The nature of this threat of force deserves to be made quite clear, since it is now obvious that the only element which the Government hopes to save from the wreck is the...

The case for an increase in the Treasury grant to universities is completely simple, and the University Grants Committee is hardly likely to depart so far from its consistently...

There is no possible measure by which the success or failure of the Festival of Britain can be measured. The financial balance is largely made up of imponderables, and the...

It is inconceivable that Signor De Gasperi's recent visit to the United States could have gone off without some discussi,on of the Trieste territory, at present arbitrarily...

The questions which are now in the forefront of West German politics can be clearly recognised as the ones that matter most to all Germans—unity, sovereignty and the army....

In the absence of any Communist reply to General Ridgway's suggestion that the truce talks should be resumed at the village of Songhyon, in the no-man's-land between the two...

W ITH the publication of the Labour and Conservative manifestoes any still undecided voters, of whom there are probably fewer than is commonly supposed, are in a position to...

number with every sign of sustained, if not increasing, virility, as the Practitioner has just done, is eminently a matter for congratula- tion, and when the achievement is...

of the different religious weeklies, mentioning the Church of Eng- land Newspaper as having recently swallowed The Record. Someone seems to have inferred (perhaps owing to the...

Dinner, which was the occasion of his visit to England, caused much disappointment and some perplexity. The Duke had at the last moment cancelled the Press Confer- ence he was...

Guardian, "British influence, achievements and status stand high among the nations." According to the authoritative Washington correspondent of The Times the same day :...

Patricia Rothwell, M.E.S.T.D. (B.B.), A.I.S.T.D. (L.A.), A.I.S.T.D. (B.B. Comm.), A.I.B.D. (B.B. Comm.). I shall learn.

difficult diplomatic situation is to send a gunboat." So it was Winston who ordered the ' Mauritius ' to Abadan. JANUS.

to amend some hymns and abbreviate others. The familiar "O'er heathen lands afar Thick darkness broodeth yet" becomes the rather flat "O'er lands both near and far," and the...

T HE success of the Bevanites in the poll for membership of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party will much more than outweigh any good that might have come from the...

By WILSON HARRIS T HE answer is not as simple as it seems. Mr. Churchill can certainly do as much to win the Election for his Party • as any man living. He can equally...

By BRUCE BELFRAGE (The fifth anniversary of the B.B.C. Third Programme was celebrated last Saturday.) I N 1949 a Liberal Research Group, of which I was a member, produced a...

By DAMEMYRA CURTIS* It is as well to remember that the Act was not designed to prevent the home from breaking down—if indeed any legislation could address itself to that end....

By ROYHARROD T O take over at the worst hour, when previous com- manders have allowed the position to deteriorate, when the armies are within an inch of annihilation, gives the...

By MARC HAN ITA LASK I M OST of the new fashions of fiction-writing appearing during the past fifty years have had gradually to build up their own standards of comparison...

By the BISHOP OF LONDON FIFTEEN-HUNDREDTH anniversary seems well worth keeping, if only in praise of antiquity. But however venerable the Council of Chalcedon, it deserves com-...

By D. W. BROGAN T HE young American Air Force corporal in the train beside me had a nice face, but even his mother could hardly have described it as intelligent. And he was...

By PETER FLEMING S the audience flowed out through the foyer at the end of the play I caught the tail-end of an invitation which a well-dressed, middle-aged, rather purposeful...

By HAROLD NICOLSON p ROFESSOR GUSTAVE LE BON, were he alive today, would observe with professional satisfaction the develop- ment of the oil crisis in Persia. One of the main...

THEATRE k.lcs Nuits de la Co!ere" and "Oedipe." "Partage de Midi." (St. James's Theatre.) M. BARRAULT'S may be a grasshopper mind, but there is no denying Its energy and...

"SubmOrine Command." (Plaza.)__.__" Cinderella." (Berkeley.) THERE is very little left for the picture-going public to learn about submarines. We have surfaced and dived...

atmospheric ; and the rainbow at the end is delightful. But beyond the pleasures of its title, the new musical show is a sadly bankrupt affair. The songs arc dimly reminiscent...

ANY fairly advanced Prom-goer who during the season had heard and enjoyed, say, Walton's Viola Concerto or Fricker's Symphony No. 1, might have been rather dismayed if he had...

AND now we settle for the autumn drowse: The bee, snapdragon-trapped, turns in and snores; Dogs idle in mid-scratch ; men gape like cows. Ripeness is all. . . . Lethargy is...

Report by Thea Holme A prize of £5 was offered for an extract from a farewell address (after a presentation by grateful parishioners) by one of the follow- ing: Dr. Chasuble,...

Set by R. J. P. Hewison • Limbo must harbour many poems which might have .been, but never were, wriiten=such as the " Essay on Wonman'! by Alexander Pope, or ' The Aeronauts"...

SIR,—Having now read Mr. Godley's story of van Meegeren's imitations of Vermeer and other masters, reviewed in your issue of July 6th, I can give an earlier date than he does,...

