B arrAnsi has the Bomb, for better or for worse; and in this season of the year, when the Defence White Paper and the debates arising out of it in the Commons are imminent, the...

MR. CECIL KING and his Daily Mirror group made a bid for the hand of Odhams Press when that firm was almost at the altar with Mr. Roy Thomson. Mr. Macmillan told the House of...

No. 6919 Established FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1828 1961

uOR a quarter of a century Sir Angus Watson played a considerable part in the life of the Spectator. Where another man might have been content to retire after a highly...

Frank Munsey contributed to the journalism of his day the talent of a meat-packer, the morals of a money-changer, and the manners of an undertaker. He and his kind have about...

From DARSIE GILLIE PARIS T HE citizens of Algiers have always assumed they could have it their own way. They did not aspire to the responsibilities of government, but to set...

Three Card Trick By BERNARD LEVIN What this sort of situation needs, from the Government's point of view, is either the Prime Minister, who would pour drivel on the troubled...

By LUDOVIC KENNEDY I N my book Ten Rillington Place I publish an extract (not published before) from the brief of Evans's solicitors, Messrs. Free- borough, Slack and Company,...

By ANTHONY HARTLEY N ow that the American Government has been rescued from the decrepitude into which it had fallen during the last years of the Eisenhower administration,...

By PETER BENENSON URING the last week as many miles of news- print have been covered with profiles of Captain Galvao and General Delgado, as the Santa Maria sailed. Such is the...

By PATRICK CAMPBELL And when they play 'Here Comes the Bride,' I stand outside, Just a girl that men forget. A LOVELY old melody. So it was for me for ,the best twenty years of...

Some of My Best Friends By MONICA FURLONG T tin great thing about religious Dissent is that it keeps reasonable hours and has a sound appreciation of central heating. Speaking...

SIR,—Your correspondents Denis Henry and B. Walker complain in your issue of December 30 that I am a member of the 'Classical Establishment.' This is because I criticised Peter...

the Commonwealth G. R. Laking Time Exposure Martin EnnaIs Dons and Amateurs G. S. Kirk Teething Troubles Edward Samson Libraries and Authors' Royalties Sir Alan Herbert Stains...

I described the Public Library as a 'public racket,' with many sup- porting facts and figures. I note with some surprise that the Secretary to the Library Association has...

SIR,—May I attempt, in my 'excitable way,' once more to further the cause of dental health education, in the almost hopeless case of Monica Furlong? Is it Professor Slack and I...

and Mr. Vance's letter. In Mr. Vance's case, the Consul-General in Paris was not informed that any charge was being brought against a British sub- ject. Nor was he concerned in...

SIR,--1 am sorry that the Spectator should have been led into error over the attitude of the New Zealand Government towards a possible association between the United Kingdom and...

SIR. -- In his review of my short history of the Re- formed Church of Scotland, Kirk and Nation, Dr. Gordon Donaldson has accused me of 'gross errors.' This almost papal...

strong opinions and a desire actually to bludgeon the populace? His complaints against our dictatorial attitude would be equally applicable to the Good Fairy in sentences begin-...

bringing one or more appeals from charitable institutions. In my experience the number of these ciroulars has increased enormously in recent years. Perhaps as a result of...

'From Here to Obscenity,' I took up my book (Thomas Moore's Memoirs) and found entered in his journal on February 4, 1819: 'Read Wycherley's Country Wife; an admirable comedy,...

'From Here to Obscenity' in your issue of January 20 was a criticism of a pamphlet by Messrs. Allsop and Pitman or simply an extract from Alan Bricn's memoirs. There appeared to...

to Chaucer's seven-letter word 'queynte,' In the Penguin Canterbury Tales, Neville Coghill uses the admirable synonym 'quim,' which has the apposite four letters and is...

SIR,—Prisoners at present cost the good citizen a lot of money and on release there is the ever-present risk of relapse into crime. The genuine anxiety this causes some people...

go on shout- ing liar' at each other till kingdom come without Proving anything except that the Embassy sees it as its job to represent Iran as a kind of paradise of Plenty....

