When Hilali Pasha became Prime Minister of Egypt four months ago he set himself three tasks; to punish those respon- sible for the outbreak of violence which nearly destroyed...

S OMETHING of the intense excitement which is always generated in the United States 'in election year has filtered across the Atlantic, and the course of the Republican Party...

In its latest note the Swedish Government has proposed to bring the case of the shot-down Swedish aircraft before the International Court of Justice " should the Soviet...

how it works; -many Italians either do not understand it or do not like it. The Italian Government is thus confronted with the old dilemma of whether it is more democratic to...

" Not even a prison," says the report of the Broadmoor Enquiry Committee, " can guarantee that no prisoner can ever escape." From this truism, which needed all the same to be...

Underlying the whole Commons debate on the cost of living on Monday was a false assumption—the assumption that the relationship between earnings and prices in a given petiod is...

I T was the strangest of censure debates. One refers, of course, to the debate on Korea. There was such a faint tincture of censure about the Opposition's regret at the failure...

In reducing the prices of their cars for export the Ford Motor Company have gone straight to the heart of the matter, Com- petition for overseas orders is now primarily price...

The prayers against orders under the National Health Service which were made in the Commons on Wednesday night were an attempt to alter a policy which cannot be altered. The...

I N Britain the most persistent tendency of opinion on the Korean war is the tendency to forget. From this one fact is derived the exaggerated effect of those shocks Elnd sur-...

a point about the germ warfare charges in Korea which I am surprised no one has made before. He points out that one of '‘the two types of bomb alleged by 'the Chinese to have...

flew to Malaya this week to do a two months' tour of duty on General Templer's staff, is ,probably unaware that he has already established, in a fortuitous sort of way, a...

promotion section are calling the attention of the travelling public to the merits of their " greate newe shippe of the air," the Elizabethan, is a document which must have, for...

is when she writes : " There ought not to be a cash barrier around the Queen. The approach to the Palace ought not to be through secondhand or hired clothes." This does not come...

was felled, or perhaps was blown down in a storm. From, part of the butt the estate carpenter made a large box of toy bricks, and with these my brothers and I used to play upon...

RITING in Tuesday's Daily Herald on " The Queen and the People," Miss Jennie Lee marshals 4, Y r (or so one imagines) the same sort of arguments which prompted Mr. Attlee and...

"Principiis obsta ! sero medicina paratur Cum mala per longas convaluere moras." * T WO thousand years after Ovid wrote the above lines, most people pay at least lip-service to...

By EVELYN KING E was born on July 5th, 1752, in Norwich in the day of Wenman Coke; and tomorrow is the bicentenary of his birth. He got a little but not much education in...

L'y NEVILLE CARDUS I I, was apt and delightful that Queen Elizabeth should have - gone to Lord's on the day that saw an Indian cricketer bringing again to a Test-match the...

Brave with summer the garden ventured Right inside the room ; The walls were leafed and birdsong tingled Through the sun - stained gloom. Kisses like butterflies flickered...

By D. W. BROGAN H AROLD ROSS is dead. He died, indeed, shortly after the American edition of this book* was published, and that was hard on Mr. Kramer, who, writing of a living...

By the Rev. MERVYN STOCKWOOD T HE Church of England has a partiality for washing dirty linen in public. And yet it must be admitted that, although some of the soiled garments...

By IAN FLEMING I T seems that a Middle-aged couple who received a lot of publicity in a recent court case have just sailed for Jamaica ' to start a new life." When I read this...

By J. P. W. MALLALIEU, M.P. W ELL, I've been there again; and now I can imagine something of what seems to be its charm. Suppose you have got tickets for the Centre Court. You...

By KATE O'BRIEN T HEY are the music here. They run, arpeggios and chromatic scales, through the hilly street and through the weather. Sometimes they are very small comic operas....

By HAROLD NICOLSON I SEE that Mr. Thorneycroft has stated in reply to a Parliamentary Question that the Government have, decided to place a ban upon the import from abroad of...

