Shorter Notices Twelfth Century Paintings at Hardham and Clayton. With an introductory essay by Clive Bell. (Miller's Press, Lewes, Sussex. £3 3s.) FOR the student of...

Book Notes MARY PALEY MARSHALL, wife of Alfred Marshall, the econom-st, was born in i850 and died in I944. She left behind her the MS of an autobiographical sketch which she...

Invitation to Ranelagh. By Mollie Sands. (Westhouse. 12s. 6d.) THIS is a lively account of the Chelsea pleasure garden which, with its "rotunda," orderly trees, straight walks...

Jade Without Tears A Jade Miscellany. By Una Pope-Hennessy. (Nicholson and Watson. 7s. 6d.) UNLIKE Dame Una Pope-Hennessy's Early Chinese 7ades, which was published in 1923,...

Fiction Agents and Witnesses. By P. H. Newby. (Cape. 9s.) The Rock Pool. By Cyril Connolly. (Hamish Hamilton. 8s. 6d.) Genevieve. By Jacques Lemarchand. (John Lehmann. 8s....

In My Garden Since most gardeners have been saddened by the amount of dead wood among their roses and were quite unable to prune at the usual dates, an experience (quite new to...

MODERN TEMPLES SrR,-There has been much talk and high feeling about the proposal to build an electric power house near to St. Paul's. If it were a new church that was envisaged...

SERVICE IN THE MINES SIR,-At this moment the country is crying out for more miners. Yet the other day at a Conscientious Objectors' Tribunal in one of our northern cities the...

A Crested Rarity Among records of arrival the most unusual that has reached me comes from Edenbridge in Kent, where a distinguished nonagenarian has been watching a hoopoe, a...

COUNTRY LIFE A DUEL (fought with weapons as little lethal as Mark Twain's " boot-jack, at half-a-mile ") has been, perhaps is being, engaged between Sir John Russell, best of...

THE FIVE-DAY WEEK SrR,-It is a sobering reflection that if the five-day week had been enforced at the time of the Creation man would not have been created. Would the world then...

AN INQUISITIVE PUBLIC DEPARTMENT SIR,-In your issue of January 17th, 1947, under the heading The British in Malaya, you published a letter from a correspondent signing himself...

Native Daffodils How lovely have been the fields of Lent lilies! Most of them are fields that must be classed as paddocks and are close to houses, at any rate in the East,...

I have not often read anything more distasteful than the interview with Mr. P. G. Wodehouse, who has just arrived in New York with Mrs. Wodehouse and a Pekinese, in Tuesday's...

The ready decision of the Postmaster-General to abandon, in face of abundantly justified protests and appeals, the proposed television station on White Horse Hill, Berkshire,...

The English language has its deficiencies. There is a desire- very reasonable and intelligible-in certain quarters to avoid the use of the word " conscript," for men enrolling...

* * * t The pamphlet Keep L~eft conceins the rather deeply fissured Labour Party only. The moving spirit (though he had two collaborators in the actual writing) is understood...

A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK SEVERAL of the diplomatic correspondents who attended the Moscow Conference have, since their return, been recording their impressions of what they saw...

Sir Stafford Cripps, I see, mentioned at the week-end that the Board of Trade receives some goo,ooo letters a month from people discontented with various details in the...

TRAVELLER'S WELCOME SIR,-The melancholy fate which befell your correspondent at Bath was mine on two occasions recently-at Canterbury and at Salisbury-on exactly similar...

FOREIGN BROADCASTS SiR,-While I agree wholeheartedly with Janus that we should now be able to get programmes of foreign radio broadcasts in either the Radio Times or the daily...

DOGMA AND RELIGION SIR,-Two points arising from Dr. Major's letter: (1) A necessary corollary of man's " belief in Divine love and his disbelief in human omniscience " is a...

INNS AND THE PUBLIC SIR,-Readers of The Spectator who contemplate travelling in Scotland may be interested to know that the law governing the rights and obligations of...

BACH'S VIRTUOSITY SIR,-Mr. Court's letter of May 2nd raises an interesting point. I never meant for one moment to suggest that Bach's dedication of the Musical Offering to...

CANE OR AXE? SiR,-In his Marginal Comment in your issue of May 2nd, Mr. Harold Nicolson refers to a statement made by Mr. Peter Freeman, M.P., when the question of corporal...

RABBIT-TRAPPING SIR,-The two letters which appeared in The Spectator of May 2nd on the subject of rabbit-traps failed to subvert my own conviction based on careful personal...

AT WESTMINSTER THERE has been a certain symmetry about our Parliamentary proceedings this week. We ascended the slopes on Monday and Tuesday, reached the apex on Wednesday, and...

Aftermath of February While the fuel cuts which paralysed the national economy in the middle of February were still in force, it was already being pointed out that the after...