Scenes from Provincial Life By DAVID CAIRNS IT is not only Musica Viva that has lately de- monstrated Liverpool's fertility in the devising of new ideas. The other day, at its...

SIR,--Nicholas Davenport is wrong in saying of the FBI'S recent conference at Brighton that 'the im- portant industrialists there assembled all insisted that "growth conies...

Sig, — In his review of T. S. Eliot and the Idea of Tradition, Frank Kertnode stated that I did not 'look critically at the "dissociation of sensibility," offering a version...

Christian in New York City By BAMBER GASCOIGNE Fairy Tales of New York. (Comedy.) — Master- piece. (Royalty.) — We're Just Not Prac- tical. (Stratford, East.) —The Importance of...

L AST week I wrote in this column about the background and profits of a popular televi- sion programme, using Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium as my example....

Limits of Normality By ISABEL QUIGLY sensational than the other, and pointing no par- ticular moral except the moral of humanity. No one is going to suggest, thank heaven,...

Viewer's Digest By PETER FORSTER linzurr has a useful phrase somewhere about a performance which was 'a whole thing': but it is becoming a feature of television that we must...

Tokyo Noes By CLIVE BARNES Of course, there is a certain cuteness, a quaint exoticism, in seeing a miniature red-hot momma in a flowered kimono belting out a pop-song with...

The New Pastoral-Comical By D. J. ENRIGHT RECOMMEND the book firmly to everybody who wants to be shocked,' said a reviewer on the first publication of Scenes from Provincial...

Foa the last thirty years historians of the eighteenth century have concentrated on the structure of politics, particularly the methods by Which members were elected to the...

Poetry and Philosophy. A Study in the Thought of John Stuart Mill. By Thomas Woods. (Hutchinson, 25s.) To readers pressed for time, it should be said at the start that neither...

Now We Are Enemies. By Thomas Fleming. (Gollancz, 25s.) Ii is only partly true to say, as is often said, that the British like to glory in their defeats: it is more to the point...

GIRLS put up their hair, but one sometimes feels that the most important day in Shaw's life was the day he decided to put up his eyebrows. Pre- served by Rodin, Epstein,...

The French Radical Party. By Francis De Tarr. (0.U.P., 35s.) READING this excellent, entertaining and depress- ing book, I came on the late M. Jammy-Schmidt. had long...

The Lost Footsteps. By Silviu Craciunas. (Collins, 21s.) The Lost Footsteps. By Silviu Craciunas. (Collins, 21s.) HE fled through his own land like a defeated prince, succoured...

THE reviewer of a Festschrift too often finds it necessary to concentrate on the merits of the recipient, in order to be able to pass over in decent silence the pious mediocrity...

The House of Five Talents. By Louis Auchin- doss. (Gollancz, 18s.) ABLE novelists do not need to work with the aid of special situations, special 'character- adhesives,' such as...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT IT is all very well for you to advocate planning for economic growth, said a petulant friend, but how do you know that the Tory Government or the British...

By JOHN COLE T HERE is something about the coal industry which enlists for it the affection and kindly interest of every outsider who studies it. Perhaps it is because although...

By CUSTOS T HE equity markets began the new account in a confident fashion—with a premium of 18s. 3d. on the new ICI shares, issued at 55s.— but failed to derive much...

C OLVILLES, the Glasgow steel-makers, have had a most successful year with record production and profit figures, pre-tax profits having jumped frqm £8,527,525 to £12,963,267 for...

Who's Yellow? By KATHARINE WHITEHORN ANYONE who says of a photograph 'I think it's very good of me' is apt to be dashed if someone then says 'It's very pretty but it isn't...

Physician, Heal Thyself By JOHN LYDG ATE THE alarming size of the nation's drug bill—even at 2s. a prescription—iS forcing the medical pro- fession to reconsider the whole...

On the Move By LESLIE ADRIAN THE business of moving house seems to be full of dangers, judging by the correspondence I have had recently. A reader who had to move house from...

A smALL friend of mine has just come back from visiting the United States with her mother, chant- ing the rhymes and jingles she came across there among her fellow...