Some minds are congenitally absorptive. It is to be hoped that that is true of Mr. Dulles's and Mr. Stassen's, for in their ten-days' European tour, which included visits to...

and flood is not complete by any means, and it is impossible as yet to compute its cost in terms of money. Some slight indication of the amount that will have to be spent on...

Disagreement on the Sudan has been such a chronic condition of Anglo-Egyptian relations for the past generation that agreement is a prospect which will require some adjust- ment...

The Balkan defence talks have made rapid, and to all appear- ance completely successful, progress, and Mr. Eden's visit to Athens and Istanbul in April should prove even more...

The White Paper on Central African Federation, published since the last issue of The Spectator went to press, adds little to what was known or surmised already about the results...

Mr. Dulles has made it clear that no decision to blockade the China coast has been taken in Washington, and has left it to be inferred that recent discussion of the project was...

The action of the Federal German Cabinet in banning the -" neo-Nazi ". organisation Freikorps Deutschland and issuing warrants for the arrest of four of its leaders is to be...

On Monday The Times published a comment by General Glubb, of the Arab Legion, on alleged Arab infiltration into Israel. On Tuesday tension in Jerusalem and at various points on...

The reduction of ten per cent. in the grants to the Universities Council for Adult Education and the Workers' Educational Association will mean a saving in 1953-1954 of...

p ARLIAMENT is involved in three issues at present— two of them temporary and the third permanent. The extent of the influenza epidemic is a daily concern to Government and...

March 31st. He will be succeeded by the present Deputy Editor, Mr. Walter Taplin.

T HOSE many forces that frequently have beaten against the resistance of all British Governments since the war to full membership of all the various schemes for European...

looking back. Last week he was so intent on looking forward that he got a little lax about looking back, and consequently failed to realise that the project for a new women's...

that the loss of the ' Princess Victoria might have been largely due to the fact that the car doors in the stern were calculated to withstand heavy seas far less effectively...

has, I observe, been inaugurated at Cambridge. It consists of the fulfilment of a vow taken by some members of a women's college to take baths, undetected, in every men's...

Court Road, I noticed a venerable and massive figure standing stock-still in the middle of the pavement. As I passed him I observed that it was Dr.` Vaughan Williams. Looking...

R. EDEN's friends will have welcomed his decision to take a short rest in the country this week, for in spite of official reassurances he has looked very tired of late, and with...

the official biographer of the late King comes a little unexpectedly, for Mr. Wheeler-Bennett's literary interests have'lain so far almost wholly in the field of inter- national...

never did till I listened to a B.B.C..play on Saturday night, most of it consisting of calls to and from police-stations. If that was correct, and no doubt it was, the operator...

in the list of those on whom the, University of St. Andrews proposes to confer honorary degrees at the Graduation Ceremonial in June; he is to get the degree of LL.D. Sir Evelyn...

By MERVYN STOCKWOOD T HE Bishop of Bristol has suggested that the Church must look to its intellectual roots and provide adequately equipped apologists. I am sure that he is...

By The Rt. Hon. P. J. NOEL-BAKER, M.P. F 64 INAL determination (about a blockade of China) might hinge on how much fuss is raised by the Allies over the Formosa decision." So...

nation's health, and the interest properly taken in it by the public, "The Spectator" offers three prizes of £15 15s. for the best article on each of the following subjects:...

By W. W. WILLIAMS* I HAVE for two and a half years made a detailed study of a section of the East Coast between Lowestoft and South- wold, where coastal changes are very rapid....

By MARGERY MUMFORD Nairobi. W HERE does Truth live in Kenya ? Her whereabouts are hidden by the mists and gases of prejudice and susceptibility, prestige and egoism, racialism...

By BRIAN INGLIS Dublin. S OME thirty years ago the headmistress of a kindergarten school in Bexhill used to warn recalcitrant pupils that, if they did not behave themselves,...

