16 SEPTEMBER 1955, Page 8

THE VIOLENCE OF the Turkish reaction to events in Cyprus

will surprise no one who has frequented the Turkish cafés in the island. I remember one near the college of dervishes in Nicosia, where the decorations on the walls consisted of two luridly coloured prints. One showed a Sultan slicing off the head of an infidel; another a janissary standing on one leg (the other lay severed on the ground) giving a vertical version of the same treatment to yet another giaour. However, these bloodthirsty reminders of the Terrible Turk did not spoil my meal. They simply served to confirm my earliest impressions of the Ottoman Empire, which centred around a sentence in an old history book : 'The Turks sawed the Archbishop and the Governor in two, and committed several other grave breaches