B ULGANIN's fall was expected. Khrushchev's assump- tion of the premiership was not. It contradicts so blatantly the theory of 'collective leadership' of which has has spoken so...

SPECTATOR

By ROGER LLOYD* A LL over the world this generation is haunted and obsessed by fear. The historic event of Easter Day is the basic condition of finding any satisfying answer to...

By DARSIE GILLIE Paris IT is hoped by careful experiment to equip the human body for travel in outer space. No one has experi- mented in adjusting it to the post of Prime...

ALL right, all right, all right. Al- though Taper was not as wrong as Mr. Randolph Churchill (well, you wouldn't expect him to be, would you?), and had craftily leapt off the...

Astrology BERNARD LEVIN I don't intend to make any more jokes —it's too dangerous

to trial is that it would show up their hypocrisy over Hungary. For one thing, the Yugoslays would break the silence they have kept since Nagy was kidnapped by the Russians,...

H-bomb much better than I had expected : but this was partly because the grillers were never allowed to make things very hot for him. The BBC, presumably in the belief that...

down to history as the election won by public opinion polls—in spite of the fact that the pollsters turned out to be wider of the mark, at least in percentage terms, than in...

to Imre Nagy in Hungary. Russian instructions to the puppet Hungarian government on what the people ought to think about Nagy have been ludicrous in their contra- dictions. On...

each other for the benefit of a large crowd of publicity agents, press photographers, reporters, doctors, `umpires,' seconds' and assorted spectators, pausing every now and then...

WHY IS WESTERN DIPLOMACY SO feeble in relation to Khrushchev? Why, in particular, are his devious expedients so often allowed to appear as if they were carefully planned...

for Mr. Bonham Carter, so far out? The Gallup people, I see, are arguing that `confusion between the Liberal Party—which is a national party—and the National Liberal Party, has...

getting pre- maturely middle-aged, but I become increasingly irritated at misquotations, or quotations wrongly attributed, or characters in them wrongly identi- fied. I ,found a...

By IAN FLEMING D IG that T-bird!' I had cut it a bit fine round Queen Victoria's skirts and my wing mirror had almost dashed the Leica from the GI's hand. If the tourists don't...

By H. MONTGOMERY HYDE* rr HE easiest way for a traveller from the West to penetrate the Iron Curtain is simply to walk through the Brandenburg Gate. If he should be stopped by a...

in the first chapter of my first book, I wrote: 'I always read the Agony Column first and the news, if there is time, afterwards.' This was true then, and it is still true...

APRIL 6, 1833 SABBATH OBSERVANCE Tin:. application to the Legislature on this subject, on religious grounds, is perfectly unjustifiable. They who think that the First Day...

The G-String of Death By JOHN BRAINE LIKE the harried little man in the TV 7'intes advertisement I miss many programmes that I want to see. But I never miss Let's Go Dancing....

Intellectual Strip-tease By ALAN BRIEN IIII The Catalyst. By Ronald Duncan. (Arts.) IT is odd that the proposition that ea, one man can love two women who can also love each...

The Fault of the System By A. V. COTON The explanation is a dismally simple one. The System is dead against them. Very few critics, and not very many more of the ballet...

Realism in Love By ISABEL QUIGLY A Farewell to Arms. (Carlton.) 64 lik o use the words without irony) is a ff I THE love story pure and simple (1 good deal rarer in the cinema...

Coffee By LESLIE ADRIAN T YING between the chasm of Oxford Street's L chain stores and the north end of New Bond Street, South Molton Street, WI, has somehow managed to...

Torrington Henry Kerby, MP, Andrew Goodman, Reginald A. Smith Taxi! Colin Haycraft, M. M. Melinsky, R. C. Turner `Pop' Fiction Lois Mitchison Converted Vans and Purchase Tax...

SIR,—Mr. R. E. Thomas, President of the Taxi Fleet Operators Federation, writes : In the matter of tipping your contributor (wish- fully thinking perhaps) states it is illegal...

comparing the reburgeoning of the Liberal Party with the war-time revolt against elec- toral truce. For the moment she shook me. What she has overlooked is that the runaway...