Bottled By PETER UNWIN (Christ Church, Oxford) HE idea occurred, in Solihull of all places, to a beer- drinker and a tomato-juice enthusiast who were drinking tea together. The...

Calling all rooks in Wellhead Parish. Urgent. Nimbus, vedette of second squadron, speaking. Scarecrow observed beyond the southern hedgerow, Grounded but mobile, steadily...

absence of some eighteen months. She made her reappearance in Symphonic Variations, and stood out from the indifferent performance of her companions by reason of her extra...

OPERA AND BALLET Orpheus. (Royal Opera House.) Tins is the last of the revivals of the 1952-3 season at Covent Garden, and the opera company now goes on tour. Gluck's Orpheus...

Oedipus. By Sophocles. (King's Theatre, Hammersmith.) MR. DONALD Wourr has, prefaced his Shakespearean season at Hammersmith with King Oedipus and Oedipus at Colonus, in the new...

We will post the SPECTATOR to any,of your friends residing in any part of the world at the following rates :— 52 weeks, 35s. ; 26 weeks, 17s. 6d. In addition a Birthday Greeting...

Orpheus an opera or a ballet ? What did it look like in Vienna in 1762 or in Paris twelve years later ? Does the fact that we don't really know what it looked like matter one...

form of divertisse- ment, the ballet in Orpheus plays an integral part of the whole. The Furies and the Blessed Spirits set the key for the Underworld - and the Elysian scenes...

Les Belles de Nuit. (Rialto, February 12th.)—La Minute de Verite. (Rialto, February 15th.)—Springfield Rifle. (Warner.) —Appointment in London. (Leicester Square.) THE French...

V1LLETTE, BY CURRER BELL• Villette is Brussels, and Currer Bell might have called her new novel " Passages from The Life of-a Teacher in a Girls' School at Brussels, written by...

Turner. (Whitechapel Art Gallery.) THE moment of Turner's reassessment is now close, and the White- chapel Art Gallery—very spick and span in its new grey and white—has...

Immortals at the Oval By J. P. W. MALLALIEU S a cricket-ground the Oval means little to me. It has none of the graciousness of Lord's; little of the'majesty of Old Trafford....

Set by M. H. Middleton It is often suggested that industry must now exercise in the arts the patronage that was formerly the duty of the nobility. Competitors are to imagine...

• Report by J. M. Cohen The usual prizes were offered jar a translation of Jean-Baptiste Chassignet's sonnet ; " Qu'est-ce de noire vie ? ..." in equivalent English form. The...

The Coronation Oath Sia,—The Bishop of Monmouth's original statement in his sermon was that " when the State thought it desirable to include in the Coronation oath a single...

Sit,—It has frequently been observed that Mr. C. Day Lewis is the only poet - to hold the Chair of Poetry at - Oxford since Matthew Arnold. Mr. Garrod's review of his...

Italian Visit! Although considerably Professor H. W. Garrod's junior, I too have lived all my life in a different kind of poetry. But I would submit that, for all that, it...

Sm,—The article Tire President's Policies contains a statement which is not in accordance with fact. The statement is: " There is no difference of opinion in .this country An...

Slit,—In all the discussion about Formosa I have seen no mention of the Formosan people. In the tables of the area and population of the world in Whitaker's Almanack for 1948...

SIR, —One question of urgent public importance arises from the unhappy Bentley case. It is whether the High Court of Parliament—made up as is it of 600-odd men and women, each...

Sut,-1 am glad to see that you have raised once again, through Mrs. Barbara Castle's article, the question of the settlement of the Arab refugees, and that she reveals so...

SIR,—The attack made by E.H. on Janus smacks of the spirit in which murders are committed. Nor certainly does it express the view of ordinary thoughtful folk. A keen and...

SIR, —In his admirable notice of Macaulay: Prose and Poetry. your reviewer makes a remark so astonishing that a protest seems permis- sible, " I know," he says, of no objective...

