Secular Intellectuals BY CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS I WAS extremely interested in Mr. Kingsley Martin'S article on the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Christmas Book Supplement of the New...

A Cot.D MORNING . . _ ~~~I _ ..11.-.. s o s It always seems much colder when there is a rime onl thle hcdge and a white carpet running up from the hollow to the edge of the...

1[.AR[I.N DlGGiING When the soil is heavy few people are inclined to turn a plot over, but when there has been little rain and on ground that is welldrained early digging has...

I1MPROVISED IMPLI:[EN'rS 'I was interested in your note respecting a weed cutter,' says the Rev. A. F. Slater, of Bank View, Beeston Brook, Tarporley. 'Thirty years ago our...

Country Life' H'B' IAN NIALL mii.i : I. have bccii complairas of seals raiding the niirating salinon on their way to tric spawning waters of the River Tweed. Poachers can be...

Economic Thought THE GREAT ECONOMISTS. By R. L. Heilbroner and P. Streeten (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 28s.) PROFESSOR HEILBRONER clearly enjoyed writing this book; it is lucid...

THE OTHE'R OLIVE'R EDWARDS SIR,-Please allow mC to thank Strix for his observations (.Specialto, Novcmbcr 25) on1 my statement that I am not Oliver Edwards of The Times, and...

Letters to the Editor Cyprus SpYros A. Kyprianos, Lord Stanley oj Alderley Geoffrey Dawson B. S. Townroe, Robert Pitman The Other Oliver Edwards Oliver Edwards African Labour...

SIR,-What peculiar standards of journalism you follow. In a Sunday Express article about the former editor of The Times I put the view that Geoffrey Dawson's part in the...

! GEOFFREY DAWSON SIR,-Mr. Fairlie, in his article on the late Mr. Geoffrey Dawson, whom he admits he had never met, gives a pen picture which to many of us appears to be...

SIR,-I am grateful to you for giving Mr. Donnelly enough of your valuable space to reprint a prdcis of my article for the benefit of your readers who may inadvertently have...

The Pastoral Character CHiUR1CII AND PARISH. By Charles Smyth. The Bishop Paddock Lectures for 1953-54. (S.P.C.K., 17s. 6d.) IN his Bishop Paddock LcCtures the Rector of St....

Presume to Scan THE FOUR (,GP, 1-11 ELI i ss. 13y the Right Rev. J. W. C. Wand. DD. 8s. (-)d,) A CRELD L} i i iI1 (1iu 1Ds. B~v Catnon H. A. B3lair. (l-oll!-. mans, i...

Defection in December B3Y A. M. GOLLIN T THIS month marks an important anniversary in the history of the Spectator. It was exactly a half-century ago in December of 1905 at a...

THE AUTHORSHIP of the Fourth Gospel is a difficult subjects - . . ~ . A. on which scholars are by no means agreed. but I thin1 1"o writer of the blurb of The Scrolls froi Iic /...

A COMMERCIAL TELEVISION programme each Sunday has a section which deals with famous controversies over worKs of art at their first showing. I was pleased to hear that in the...

AS ONE who has always taken a sly delight in the odd snippets of erudition to be culled from the learned journals, I was sorry to learn, from the annual report of the Nuflield...

A Spectator's Notebook READERS of newspaper serials have been having a thin time lately. First of all there were Mr. Herald's 'revelations' about Sir Winston Churchill, which...

THE ID)EA is once more being p)ut around that Mr. Butler may move from the Treasury. I should think that Mr. Butler would like a change. He has been Chancellor for four...

DISTINGUISHED APOLOGIES Sm,---1n my last week's article, 'Mind We Don't Quarrcl,' I was not, of course, so fatuous as to wonder whether distinguishleLd support for political...

Contemporary Arts English Taste THE second part of the Royal Academy's Winter Exhibition, English Taste in the 18th Centurv, is a sumptuous and exciting show, not on any...

AFRICAN LABOUR ADVANCEMENT SIR,-In your last issue Custos refers to the Rhodesian Anglo-American Group of copper companies following the initiative of the Selection Trust Group...

! NEW CHURCHES SIR, - May I have the courtesy of your columns to tell your readers a little about the reason for an interesting revival of Church administration'? On Saturday...

THE HOMOSEXUAL AS SCAPEGOAT Slm,-Lord Reading's unhappy speech on the Burgess-Maclcan case contained one passage which suggested that the Government was actually contemplating...

LINE-UP IN FRANCE IDarsie Gillie writes: Paris UEIUES of Frenchmen at the nmairies waiting for hours to Qmake sure they are on the roll of voters, or, if young, to register...

Portrait of the Week T HE peregrinations around Asia of the Soviet Goon SlIO' have now got as far as Burma, physically, and as tl0e Crimean war, spiritually. Clashes with...