What Do We Owe? Speaking at a dinner to the Brazilian Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, Mr. Dalton said that our war debts were an unreal, unjust and unsupportable burden. All...

CONTEMPORARY ARTS THE THEATRE "' Oklahoma " (Drury Lane).-" We Proudly Present." By Ivor Novello (Duke of York's). IF I were reviewing this musical play for Pravda I should,...

MUSIC A FEW months before his death Rachmaninov was urged to give his opinion of Shostakovich's seventh symphony which he had just heard for the first time on the wireless. Not...

THE CINEMA " Czechoslovakian Film Festival " (New Gallery). LAST year there was a British Film Festival at Prague, during which the enthusiasm with which our films were...

The Lords and the Transport Bill The Transport Bill new goes to the House of Lords, improved in some respects, 2s the Minister of Transport himself admits, by the utterly...

The Shadow of an Army If the United Nations is to be an effective body it must command an armed force, and, if the proceedings of its Military Staff Committce are any guide, it...

The Partition of India No one can fail to be conscious of the sense of apprehension brooding over India. In the main, active disturbances have been lepressed, the Viceroy is...

The Fuel Ban in Practice The debate in the House of Commons on the domestic heating ban led to considerable modification of the approval given to the ban at first sight in...

Stalin as Spokesman The routine of interviews becoming established. The the course of a talk with Mr. of which is now published, he statement by pointing out that different...

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR TEXAS AND MR. WALLACE SIR,-The "common man" here in the United States of America reads from the papers on this side, as well as from the British Press,...

CONTROLLING THE ATOM SIR,-It was good to read the suggestion, in your News of the Week, that the international control of atomic energy might begin with a system covering all...

FARMS AND RATIONS SIR,-In your News of the Week of May 2nd you rightly stress the magnitude of the task facing the countryside. What troubles me and the rest of farmers is...

PERPLEXED AMERICA By GUNTHER STEIN Tucson, Arizona. AMERICAN post-war life has developed two strangely contradictory aspects-on the material side an almost incredible degree...

STRATFORD, 1947 By JOHN GARRETT GARRICK acclaimed Stratford-upon-Avon as "the town which gave birth to the first genius since the Creation," and described it as " the most...

Mission to the Ukraine The Scared Men in the Kremlin. By John Fischer. (Hamish Hamil- ton. 10s. 6d.) IN the spring of 1946 the author of this book-a politically progressive...

Another North African Campaign Desert Hawk: Abd el Kadir and the French Conq'uest of Algeria. By Wilfred Blunt. (Methuen.. 16s.) BY the capture of Algiers in i828, the last...

FINANCE AND INVESTMENT By CUSTOS IT is seldom that Mr. Dalton and the City see eye to eye on matters involving financial principle, but I cannot imagine any quarrel arising...

ART The Royal Academy THIS year the catalogue is disarmingly prefaced with a quotation from Carlyle: " The merit of originality is not novelty ; it is sincerity. The believing...

ON THE AIR In Chancery having dragged its slow length along to the appointed end, Vanity Fair has taken its place as the Sunday evening serial in the Home Service programme....

It EIGHTEEN OR TWELVE? THE decision to reduce the national service period from eighteen months to twelve was dulv endorsed bv the House of Commons on Wednesday after as...

Blackmail in Durham When, on the first day of the first five-day week, 150 winding engine men struck in favour of a seven-day week and prevented 26,700 Durham miners from...

BOOKS OF THE DAY Courrier Francais [Believing that readers of the SPECTATOR will welcome reliable information on new French books, we have arranged for M. Henri Martineau, the...

GENEVA ONCE MORE By H. G. DANIELS WHEN the national delegations dispersed at Geneva about a W year ago, after the final dissolution of the League of Nations, they did so to...

FEBRUARY COPSE THE tombstones tiltSee where the dead arise, With limbs unfolding And with startled eyes. Palms press against slabs, A leg hangs down, The head lifts up That...

SYRIA AND TRANSJORDAN By ROBIN MAUGHAM TRANSJORDAN is the happiest country in the Middle East. The people are friendly, genial and hospitable. I believe there are three...

THE UNFINISHED CITY By D. W. BROGAN IN i8oi Mrs. John Adams, wife of the second President and the. first mistress of what was not yet known as the White House, hung up her...

THE PARISH COUNCIL By VICTOR BONHAM-CARTER LIKE many other rural institutions, the parish council has long ceased to be taken seriously by the majority of people in this...

FRENCH LESSON THERE must be many foreign observers who have wondered whether the Fourth Republic could survive this week's crisis. An unstable coalition, unsteadily controlled...

MARGINAL COMMENT By HAROLD NICOLSON MR. GEOFFREY KEYNES recently unearthed from among his M papers a forgotten essay by Rupert Brooke. It is called Democracy and the Arts* and...