Why is Christmas
in the middle of November as far as the magazines are concerned? To tell you the truth, we don't know. Magazines have been producing their Christmas Numbers at this time of year ever since we can remember, which is a very long time.
But it does give us the opportunity to cut our Christmas pudding according to our cloth. If we were to suggest a way of solving your Christmas present problem on Boxing Day, we would not expect you to thank us—unless, that is, you have friends in Tristan da Cunha, to which place the post takes exactly 364 days from this country. But if we provide so helpful a suggestion on November 20—why, that's today ! —you have plenty of time to make a note of it, and then forget it until Christmas Eve. Which would still be in time, as it happens.
=All that remains is for us to tell you what the suggestion is. But first a preliminary cough or two, and a shooting of the cuffs. You have bought, or stolen from the Public Library, this copy of the Spectator. You have read it. You have liked it. Why?
.."-Perhaps you liked the beginning of the paper, with its crisp, informative and incisive leaders, its ironic and com- prehensive Portrait of the Week, its political cartoon by Trog, our political cartoonist. Perhaps you liked. what followed : Grace Scott's moving account of the African school that was forced to close, Richard Rovere (our Washington correspon- dent) on the American television scandals, Colin Brygge weighing in from Moscow, Christopher Hollis on a new kind of East-West struggle, Hesketh Pearson on Establishments I Have Known (and he probably knows as much about them as anybody).
M7..Perhaps you were amused by Patrick Campbell's merci- less self-examination on the Morning After. (If you weren't amused by it, we can only suppose that you read it on the Morning After.) Perhaps you licked your lips at Cyril Ray's thoughts on wine. (Or perhaps you licked them at Katharine Whitehorn's thoughts on Model Girls.) And you must have found something in Leslie Adrian's round-up of unusual Christmas presents.
=Ah ! Unusual Christmas presents. That reminds us. But first, what about our critics? We don't like to boast (for people who don't like to boast, we seem to do it awfully often), but we think we have the best team of critics in the business. Alan Brien on the theatre, David Cairns on music, Isabel Quigly on films, Peter Forster (have you read his new novel, incidentally?) on television, Simon Hodgson on art.
Or our books? This week alone we have Kingsley Amis, Dan Jacobson, Evelyn Waugh, Philip Larkin, A. J. Ayer, Simon Raven, D. W. Brogan, Christopher Sykes, Marghanita Laski, and a round dozen (actually, some of them are damnably full of corners) of others.
And that's not the end of it. Bernard Levin (ne Taper) saying the first thing that comes into his head, and the second thing, and the third ; Maurice Bartlett's subtle, observant drawings, Blake's cartoons, sliding the dagger in quietly and almost painlessly ; and our resident Doctor.
Well, now (and thank you for being so patient). Let us assume you have read all these things, or some of them, and liked them, or some of them. Did you know that you can give it all, fifty-two successive times, to as many of your friends (or enemies, for that matter) as you like, at half price? If you haven't any friends, and you are reading it for the first time, you can give it to yourself, at the same rate. Make a list as long as you like of people to whom you would like to send the Spectator—lively people, intelligent people, observant people, interested people, people people—and we will send it to each of them with a greetings card saying that it comes from you. The only two conditions we make is that they should not, as far as you know, already be regular readers, and you should not mind paying only half the usual rate for a subscription.
One final point. We have not forgotten your friends in Tristan da Cunha. It's too late for this year as far as they are concerned, but just think of being able to say on Boxing Day, 'Well, I've got some of my Christmas shopping done for next year, that's one relief.' Just fill in the form below. Write it out on plain paper if you would prefer not to cut the Spectator. Write legibly. Write soon. And send 255. ($4.00 from Canada or the USA) for each subscription.
To: The Spectator, 99 Gower Street, London, W.C.I.
I enclose £ s. d.
Please send the Spectator fgr a year to my friends listed on the right and tell them that the paper comes as a gift from me.
Name (Pleas,: 14-It biode throughout) Address ...OptOOt,V000, I. Name Address 2. Name Address 3. Name Address
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