SIR,—AS you have a passion for collecting horrible words, the following extract from an advertisement may interest Lyou: "National Coal Board invite applications for the...

I have often been fascinated to see how birds make use of their wings and tails to brake and turn in the air. Many water-birds slow themselves before alighting by keeping their...

SIR,— With your leave (to satisfy The idle curiosity Shown by F. M.) I must insist I positively do exist. The evidences all agree That I was born in '83. A pedagogue upon the...

the road, I looked into the coppice at the hazels and blackberry bushes; the blackthorns and the holly. The few larger trees, one or two oaks and beeches, had made a carpet of...

prepare. trenches for celery. Take out the soil to a depth of eighteen inches, and make the trench fifteen inches wide, spread a six-inch layer of manure mixed with top soil,...

In the centre of the little wood, where I often used to go to gather nuts or pick blackberries a few years back, there stands an old dead tree. It is a chestnut, I think. The...

It has been said that reading Greats Makes men improve their thinking-rates. Will not a brain run even faster When it's a super-ex-headmaster ? Add " Balliol Scholar," and...

dicky, with a ready-tied tie and cuffs to match. It is not that he is a dressy man, for he does not bother to hide the heavy flannel shirt that peeps from behind the starched...

What is virtually a cause célèbre lays a heavy responsibility on the District Magistrate concerned, who by the nature of things has little experience in affairs of such.magni-...

biography of AT the General Election of 1880, the Liberal Party was returned a Communist must be an interim appreciation. Not only are the with an assured majority. Lord...

21s.) Howard. (Batchworth Press. 21s.) Netherlands was not a member of Benelux, with the words: "When I The great new novel from Africa say no' it means NO." The other is of...

ET NUNC MANET IN TE is the title Gide gave to the confession in which he poured out the first agony of his grief and remorse after the death of his wife in 1938. Later he...

" Sir Francis Younghusband : Explorer and Mystic " by George Seaver, Rex Warner " Divine Horiemen : The Living Gods of Haiti " by Maya Deren ; and Professor D. W. Brogan "...

Selected Poems. By Wallace Stevens. (Faber and Faber. 12s. 6d.) WALLACE STEVENS is the most musical poet of this century. Not only does he write poetry about music, but his...

The White Knight. A Study of C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). By Alexander L. Taylor. (Oliver and Boyd. 16s.) THIS book is a fresh and learned tribute to the vitality of a...

Books in General. By V. S. Pritchett. (Chatto & Windus. 12s. 6d.) MR. PRacuErr is a short-story-writer with a heaven-sent talent for making his characters betray themselves from...

Astronomy for Everyman. Edited by Martin Davidson. (Dent. 18s.; IN the preface it is claimed that this book provides an up-to-date and authoritative outline of our knowledge of...

The Time of the Assassins. By Godfrey Blunden. (Cape. 15s.) Blanket Boy'a Moon is, informatively speaking, an interesting book, telling about the impact of South African...

book Mr. Edward Allcard proves that he is not only an intrepid sailor, but also an efficient journalist who almost invariably finds the telling phrase. This well-produced volume...

for it from a number of sources, Egyptian, Greek, Biblical, mediaeval and more recent, and explores its implications for the man or woman in search of a wisdom to live by. It is...

6d.) A Ray of Darkness. By Margiad Evans. (Arthur Barker. 12s. 6d.) MARGIAD EVANS is a poet. She greets with modest surprise a comment that site had unusually keen senses, and...

The Smaller English House. By Reginald Tumor. (Batsford. 42s.) IT was an excellent idea of Mr. Tumor's to write a history of the smaller English house from 1500 to 1939. The...

[A Book Token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week. February 24th. addressed Crossuord. 99 Gower Street....

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By CUSTOS MR. CHARLES CLORE, whose bid for control of J. Sears & Co. has been successful, has become a market portent. We shall probably hear more about the economic...