IT IS RARE ENOUGH to find any kind of entertain-
ment in London after 11 at night; and when it is combined with topical political agitation, as in Monday's Nuclear Disarmament rally Stars in Your Eyes, I would have assumed that the organ- isers were sure of a full house. No: the Royal Festival Hall had some large gaps among the fl-a-seat front stalls. Still, the audience were crushed eagerly in the cheaper sections waiting to be electrified, frightened and exhilarated. Were they slightly disappointed by its mixture of re- strained propaganda and refined entertainment? There was an unmistakably 'progressive' look about the paying customers—the men were well dressed but shaggy, given to hairy tweeds, heavy spectacles and bristling grey hair. Even some of the over-thirties wore beards as if they had brand- ished them all their lives. The women were either young coffee-bar types in sweaters and flat heels or middle-aged executives with bitter-sweet smiles and blue-rinse bobs. On the stage there seemed for a moment to be a wide selection of the old stal- warts of the Popular Front. but the curly-quilted, shyly-smirking man in the dinner jacket was Benjamin Britten, not Hugh Gaitskell (or even J. P. W. Mallalieu); and the'bald, absent-minded, snapping turtle turned out to be Gerald Hoffnung, not D. N. Pritt. The master of ceremonies, squat and jovial as a toby-jug, could not have been any- one else but J. B. Priestley.
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