, which I saw at the Oxford Playhouse over tho...

A less promising crib to crack than No. 99 Gower Street It would be hard to imagine, but perhaps the burglars who entered the offices of the Spectator over Christmas were misled...

In the latest report of the Historic Buildings Bureau, Sir Alan Lascelles points out that it is one thing to preserve a fine old house from demolition or decay, but quite...

Mr. G. D. Fox, who died on Christmas Eve, had in him that streak of greatness without which (I suspect) it is impossible to be a really successful headmaster of a private...

Negative intelligence, they used to teach one in the Army, is often of the utmost value. Reversing the technique usually employed by prophets, I append a list of things which in...

T HE Chinese appreciate tact, and the precautions taken by Mr. Hammarskj8ld to insulate his mission to Peking against controversy and misunderstanding are not likely to be...

ay LENA M. JEGER* 0 N the Monday before Christmas, the policeman at the Westminster barrier was surrounded by a crowd of about forty British subjects. Carefully each one Wrote a...

Three prizes of eight guineas each are offered to boys and girls at school in the United Kingdom or Eire for (a) a story of not more than 1,500 words, (b) an essay of not more...

By STUART MACLURE T HE recent changes in the Government's policy for educa- tion deserve examination in some detail for at least two reasons. In the first place, education costs...

By ROBERT ROBINSON HE man who received the invitation can't use it because he is coitering an exhibition of spirit paintings. How is it you t. ot ono ? " Jackie Sharpshoot. We...

F OUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SEVEN families have refused the opportunity of living in a new housing area outside the county borough of Portsmouth. that still flattened town. They...

Below are printed the answers to the Christmas Questions published in the Spectator of December 24. 1. a. C. R. Attlee. b. Noel Coward. c. P. G. Wodehousc. d. Vyvyan Holland....

Compton Mackenzie T HE House of Commons was not unlike a disturbed ant-hill after Sir Winston Churchill's casual reminis- cence about a telegram that may or may not have been...

December 24, "0 4 9 his voice to those in the already big u attalions who predict that the Liberal vote : 411 continue to decline. Extrapolation of trend is not always a safe...

Most of the forces of England have united to exor- cise it: the arch-thief of politics, the Con- servative Party; the bemused, hesitating Labour Party; and the small, but...

DYING LIBERALISM should not find it difficult to be sorry Or Trimmer, were it not that his comments nPon the political scene appear to me con- thtently to be actuated by...

SIR,—After listening to Miss Kendon's gentle sermon on the invertebrata of the New Estate, your readers must have been astonished to find, on dispersing, that Mr. Peter Green,...

Sta,—Mr. Joh& Betjeman describes Staunto0 Harold as 'one of the most gracious building , in England.' The Hon. John Byng, ridinS about the country during the last twentl years...

THE Christmas season usually brings with it a surfeit of shows, and dramatic critics already sinking under the effects of too much food and drink find that a mental indigestion...

SIR,-1 can beat the palindrome that Mr Betjeman quoted in your issue of Novenv ber 12, by a Latin one that, some fifty yearl ago, I learnt from E. F. Johns, headmastet of Winton...

SIR, —May . I add a tardy comment to the discussion which followed the article of Mr. Gordon Wilkins in your October 22 issue ? Since your publication reaches these farthest...

that Bertrand Russell's talk on 'The Hydrogea Bomb and the Peril to Mankind' should have taken place during peak listening time on the day before Christmas Eve. It was as if the...

Brothers. (Empire.) MAY I begin by wishing a Happy New Year to all people who love cinemas, to those who go into them to escape from Ve, to learn more of life, to kiss their...

compared with the itately progress of other ages, nevertheless art moves sluggishly by political or tech- nological standards. This has been a year Much as any other,...

do just now is to sec that his more frose d prone vegetables are protected. Straw sholli be used to cover the heads of celery, crown ° of rintharb or anything else that might MO...

The usual prize was offered for an alphabetical telegram (1.e. of 26 words, the first beginning with A, the second with B, and so on) suitable for sending at the New Year to any...

Not long ago I took to tying my own flies and making a collection of furs and feathers, silks and tinsels that go to make such things as a March Brown, a Black Gnat or I...

prize of £5 is offered for an extract from a speech on the lines of the American 'State of the Union' message by the head of one of the following : Ruritania, Lilliput, Wonder-...

SINCE I found my first partridge's nest at a very early age I have always taken a great interest in the little brown birds. The past two seasons have been bad for the partridge...

Writing of the Tawny Frogmouth which often saves its life by imitating a dead branch! an Australian friend, Mr. Max Henry 01 Chatswood, sends me an interesting letter on what...

By KINGSLEY AMIS B YRON is the fifteenth poet (not counting Shakespeare, of course) to receive the honour of an individual Penguin volume.* He comes after a bunch of standard...

The Road to Mecca. By Muhammed Asad. (Reinhardt. 21s.) IN the autumn of 1926 a young man named Leopold Weiss, grandson of a Polish rabbi, stood before an Indian Muslim in...

The Canterbury School of Illumination, 1066-1200. By C. R. Dodwell. (C.U.P. 84s.) bESPITE a generation of research, the old fallacy that medieval art is not merely anonymous...

Mary Magdalene. By R. L. Bruckberger. (Hutchinson. 12s. 6d.) My Servant Catherine. By Arrigo Levasti. (Blackfriars. 21s.) IN what passes for a practical age, saints, still more...

ama a IS a a amamama Maaaa . aaaaaaaaa U 16 . a se a s..5 a a am 211 illaaaaa ., 34 .1 I at w. o Li al T tu tu r I 01 7-■ GI se f. st al Ti J I at C...

The Charles Laughton Story. By Kurt Singer. (Robert Hale. 15s.) PERHAPS a few things come more easily than nostalgia for a period, a state of affairs, that one hasn't, in fact,...

'I LOOKED round the Harringay course and scrutinised the teams. They were mostly men. At that moment there came a sudden glow of determination that no man should beat me that...

Robertson. With cata- logue raisonne and plates. (Edinburgh University Press. 35s.) THE Venetian painter Vincenzo Catena (1470-1531) is known to lovers of the Giorgionesque by...

By John Masefield. (Heinemann. 8s. 6d.) THIS is a revised and rewritten version of the book which first appeared in 1911. Reading it now, as if for the first time, one is struck...

By CUSTOS THE stock markets were in cheerful mood after the Christmas holidays but they are not going to be so easy for investors this coming year as they were in 1954. One can...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT ON January 1, 1954, the Financial Times Index of industrial shares was 131 and as I Write it is around 182—a rise of nearly 39 per cent. The index covers...