THEATRE The Millionairess. By George Bernard Shaw. (New.) IT is nasty not to join the party and sing oneself dizzy, but there it is. This late play of Shaw's seems to me one of...

Carrie. (Carlton.)—Untamed Frontier. (Gaumont and Marble Arch Pavilion.)—I'll See you in my Dreams. (Warner.) THEODORE DREISER'S story about a young and innocent country - girl...

beautiful, fierce and shy. I long to follow it into the forest, But if I abandon my flowers, they will die. I chose my garden and planted and carecYfor it. The wild thing...

It is sad if not altogether surprising to find, if one finds right t i that anguish, or dread, or anxiety, or at least foreboding, are dominant notes. Permeke's sad sunset and...

so when they bring music which is unfamiliar to us. The Stockholm Philharmonic celebrates its fiftieth birthday this year, and has had the benefit in past years of conductors...

First World War, they helped to plant the Black Wood. It was a fine wood of spruce, and it took just about the time between the two wars to come to maturity. Italian and German...

PEAT is a first-class fuel. It burns well and gives off a great heat, and 1 Its only disadvantage is that it tends to leave grey ash on the mantel- piece and make a rather...

Feed onions with super-phosphate and sulphate of potash to help them reach a good size. Clear the bed of weeds. Good scarlet runners can be obtained only by ensuring that the...

Since I wrote a book about poaching a few years ago, I have been embarrassed to find myself hailed as an authority on all matters relating to illegal methods of obtaining one's...

being towed round by tractors, and the business of hay-making goes ahead at a great pace. The hay used to be cut with a pair of horses and a mower, after which all available...

of £5 was offered for a continuation of the'' Musical Banks " catechism in Erewhon Revisited beginning : " My duty towards my neighbour is to be quite sure that he is hot likely...

Set by Lewis Petrie It is said that in a Liverpool Magistrates' Court witnesses. used to be ranged in the degrees—" Liar, dam' liar, expert witness." A prize of £5, which may be...

The Other Ladder Ent,—Before the days of State assistance it was the father who paid the bill and it was the father who decided whether or no the university was the right place...

SIR,—Janus's long and admirable fight against bogus degrees has ma your columns the inevitable forum for any discussion of acade distinctions. I trust, therefore, it will not be...

the mark in his observa- tions on the Glyndbourne Cenerentola. "The role demands a roguish vivacity, a voice of incisive brilliance and perfectly confident showman- ship "—such...

Em,—I endorse, with regret, P. R. Gresham's criticism of modern British products. The present apparent policy of manufacturers to sacrifice traditional British quality to...

the session of Parliament was formally wound up on Thursday, was of the approved stereotyped form. There was a touch of novelty in the prayer at the close, that Providence might...

difficult segment of the immense refugee problem in the world. There are still 800,000 of them. Penniless and workless, they and their families are gathered in camps and...

June 27th states: " Just as the high-way ' is a nationalised or almost national affair, so the rail- way' should be a national affair, and the cost of it borne on the same basis...

the Spectator of June 13th. Mr. Derek Hudson commented on the librarians' habit of cataloguing her novels " neither under B nor D but under A." Surely it is time a protest was...

SIR,—IS there any reason why the B.B.C. in forecasting our weather should not give us the benefit of an occasional hot day ? Surely when we are comfortably into the eighties the...

first visit when I saw her win the Singles Championship on the old ground at Wimbledon, may I rebut the charge made by J. P. W. Mallalieu in his sprightly article Wimbledon...

the Onslows of Clandon Park in the eighteenth century, and am anxious to trace letters from, or relating to, members of the family in that period. If any of your readers have...

been sending me the Spectator regularly for many years, thus doing me a kindness which gives me much pleasure and which I greatly appreciate. I have looked in vain for the name...

Light on Beatrice Webb Beatrice Webb's Diaries, 19124924. Edited by Margaret I. Cole. (Longmans. 24s.) UNLIKE its two predecessors, this volume of Beatrice Webb's auto-...

