HIS has been a strike not for higher wages, but for power.' The Spectator's original diagnosis of the news- paper dispute has been amply confirmed by the report of the...

Communist guns, were attacked, President Eisenhower would then have to make up his mind and decide, at once, what to do. Is America committed to their defence or is it not? It...

The recess began with the announcement of the changes in the Government made by Sir Anthony Eden. The full list is: Mr. Harold Macmillan to replace Sir Anthony Eden as Foreign...

Nearly a year after the Supreme Court ruled against segregation it still has to decide how and when the system of separate schools for white and Negro children should be...

By HENRY FAIRLIE I F this were a normal year, it would be just about now that Mr. Harold Macmillan would flick over the pages of his diary in pleasant anticipation of the garden...

armchair, Persian carpets, Florentine paintings, and chintz curtains. That sounds attractive enough, but I learn also with interest that Sir Winston is being provided with an...

BY THOMAS HODGKIN Last December the five Colombo Powers issued a joint invitation to twenty-five Asian and African countries to attend an Afro-Asian conference, to be field in...

has been that we were deprived of many tributes to Sir Winston Churchill. Unfortunately, we were not spared Mr. Aneurin Bevan's characteristically unpleasant references to...

the newspaper strike that before it began the News Chronicle had been losing money. In our correspondence columns Mr. Cadbury writes to correct him. The News Chronicle...

farewells to Sir Winston ended last week a Conservative Whip came up to Mr. Christopher Soames, only a few hours before the son-in- law and PPS of the Prime Minister, and said,...

Boyle's promotion to the Treasury, but I should like to mention his distinction in another field—or perhaps I should say just off it. He was the greatest cricket scorer there...

BY RANDOLPH S. CHURCHILL this is their wish. . In the case of the Nigerian set of Siamese twins, the press managed to get into the ward and a form of auction was con- ducted to...

By NORMAN GIBBS* almost unavoidable consequence of the publicity attached to a major government declaration of policy, such as the Statement on Defence for this year, is that it...

Blairquhan got a letter from an eccentric neighbour complaining that Blairquhan's bees were persistently crossing the march and taking honey off his land. Blairquhan replied :...

BY JOHN BETJEMAN towers looks far lovelier and more peaceful now. I stood by the Strawberry-Hill-Gothic conduit in the Market Place and for the first time obtained an...

man friends with whom I was talking last week mentioned that they had each caught birds. One did so while spinning a well-known salmon river. His spinner was taken by a swan....

reason to be when land that once grew crops ceases to do so. This rarely happens through bad husbandry and only very occasionally through a change in natural conditions, but it...

While their parents and elder brothers and,sisters were going round the doors with their baskets of artificial timers and clothes pegs and appeals for old iron and rags. the...

1 -1 HE TIMES has not been published since Friday, March 1 25. Up till then it had appeared with unbroken regularity since January 1, 1785, though on the first day of the...

source as his revilement of Bennett or Compton Mackenzie: the resent- ment of a genius whose fidelity to his vision, right or wrong, typically reaps odium or neglect, while the...

agree that it is a reflection upon my intelligence, but I am quite unable to follow Mr. Fairlie's reasoning in your issue of April 1. As I understand it, certain members of the...

SIR,—It is a fine thing that a poet should in- spire loyalty and have people ready to defend him against adverse criticism. When I wrote my article on A. E. Housman in your...

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Shaw Against Lawrence F. R. Lea via, Howell Evans The Labour Party in Travail Lord Winter News Chronicle L. J. Cadbury A. E. Housman John Wain Summer Time P. F. Atkins...

has been called to a reference to the News Chronicle which appeared in Mr. Randolph Churchill's article on the newspaper strike in last week's Spectator. This reference was to...

most remarkable theories ever put before the British public. By suitably manipulating the hands of the clock, we are told, it is possible to benefit the physique. general health...

drink live fish. While on trek in the Gold Coast during the dry season, I once pro- tested to my steward boy against sharing a gallon of muddy bath water with a small live fish....

