the Bonfire PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR Serpents of the Abruzzi JENNY NASMYTH : Exit Six Monarchies JOHN ARLOTT Buse's Benefit

T HE splendour of the Coronation of Elizabeth II is over. It was a bright symbol, and its light will not fade quickly. Yet if the Queen lives as long as her loyal subjects have...

While British troops were firing red, white and blue smoke shells in Korea, President Syngman Rhee, it seems, was exploding some diplomatic ammunition on the White House in...

The news from Kenya is, once again, anything but good. Mr. Lyttelton's fairly optimistic speech, which he made before returning from Nairobi to London a fortnight ago, was...

He faces national elections in Western Germany, paralysis in Paris such as to discourage hopes for a European Defence Treaty in the near future, and a new " United Germany "...

I T became known on Monday night, as the result of a message 'received at Printing House Square from Colonel John Hunt, that the summit of Mount Everest was scaled on May 29th...

The fear that while the British Government and people were taking a holiday to celebrate the Coronation some other Government might manage to upset the present delicately poised...

H OW will the Queen reward the conquerers of Everest ? Though it is premature--for the men are not yet safely off the mountain, and all we know for certain about their...

there, everybody seems agreed that the general standard of design throughout the wide range of Coronation decorations, emblems and souvenirs was remarkably high. Having taken so...

abstruse 'nip fortunes than to lose a pet owl by drowning; but when this happens—as it now has to me—two years running, he may well be excused if he becomes uneasy in his...

worn by most of the Regiments of the Line, by the Royal Regiment of Artillery and by the various Service Corps did not, I thought, come very well out of its first large-scale...

BY LAIN HAMILTON OLLOWING Scotland Yard's instructions on the inside of the sticker on the windscreen, we turned in a wide arc from the north to come at Parliament Square, and...

By PETER FLEMING I WOKE up feeling slightly embusque, as though, given the chance to see service in some great decisive battle, I had chosen instead to take part in minor...

BY JENNY NASMYTH I N the .year that George VI was crowned, continental Europe could boast eleven crowned Monarchs, one Regent, a reigning Grand Duchess (of Luxembourg) and two...

Magazine Post) Id.

By PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR L EAVING the gentle, Italian, primitive landscape of Umbria for the blank sierras of the Abruzzi was as complete a .change as a journey to a different...

crowd drifts happily but wearily down the Haymarket, ignoring the sparse traffic, the soft intermittent rain, the still keen northerly wind. Propped under the portico, two...

Let's Start a. Magazine S own, taking his hat off to people, does he? " asked Peter bitterly. He was in his Disraeli period, and a virulent Royalist. I told him that, after...

Courbet. (Marlborough.) PIGEONHOLE an artist and we can all stop thinking. It is all but a century since Courbet, disclaiming the label of " realist," prefaced his one-man show...

THEATRE Guys and Dolls. From Damon Runyon. (Coliseum.)—The Uninvited Guest. By Mary Hayley Bell. (St. James's.) THERE had been some doubt as to whether the Broadway...

Ludlow and all that, but I still feel that the place for the theatre is indoors. During twenty-one years, bravely fighting such blind prejudice and the London summer, Robert...

Genevieve. (Leicester Square.) MR. WILLIAM ROSE'S comedy, involving the rivalry between two young men who own antiquated cars and enter them for the annual London to Brighton...

The Immortal Hour. AFTER Saint-Sains's Samson and Delilah and Sutermeister's Romeo and Juliet, Sadler's Wells' lateit novelty is Rutland Boughton's The Immortal Hour, which had...

This summer evening like a memory Stirs thoughts and feelings that I cannot name ; Yet in the heart a sense of harmony Establishes an undisputed claim. The little houses in the...

Set by Edward Blishen Silent deck-scrubbing machines (large vacuum-cleaners in appearance) have been introduced by a British shipping line. Competitors are invited to submit a...

Report by John Barlow Prizes were offered for two limericks (unlimited entry) on any of these twelve London areas, the appended rhyme-word to be used once : Bayswater...

Od. per annum. S. Africa (Air Express) £4 Os. Od. per annum. Rates to other parts of the world will be forwarded upon application. For further particulars write :— The...

Buse's Benefit By JOHN ARLOTT 0 N June 6th, 8th and 9th—if the unpredictable Bath wicket allows it to continue so long—a game of cricket will be played between Somerset and...

Future contributors to this page will include J. P. W. MALLALIEU NEVILLE CARDUS JOHN ARLOTT EDWARD CRANKSHAW MICHAEL BERRY BERNARD DARWIN PATRIC DICKINSON

cannot but feel that, in spite• of your protestations to the nurary, your ma g azine must share some responsibility with Mr. esmond E. Henn for the ini q uitous article which...