Bolivar. By Salvador de Madariaga. (Hollis & Carter. 45s.) IN the first q uarter of the nineteenth century the principal coin. imunities in Spanish-speakin g America took up...

" EUROPE is not a political creation. It is a society of peoples who shared the same faith and the same moral values. The European nations are parts of a wider spiritual...

The Living Landscape of Britain. By Walter Shepherd. (Faber. 36s.) A BOOK which begins by announcing a clearly defined and limited objective earns the immediate gratitude of...

Gustave Courbet. By Gerstle Mack. (Rupert Hart-Davis. 45s.) MR. GERSTLB MACK has written the first full-length biography on Courbet in English. For a long time I think it will...

How to Travel Incognito. By Ludwig Bemelmans. (Hamish Hamilton. Its. 6d.) EVEN if it were not known that Mr. Bemelmans had once run his own restaurant, his books would...

By Rend Grousset. Translated by Anthony Watson-Gandy and Terence Gordon. (Bles. 42s.) THE fields of Chinese history are many-acred, and most of its harvesters are slow workers...

SACHEVERELL SITWELL'S has become the art of retrospect : a cele- bration of the beauties of the world which he feels to be slipping away. It will never be possible now for him...

Plant Hunter in Manipur. By F. Kingdon-Ward. (Cape. 15s.) IN 1947 Mr. Kingdon-Ward was commissioned, by the New York Botanic Garden, to explore the mountainous regions of...

Robert Burns. By David Daiches. (Bell. 15s.) - t THE modern reaction to Burns—as exemplified by such Lives as Hecht's, Snyder's and Mrs. Carswell's—has been to regard him as...

Talks on Book-Collecting. Edited by P. H. Muir. (Cassell. 12s. 6d.) Nineteenth Century English Books : Some Problems in Bibliography. By Gordon N. Ray, Carl J. Weber and John...

Llewelyn Powys. A Selection from his Writings. Made by Kenneth Hopkins. (Macdonald. 16s.) " To be even aware of the sun as he moves from horizon to horizon is a form of prayer...

STEPHEN LEACOCK died in 1944, and there are signs that the work of this great humorist—after passing through the period of neglect that so often seems to follow the deaths of...

By Oliver Strunk. (Fa 63s.) THIS is a collection, by the Professor of Music at Princeton Univers of writings about music—theoretical, polemical, rhapsodical technical—from...

The Sailing Race and Other Poems. By Patric Dickinson. (Chatt∎ & Windus. 6s.) Visions of Time. By Hal Summers. Hand & Flower Press Words by Request. By Christopher HasSall....

The Victorian Flower Garden. By Geoffrey Taylor. (Skeffington. 12s. 6d.) Gardenage. By Geoffrey Grigson. (Routledge & Kegan Paul. 21s.) - The Flower in Season. By Jocelyn...

The Struggles of Albert Woods. By William Cooper. (Cape. 12s. 6d.) ' A Many-Splendoured Thing. By Han Suyin. (Cape. 15s.) Land from the Sea. By Showell Styles. (Faber. 12s....

Ii' literature reflects life, then we can fairly say that the inductions to be drawn from recent crime fiction are depressing. True detection is moribund if not already dead :...

The Country of White Clover. By H. E. Bates. (Michael Joseph. 12s. 6d.) IN The Country of White Clover Mr. H. E. Bates has written an affectionate and real- istic book about...

when they look westwards away from the tortuosities of Europe across the Pacific to the Far East. Protecting this "American lake," in the, middle of which the President and...

BUDU SVANIDZE really is Stalin's nephew. - He left the other side of the Iron Curtain for ever after the war for an unfashionable reason : love. He retains a genuine personal...

THE high cost of French books since the war has led to the creation of two Book Clubs, whose purpose is to sell selected choices at prices below those generally ruling. The "...

By CUSTOS FOR no very obvious reasons stock markets have at last succeeded in staging a moderate recovery. Although the improvement in prices has not gone very far, it has been...

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