SIR,-1t would perhaps seem ungracious to take Mr. Harold Nicolson's charming article in the Spectator of September 28th too seriously. It is, however, so full of sound knowledge...

Whose Privilege? sut,—I wonder how many of your readers have, like me, attempted in vain to attach a definite meaning to the new and mysterious word "underprivileged." A...

SIR,—Richard Edgeworth (eldest brother of Maria Edgeworth the novelist) was born in 1764, in the age of wigs and sedan chairs and Chatham. His half-sister Lucy Jane (Mrs....

Sm,—Your correspondent, Mr. Kennard Davis, in asking how Dr. Gallup measures human happiness, will no doubt provoke many profound reflec- tions in the minds of moralists and...

Si,—Mr. Massingham in Country Life says he doesn't believe in "this biennial business" in apple-trees because his Ellisons Orange, reputed to be biennial, has fruited four...

SIR,—Mr. Stockwood's argument is two-edged. If we accept the Biblical doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, why should one Christian expect to be paid for his...

'MANCHESTER AND ITS GUEST THE event of the age is one that has not yet happened, but is going to happen ; the North of England already feels its . influence—a refraction of...

SIR,—In an otherwise admirable note in your issue of September 28th you refer to the mystique of kingship as something "which few foreigners can understand • and which often...

Not the least of the seductions of Campden, neither village nor market- town but a unique self betwixt and between, is its cherry orchards that ring it round, into which the "...

SIR, —The temptation to read Christian meaning into the Old Testament Is exemplified in the doctrine of the future life. There is no doubt that the Hebrews hoped for a future...

One of the very loveliest of English gardens I know is that of Hidcote Bartrim Manor on the northern edge of the Cotswolds. Its principal charm is a long turf walk, bordered by...

1 OFTEN revisit places endeared to me by old associations, but none with the quickening (life, wrote Henry Vaugban, is "a quickness which rrty God bath kissed ") that agitates...

of the Evcsham R.D.C., and by personal contacts with the people, I once collected what I think must be one of the most remarkable hordes of rural folk-tales in Britain. I give...

S1R,—During the first week in May we were all startled to find that our postage stamps had been entirely rearranged. Those of your readers who asked the postal clerks for an...

S1R,—Some 750 students from German universities will soon be on their way to this country to give our farmers help in gathering in the potato and sugar-beet harvest. A...

Poets and Their Friends SOMETIMES I am appalled by thoughts of unfortunate university students having to choose subjects for theses which no one has ever thought of before. I...

The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes. Edited by Iona and Peter Opie. (Oxford University Press. 3os.) THE Great Anon lie thick beneath the ground. They rest their heads upon...

John Gerard : The Autobiography of an Elizabethan. Translated from the Latin by Philip Caraman. Introduction by Graham Greene. (Longmans. i Ss.) JOHN GERARD the Jesuit is a...

THE Edwardian age, says Mr. Gore, is "over-documented—hence the fog which hangs over it." This is an odd complaint, for a historian cannot be too liberally supplied with...

The British Amphibians and Reptiles. By Malcolm Smith. (Collins. 219.) "THIS book concerns mainly the field naturalist." So writes the author, Dr. Malcolm Smith, in his preface,...

MR. JOHN CARSWELL has edited and introduced The Autobiography of a Working Man by Alexander Somerville (Turnstile Press, 10s. 6d.). This neglected book, first published in 1848,...

The Gunpowder Plot, By Hugh Ross Williamson. (Faber. 2 s.) THE history of England and of Scotland in the seventeenth century is full of plots and counterplots, ranging from the...

IN this typically Boston book there is a good deal more about the Bostonians than about Keats. There are four of them: two women —Louise Imogen Guiney and Amy Lowell—and two...

The Revolt. By Menachem Begin. (W. H. Allen. t8s.) HERE are two men who came from Europe to Palestine determined, if they could, to direct the destinies of that puzzling...

The Collected Poems of.Keith Douglas. Edited by John Waller and G. S. Fraser. (Editions Poetry London. I 25. '6d.) A Tetralogy. • By Arthur Constance. The Two Natures. By...

FEW forms of criticism are more stupid than to complain because a writer has not done something he never meant to do ; yet I could wish that Mr. O'Hara's ferocious and ironic...

THE AUTUMN publishing season has already seen the appearance of a number of important books of varied biographical and auto- biographical interest—among those that have been...

present so rich and extensive a tapestry as Edinburgh at the close of the eighteenth century is a task easy in appearance 6ut in fact exacting, demanding both arduous labour and...

House. 181.) IN 1898 the anthropologists Spencer and Gillen forecast the speedy decline of the Central Australian aborigine. Fifty years later Mr. Mountford, after a study of...

FROM the non-specialist point of view this book, a re-written University prize essay, still seems lacking in form. This is a pity for the subject is one of great and also of...

a provincial museum's cellars. It is the story of the names—painters, administrators and critics, forgotten, half-forgotten and sometimes all-too-well remembered—the...

expected that markets would maintain for long the exuberance with which they greeted the prospect of an early political show-down. After the first brisk raising of...

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IA Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first coned( Solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, October 16th, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...