Word Blindness in the Army Ste The Royal Army Education Corps recently conducted a survey of the standard of literacy amon g National Servicemen. It makes dis- turbi ng readin...

SIR,—In a review of Miss G. R. Levy's The Sword From the Rock, Mr. Peter Green writes intemperately of: a rank growth of symbolical exe g esis, where fantasy borrowed a...

of Mr. Montgomery Hyde's life of Carson. But in stressing the qualities of the indomitable counsel in-the courts, and the menacing figure on public platforms and in the House,...

SIR,—Mr. A. P. Ryan tells your readers, in his review of Mr. Montgomery Hyde's Carson, that Stormont, the Northern Ireland House of Parliament, is " grim "—a word, which, of...

SIR,—I am afraid that your note under the above heading in the issue of May 22nd may be open to misunderstanding, particularly that part' of your comment which relates to the...

THE COURT QUEEN VICTORIA has once more entered on that active life of business and pleasure which characterises her Majesty's residence in town. On Wednesday, she held a Court...

SIR,-1 remember seeing William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes at the Lyceum Theatre just fifty years ago and I feel sure Strix is correct in saying that " elementary, my dear...

STANDING on the road, I watched a lark descending. It twittered as it came down and then, as larks do, it cut off its little song abruptly, and dropped on to the grass. 1 was...

I find that the best time is when the soil is wet. No amount of watering can establish split-up plants so well as those placed in naturally moist soil. Like pansies, they do...

My reference to frogs a few months ago has brought me an article from the New Yorker, forwarded by E. E. Hoyt of Ames, Iowa; and, reading it, I have discovered some wonderful...

By the time these words are in print the bonfires that are being built will be in ashes. Now, on the top of more than one hill round about, I can see a mound that has been...

Usually the queen wasp manages to steal a march on her enemies and her brood is out in force before anyone knows where the nest is situated; hut, passing along a path that...

Ugo Foscolo : An Italian in Regency England. By E. R. Vincent. (Cambridge University Press. 25s.) IN 1910 a young Italian scholar, Francesco Viglione, gained access to the...

• Washington's Problem Child McCarthy. By Jack Anderson and Ronald May. (Gollancz. 18s.) IN the last few weeks the Republican Senator for Wisconsin has bellowed his way into...

The Law of Libel and Slander. By Oswald S. Hickson and P. F. Carter-Ruck. (Faber. 30s.) FOR the people of this island the proceedings of their courts of law provide a...

Locke's Travels in France. Edited by John Lough. (Cambridge University Press. 40s.) IN November, 1675, when he was forty-three, John Locke left England to spend...

Wiltshire Harvest. By H. H. Bashford. (Constable. 10S.) ONE of the many surprising things discovered, or rather unearthed, by the Second World War was the amazing productive...

review " Fables " by. Jacquetta Hawkes and " The Doctor and the Devils " by Dylan Thomas ; and James Layer " A History of Fashion " by Douglas Gorsline.

The Thomas Cook Story. By John Pudney. (Michael Joseph. 15s.) THOMAS COOK was one of my boyhood's heroes—almost taking rank with George Henty, Charles Kingsley because of The...

George Bass : 1771-1803. By Keith Macrae Bowden. (Oxford University Press. 21s.) IN 1795, when George Bass reached Sydney as ship's surgeon in H.M.S. ' Reliance,' the penal...

Escapade. By Rex Warner. (Bodley Head. 10s.) Tots is a piece of exquisitely fine fooling, such as will be enjoyed by everyone who is not incurably serious. The genial and yet...

I FIND historical fiction a peculiarly frustrating form of literature: for, unless one is an expert on the period; one has no means of telling how much is history and how much...

THE greater part of this number of the Cornhill is taken up by " The Violins of Saint-Jacques," Patrick Leigh. Fermor's account of the disappearance through a volcanic eruption...

Speaking Poetry. By Geoffrey Crump. (Methuen. 12s. 6d.) Now that the publishing of books of verse, other than anthologies, is an uneconomic proposition owing to the high cost...

fA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, June 16th, addressed Crossword, and bearing NUMBER of...

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one famous town and a little-known countryside is not an easy subject—especially for an isolated book which should have more completeness, perhaps, than one of a series. You...

My Father Before Me. By Norman Good- land. (Hutchinson. 12s. 6d.) Tins is a strange and wholesome book, fresh as the open air itself and as heavy with 'the nostalgia for things...

By CUSTOS As I suspected, the indications of a mild recovery in markets discernible towards the end of May are proving reliable. Gilt- edged stocks ase as firm as ever and, more...