N EVER before, the Manchester Guardian's parliamen- tary correspondent complained, had anything like it been heard in the House of Commons : 'A most un- pleasant experience, for...

ESTABLISHED 1828 No. 6645 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1955 PRICE 7d.

T HERE is a passage in one of the tales of Kai Lung where a mandarin is informed that, whereas it is one thing to be officially degraded three times, it is quite another to be...

A FORTNIGHT ago, having indicated the damage that would follow a marriage between Princess Margaret and Group Captain Townsend, we said that even if they did not marry there...

From our German Correspondent HE apathy of the Germans towards the goings-on in Geneva is in no way surprising. They have had far more direct experience than any Western nation...

T HE debate on the Labour Party's Motion of Censure did little to clear away the bewilderment in industry. finance, and politics provoked by Mr. Butler's Budget. Opinion remains...

T O the discomfiture of some of the senior members of his own party, as well as of the Opposition, it was the voice of a schoolboy (Parliamentarily speaking) that rallied the...

BY HENRY FAIRLIE 0 NE evening during the Conservative Party Conference at Bournemouth I heard a Minister discuss the attitude of the Government to the Burgess-Maclean affair. It...

THE INDEPENDENT TELEVISION AUTHORITY iS to be congratulated for its decision to cock a snook at the Government over the fourteen-day rule in connection with last Sunday's 'free...

about Christmas cards more than a couple of days before the last possible moment; and if there are any of them among the readers of this column 1 should like to draw their...

I learn that 1954 produced 109 murderers and suspected murderers. Proceedings were taken against seventy-two of these (most of the others had committed suicide before arrest)....

published the translation of 'A Poem for Adults' by Adam Wazyk. Even from the translation one could see that the poem was excellent in itself, but the most extraordinary thing...

(1) With the West BY T. R. FYVEL p OINTING to the trees growing on the vaguely terraced slopes between which the Jerusalem road descends sharply to the coastal plain, my driver...

The winners of the Spectator's Schools' Competition are : Gail Osborn, of the Durban Girls' College; James Currey, of Kings- wood School, Bath; and James W. Cochrane, of the...

By L. F.. RUSHBROOK WILLIAMS Nor is it only in the countryside that there is visible evidence of successful energy. The growth of new industrial establish- ments, great and...

Knew Him BY MR. NORRIS* [Gerald Hamilton is able to publish the text of a recent letter from Arthur Norris to Christopher Isherwood] MY DEAR CHRISTOPHER. I have much to thank...

BY NORMAN ST. JOHN-STEVAS I N 1945 Dr. Karl Renner, then President of the Republic, described Austria as a light skiff occupied by four elephants, unwelcome but apparently...

By JOHN BETJEMAN I T, is pretty safe to say that all dentists are Conservatives and all cobblers are Radicals. One can make interesting generalisations about religious...

Dons and the Heliograph . ' WANT some cleft sticks, please.' Thus the hero of Scoop, I a mild, foolish young man, enrolled under a misappre- hension by Lord Copper to act as a...

Oxford Divided Senior Censor of Christ Church Cyprus Col. Const. Martintm Mr. Butler's Budget Sir Angus Watson, Col. R. C. Harris School Holidays J. M. Knowles, R. H. Ardler Au...

Stit,—In his letter to you (Spectator, Septem- ber 23), Sir Richmond Palmer, obviously ig- noring the history of Cyprus, Turkey and Greece, made some rather astounding state-...

new taxation in his Budget which spreads the burden among all individual citizens, but is this true? He does nothing about the £2,000 million of waste expenditure incurred on...

SIR,—In your issue of October 28 the Re v .; Mr. Pendril Bentall declares that Mr. Vatigins" Wilkes's statement about school hours iss parish like the writer's' leads to the...

the Socialist Parties have had ample opportunity to find and apply the remedy for the economic weakness of ibis kingdom. Obviously neither party has been successful. One can...

suggestion that we press for shorter holidays. The endless summer break, originally meant (says Mr. Bentall) to let country children work on the farm, is today an outrage....

German Welfare Council, a voluntary organisation set up to help and advise Germans living in this country. We should have been glad to advise the German girl mentioned,...

SIR,—The letter of Mr. Topliss in your last issue shows that Catholics—to their credit— are not the people who allow aspersions on their history or their creed to pass un-...

SIR,—Walter Clemons says that the stories in Neil Bell's book The Captain's Woman are trash. What are his qualifications for saying so? I'd like to know, as some of the best...

Clemons, in reviewing my book The Captain's Woman, says that the stories are trash. I suggest that the use of so offensive and damaging a word to describe my work is un- fair...

SIR,—If Strix is still avoiding floccinaucinihili- pilification, perhaps he would care to pass on to Guinness Superlatives Limited (or better still a potential rival) a longer...