Theatre ANNIVERSARY WALTZ. By Jerome ChodoroV and Joseph Fields. (Lyric.) THE sun never sets on the evils that TV brings to the human race. This proposition is put with, at...

Cinema ITnm LADYKILLERS. (Odeon.) EVIDENTLY one of the most diflicult things to do in a comedy is to keep on the same level of humour, to sustain the same mood as it were,...

Television Fivi, men were in the pub when we went in, each separately watching a TV set stilnpt up in a corner where nothing but a cobweb can have been slung before. A BBC...

Opera OPFlRA AT OXIORDI Ti-ir: Oxford University Opera Club's choice of Blizet's Fair Maid of Perthi for their ann11uaIl productionl this year left all of us who did not know...

Japanese Art and Architecture THE ART AND ARCHITECTURE OF JAPAN. BY Robert Treat Paine and Alexander Soper. (The Pelican History of Art Series.) (Penguin Books, 45s.) THE...

Naval Recollections ABOVE AND UNDER HATCHES. By James Anthony Gardner. Edited by Christopher Lloyd. (The Batchworth Press. 16s.) WHY do so many naval recollections of the...

Practical Idealists PORTRAIT OF A PARSON. B y Su sa n NI iles. (Allen and Unwill, 10i. 6d.) FArLIER POTTER oF PECKIIANI. By the Rev. Canoni George Potter. (Hodder and...

The Christian Mind CFIRISTIANITY AND SYMI3OLISM. By F. W. Dillistone. (Collins, 21s.) NEW ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHICAL THEIOLOGY. Edited by A. Flew and A.. Macintyre. (S.C.M.,...

KHRUSHCHEV CON AMORE Nl IKITA KHRUSHCHEV can easily be imagined (given a little touch of the spiritual, it is true) in one of the great Russiani novels of the nineteenth...

Abnormal Symptoms LADIES IN EMERGENCY. By Dr. Alasdair Sinclair. (Christophei Johnson, 1Os. 6d.) Tells fascinating and gruesomely funny casebook is by a Harley Street...

COLD WAR IN GERMANY Our Germancu Correspondent it'rites: Bonn I is diflicullt to see what good the Sovict Union is doing to its I cause by its activities in Germany. Mr....

ABDICAT i()N ADWF]-,RTRISL.;RS and contractors are now making no secret of their intention1 to undermine the Television Act as °Onl as they can. They have come to an unwritten...

130 S S - TA L K< I N case anyone still has doubts about why we have the fourtecn-day rule, here is aln extract from Mr. Crookshank's VPeech last week: 'The pressure argument,...

THE CASE OF MR. McLERNON ())11- 10I r llx iall wr( ./oJXv tEifes.T11)"; IWlS-ROVse Stl'ike IeitLCS a (depressing example of J1O~Wa snialli disjmto 'rd fesaer inItO what is...

Protestantism Today ihw NORMAN SYK[S I O .; 'I l 1Cic three greaIt elcments of modJerii civi lisation1, ( iinilpowderl, P'ri 1 llng and the Protest ant Religion.,' thus...

Friends Apart BY PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR FOR well over a century. Anglo-Greek friendship has been one of the phenomena of international affairs. Great Britain used to be a...

Political Commentary BN' HENRY FAIRLIE M /[ R. ATTLEE spoilt the occasion of his resignation. His few words to the Parliamentary Party conveyed the impression that he had...

HOW OTHERS CHECK INFLATION By NICHOLAS D)AVENPORT THE boom abroad has created some vexation throughout the Continent. In Germany, where industrial production has risen this...

COMPANY NOTES By CUSTOS fii was bold of the sponsors of the £4 million Liverpool loan to issue a 4,1 per cent. stock at 97 after the underwriters of the (Glasgow 4 1 per cent....

A New Novel Tiir. QUIET AMERICAN. By Graham Greene. (Heinemnaiin, 13s. 6(d.) 'INNOCENCE,' reflects Fowler, the jaded English reporter who figures as the narrator in Mr....

City and Suburban BY JOHN BETJEMAN O NE of the most sinister aid uncooperative of the Ministries which now govern us is that of Fuel and Power. Take, for instance, the...

BOOKS Empson and Auden By ANTHONY HARTLEY W HAT a relief it was to read William Empson's poetry in the years after the war! This feeling was partly a reaction from the...

RE LI GI O US BOOKS I Dr. Lewis's Pilgrimage BY LORD HAILSHAM W HEN I came back from the Middle East at the end of 1942 I had never, I think, heard the name of Dr. AY IC. S....

Printers' Censorship BY NORMAN ST. JOHN-STEVAS SINCE the Director of Public Prosecutions' humiliating d6bacle of November last year when a second jury failed to agree whether...

The Scrolls and the Bible By HUGH MONTEFIORE R OMANTIC' is not the word which naturally springs to mind in connection with Biblical studies; solid and learned perhaps,...