THE most interesting new film of this week can be found only at Cambridge; the censor's ban, reinforced by the decision of the LCC, has kept, and will keep, it out of London. It...

SiR.—I think that ordinary readers complain of the badness of modern poetry, not that it is too obscure or too difficult. The obscurity and difficulty arc usually due to the...

D'Arcy's letter published in your issue of March 25, in which he refers to his wife's forebear, Joseph Gellibrand. who was eaten by aborigines in Australia in 1837. Among the...

IF Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony fails to make such an impact in this country as in Prague and America (where it has recently received the New York Music Critics' Circle award...

THE foundation of the BBC's considerable reputation as • a public service has been its capacity to rise to the great occasion. How many tawdry television programmes were for-...

UNCERTAIN JOY, By Charlotte Hastings. (Royal Court.)—IT's DIFFERENT FOR MEN. By Michael Pertwee. (Duchess.) I DID not see Charlotte Hastings's first play, Bonaventure, but 1 am...

APRIL 17, 1830 THE stupid old twaddler Colman has, accord- ing to the daily papers, given a new specimen ' of the manner in which he exercises the func- tions of Dramatic...

Torrents of Thoughts W HAT are we to make of Swift? There can be little excuse for not making something of him when we consider how many things he actually was: ecclesiastic,...

of miracles. But most of Galland's objects of admiration are to be found on the Allied side. Although he has many disparaging things to say about the strategic efficiency of...

The Letters of Samuel Pepys and his Family Circle. Edited by Helen Truesdell Heath. (The Clarendon Press, 30s.) Mr. Pepys and Nonconformity. By A. G. Matthews. (Independent...

Hamlet, Father and Son. By Peter Alexander. (O.U.P., 15s.) 'Tins is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.' It is from this point, the Prologue in the Olivier film...

The Spoor of Spooks and Other Nonsense. By Bergen Evans. (Michael Joseph, 15s.) WE have much for which to thank the doubting Thomases of this world, particularly those who,...

Doctor to the Islands. By Tom and Lydia Davis, (Michael Joseph, 15s.) WRITING to the author of The Cruise of the. Cachalot, Kipling said: 'You have thrown away material enough...

MR. NEWBY has a curious taste, or perhaps talent is the word, for the disconcerting. He has you constantly round-eyed. Not at any- thing horrific, or anything, in the normal...

by Paul Obermilller. Translated by Violet M. Macdonald. (Hogarth Press, 12s. 6d.) RILKE'S letters to Frau Mike were written between 1919 and 1924, during his sojourn in...

in sedate and factual terms, a continuity of individual miseries, and yet so subtle is their power that it is impos- sible to reject the appeal they make on our pity. Such an...

(O.U.P., 30s.) The Irish Exiles in Australia. By T. J. Kiernan. (Clonmore and Reynolds, 18s.) Tan second volume of the Leinster corre- spondence, whose publication has been...

both in the eighteenth century, when conversation pictures were most in favour, and today, when they are universally sought by collectors. singularly little has been written...

who has an eye for novelties, and an especially happy one at Christmas. Mr. Buday errs in overloading his book with scholarly detail: the apparatus and jargon of research jar a...

DAVENPORT THE City is kidding itself that Mr. Butler will make tax concessions in his Budget because he is not afraid to use the money weapon against inflation. The Banker even...

By CUSTOS THE Stock Exchange seems to be confident that it will have a 'soft' Budget, for prices have been rising quietly but steadily, although the turnover of business...

a leading article in Newspeak on the retirement of Big Brother (see the appendix to Orwell's 1984). Limit 150 words. Entries, addressed 'Spectator Competition No. 270,' 99...

ACROSS DOWN 1 Venus ensphercd at dusk? (6). 1 The wrong flavouring for the drink 4 Heads it is! (8). named (9). 10 The enthusiast at the polls is fatter 2 Thus below it's...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 267 Report by Mervyn Horder Dean Swift suggested a tax on female beauty, to be assessed by the payers themselves. This he thought certain to be...