'there arc no signs yet of any genuine revival of Liberalism.' What, then, would you consider a sign of a Liberal revival? Or, for that matter, how would you define Liberalism?...

sincere appreciation of the lucid, knowledgeable, accurate and fair manner in which Mr. Haycraft has written about the London taxi. Although the London taxicab service is one of...

of the regulations governing the behaviour of taxi-drivers, I was remiruled of some curious regulations concerning the behaviour of bus passengers quoted in my local bus...

SIR,—At a time when the prospect of diverting an appreciable quantity of this country's imports from the United States to the United Kingdom is receiving considerable, if...

SIR,—As apparently your only correspondent who reads women's magazines for no professional pur- pose and with great enjoyment, I would much like to comment on a few of the...

letter from Mr. Maurice Nockles in your issue dated March 21 did I realise that HM Customs and Excise had succumbed to the current fashion of appointing an official to make...

S IR, —Will you grant me space to show that pt. Vidler (Spectator, February 14) is not justified in expecting me to prove in my book that the papacy has since 1870 'conducted...

The Road to Toleration BY RICHARD WOLLHEIM T HE problem of homosexuality is one which impinges upon two of the most important r egulative elements in society: the principles of...

Ghana is Born. By Lionel Birch. (Newman Ncame, 18s.) MARCH 6, 1957, is one of those dates in history which will reverberate through the century. Not many nations have so...

Images and Themes in Five Poems by Milton. BY Rosemond Tuve. (O.U.P., 25s.) PROFESSOR TUVE is something of a legend in the world of literary studies as the sensitive, subtle...

WHAT happened at Peterloo' was settled a long time ago. Why it happened has long remained to be explored. Mr. Donald Read, in this humane, learned and sensible book, has set...

111E SPECTATOR, APRIL 4, 1958 M odern Science and the Nature of Life. By . v ery end of his book, summarises his belief in science as a philosophy by writing, 'It seems not U n...

Gilt-Edged Bond I HAVE just been reading a long complaint, in the monthly The Twentieth Century, about the un- satisfactory tone of Ian Fleming's novels. The author of this...

The Great Road. By Agnes Smedley. (John Cal- der, 35s.) Daedalus Returned: Crete 1941. By Baron von der Heydte. (Hutchinson, 16s.) Soldier Surgeon in Malaya. By Thomas Hamil -...

THERE was a time, thirty years ago, when Mr. Novomeysky's name was well known to students of the Parliamentary reports, for the debates on the Dead Sea salts concession, to...

Smoking-Sickness y HEAR that a well-known insurance company proposes to grant a 10 per cent. reduction on sickness and accident policies to members of the National Society of...

By PHILIDOR No. 147. Specially contributed by J. C. MORRA (Argentina) BLACK (7 men) WHITE (7 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next .week. Solution to last...

By CUSTOS THE local authorities were not slow to take advantage of the lower Bank rate. Hull and Swan- sea are raising £3 million each this week in 51 per cent. stock 1976-78 at...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT As I have said before, and Major Angas before me in his Investment for Appreciation, only a fool is permanently invested. The wise man switches his free...

ACROSS.-1 StanhoPe. 5 Owns up. 9 Tapering. 10 Milan. 12 Runners. 13 Amateur. 14 Stall-holders. 17 Constrain- ing. 22 Torun!. 23 Bugloss. 24 HOWLS.' 25 Flat-race, 26 Doyens. 21...

ACROSS 1 My chum hires rather poor beds (7). Dorothy brisks up when about all in! (7) 9 Have a look at the damage; it's enough to make you writhe (7). 10 Begone, Fury! You are...

ago a paragraph in a newspaper began: 'There is still no news of the party of Jews that left Portobello on Sunday.' A prize of six guineas, which may be divided, is offered for...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 422 Report by Plain Jane The usual prize-money was offered for an acrostic poem with the initial lights forming the word 'Easter' and the end lights...