SIR, — Pharos's condemnation of the intolerable conditions imposed on one German girl is of course completely justified. In other respects the paragraph is misleading. Pharos...

Portuguese Art How strange it would have seemed to a nine- teenth-century mind that many of us should be more familiar with the sculpture of a former Portuguese territory in...

THE QUEEN AND THE REBELS. By Ugo Betti. (Haymarket.)--THE CLASSICAL THEATRE OF CHINA. (Palace.) LET me get the praise over with. This is one of the most exciting plays to have...

TO CATCH A THIEF. (Odeon.)—THE GLASS SLIPPER. (Empire.) - BLACK TUESDAY. (London Pavilion.) To Catch a Thief, Alfred Hitchcock's new film, shown to the Queen last Monday, is not...

PERHAPS I hit upon a very atypical selection of programmes both sound and TV during the past few days and the impressions gathered from them may not he a very reliable...

NOVEMBER 6, 1830 Lord GREY, in adverting to Parliamentary re- form on Tuesday, said the people had no abstract right to a share in the management of the state; and that, in...

The Scholar as Critic BY KINGSLEY AMIS T HE generation of scholars and teachers which included Saintsbury, Bradley, Raleigh and W. P. Ker is unlikely to draw any cheers from...

MAN ON HIS PAST. By Herbert Butterfield. (C.U.P., 22s. 6d.) ACTIVMES emerge. naively, like games that children invent for themselves. Each appears, first, as a direction of...

THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE. By Sir George Thomson. (C.U.P., 10s. 6d.) SCIENTIST s' books for a general public commonly fall into various faults. Sometimes they show an...

VAN GOGH. With notes by Douglas Cooper. TOULOUSE-LAUTREC:. With introduction and notes by Hanspeter Landolt. (Holbein- With introduction and notes by Hanspeter Landolt....

ISLE OF CLOVES. By F. D. Ommanney. (Longmans, 18s.) ONE MAN'S JOURNEY. By Leonard Cottrell. (Robert Hale, 16s.) ALL these five authors have a sense of mission; they are per-...

WOMEN DIE TWICE. By Paule Lafeuille. (Gollancz, 10s. 6d.) THE PRIMROSE PATH. By Peter Forster. (Longmans, 12s. 6d.) Aspects of Love, Mr. Garnett's revealingly self-conscious...

TELEVISION. By Sir Basil Bartlett. (Allen and Unwin, 9s. 6d.) Ir must be unusual for two books with iden- tical titles to appear on the same publication date. In this case...

address a public much wider than that of the English Literature Schools. Her subject is fresh, for there has been a great deal of detailed research on the Elizabethan theatre...

(Thames and Hudson, 15s.) This book, though barbarously written, is useful and deserves to be often consulted. Mr. Williamson, who gives his book the sub-title, 'A poem-by-poem...

(Thames and Hudson, 21s.) THIS is a most uneven work. It is intended both as an unofficial history of the RAF and as a study of inter-Service jealousies. The result is not very...

36s.) THIS is a study of the use of armour in the Second World War. The author was a cavalry- man and a trained officer of the German General Staff. He took part in many of the...

Gooseberries can be propagated quite easily if one has enough room for cuttings. All but the top three buds should be removed from shoots of the year about ten or twelve inches...

BY PHILIDOR Nu. 22. I. NEUMANN (ISRAEL) WHITE, 7 men. FASHION IN CHESS Chess is as subject to changes in fashion as women's clothes. Just as the waist line goes up and down...

BY IAN NIALL THE greediness of birds often threatens to be their undoing, and gulls in particular are prone to gorging themselves whenever they get the chance. At the weekend I...

Most wild creatures move along set lines, frequenting the same track, and rats have their runs as those who are troubled with them know. When I discovered a large rat crossing...

Until a short time ago I admired a fine lawn. The owner of this particular bit of turf, when he was no longer able to tend it because of ill-health, had it taken up and concrete...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT IF Mr. Butler comes to grief with labour over his autumn Budget it will be because he has been too honest as a Chancellor. He has always made it clear that...

By CUSTOS AFTER their initial rise, marking their sense of relief that the interim Budget was not worse but better than expected, the stock markets have been quieter- and...

Competitors were asked to assume that Burgess and Maclean were setting the written examination in the English language to the passing-out class of Soviet spies, destined to go...

An actor's purgatory was recently defined as 'playing in Little Lord Fauntleroy at matinees, and Pinero's Sweet Lavender at night.' A prize of £5 (which may be divided) is...

ACROSS 1 Paired in spectacles and never alone by the sea (6). 4 Norse god takes the finest outsize suitable for a hot climate! (8) 10 It seems to imply a reduction in the Navy...

Hall, Alford, Lines, and MR. GEOFFREY BATEMAN, 33 Marsham Coal , Westminster, London, SWI.