for European Economic Co-operation opened in an air of mutual suspicion, and presently developed into something indistinguishable from a riot. On the the other hand, the affairs...

O NE hopes it will be a happy, but it can hardly , be a triumphant, Christmas for the delegates to the various international conferences, meetings and assemblies now dispersing...

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1958

By MICHAEL ADAMS E VENTS in Iraq are hurrying towards a climax which seems to have the most sinister impli- cations, both for Arab nationalism and for West- ern interests in the...

W HAT was really at stake in the angry discus- sions in Paris on Monday was not, of course, the future of OEEC but the future of the economy of Europe. It is bad enough that the...

By DARSIE GILLIE By Christmas Charles de Gaulle will have been elected President of the Republic by the thirty- nine thousand mayors, the town councils of the larger cities, the...

'The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herds wind slowly off the lea; And Taper has a glorious month away From Mr. Selwyn Lloyd, QC, MP. WHO goes home? Why, I...

'nobody in the profession the Press Council seriously.' Why, then—le --do the Newspaper Proprietors' Associatio Newspaper Society, the NUJ, the Institut so on all contribute to...

IF SIR ALAN HERBERT'S inter- vention as a candidate in the Harrow by-election succeeds in prodding the Government into finding time for the Obscenity Bill, he can con- gratulate...

possibilities. On your television screen you draw, in thick black crayon, a wi g , moustache and beard in appropriate positions. You then sit back and wait for some pompous ass,...

crabbing the pet projects of other popular newspapers, whatever merits those projects mi g ht have. Any newspaper which has unsuccessfully bid a g ainst another newspaper for...

apt to be the subject of inverted intellectual snobbery, like not ownin g a television set, or readin g detective stories 'just for relaxa- tion.' But my favourite strip, which...

attitude towards advertisin g , I was interested to hear Polly Elwes announce on the screen, on Tuesday, December 9, that a telerecordin g of Short Cuts had been withdrawn...

some newspaper men openly assert that they have the right to enter a man's house and make inquiries about him if, by any chance or misfortune, he becomes 'news.' There seems to...

convolutions which newspapers feel compelled to g o throu g h to avoid the risk of court actions. A news item in the Evening Standard ran: A sixteen-year-old boy arrested early...

At the Orphanage By PHILIP OAKES DUCA1 ION raged through my family like strong .drink. It was the key to success, synonymous with respectability and clean living. At fifteen,...

By JENNY NICHOLSON O NE thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine years ago, as every Italian child should know, the Epiphany Witch happened to be out sweeping her doorstep when...

Cat Among the Firebirds By DAVID CAIRNS Two events at the butt end of the year have illumined the To mention them in the same connection is not frivolous. These two concerts...

Books `JUST ABOUT every publisher in London seems to be here!' The publicity girl beams across the packed roomful netted in a West End hotel by ABC TV to celebrate the...

The Best of Musicals By ALAN BRIEN West Side Story is the first musical I have ever seen which seemed to be in focus from all angles. As everyone must know, the seed of the...

Girlhood Unglossed By ISABEL QtIGLY Summer with Monika. (Paris- Pullman.) — Home Before Dark. (Warner.)—The House of Lovers. (Cinephone.) — Blonde for Danger. (Cameo- Poly.)...

None Talk of Alexander By PETER FORSTER His nose is as sharp as the pen- cil with which he wrote his memoirs; his eye pierces in a way to make the male viewer instinctively sit...

Aspirin By MILES . HOWARD THERE can now, I think, be little doubt that in some people at any rate the taking of aspirin, in whatever form, has a bad effect on the lining of the...

A Home for a Ham By LESLIE ADRIAN ,GOOD cooked ham is hard to come by. I know of only one London grocer (and another MY miles away) where it is possible to buy really fine...

By STRIX 4 1 - wish you'd shut up,' I said. 'You're getting I on my nerves.' From the cardboard box on the driving seat beside me there came, not for the first time, a sort of...

DECEMBER 21, 1833 Ir appears by accounts from Russia, that the distress in the Southern provinces of the empire, from a deficiency of the harvests, is very great. Nicholas has...

was, as Dr. Hemmings guessed, delighted that my article 'Spanning the Great , Divide' should draw a little fire. .. (1) Certainly Keele's advantage in having four years instead...

The LCC David nuclei , Wolfenden Debate W. Lyon Blease, R. B. Browning Jazz Kenneth Al/sop Spanning the Great Divide Prof. Antony Flew The Church of England and Divorce Rev....

a private fight or may any reader of the Spectator join in? In the latter case, will you permit me to express my surprise at the answer which Pharos gives to the charge against...

to someone contradicting things you never said and arguing about points on which there is no apparent disagreement. Still, I'll try to make clear to Mr. Max Harrison : That I...

letter in which she studiously avoids the _use of the word 'pervert' for 'homosexual.' This seems to oe the fashion among those who want to see perversion legalised; but at...

and so put an end to the machinery of the Industrial Disputes Tribunal is a blow at the very existence of certain `blackcoar organisations such as the Guild of Insurance...

Leslii Adrian changes sex each week. On week a cone spondent refers to her as Mr. Adrian and the nex another correspondent talks of him as Miss Adrian May we have a definitive...

S1R, — In his article 'Ward Politics' (Spectator, Novem - ber 21) our worthy friend Taper has wished upon the Minister of Health a most awful fate—lo doss down on Platform Nine...

make two comments on Canon F. J. Shirley's interesting letter (December 5). (1) The learned Canon assumes that Disestablish- ment would, ipso facto, provide my 'opponents'...

The Character of Burke B y L. B. NAMIER ft URKE'S writings, admired beyond measure and most copiously quoted for nearly 200 years, stand as a magnificent facade between the...

John Betjeman's Collected Poems. Compiled with an Introductibn by the Earl of Birken- head. (John Murray, 15s.) 'AMONG the many ways in which Mr. Betjeman differs from most of...

The Letters of Mary Wordsworth. 18004855. Selected and Edited by Mary E. Burton. (0.U.P., 42s.) So much 'light' has been 'thrown' on Wordsworth's poems by now that one can...

Puritanism and Liberty, By Christopher Hill. (Seeker and Warburg, 42s.) A r last the search is over: We no longer need to hunt for a Festschrift to Albert Meusel or to borrow...

NRF. Edited, selected and introduced by Justin O'Brien. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 25s.) LEAVING aside one rather devastating question (whether anyone incapable of reading French...

The German Resistance. By Gerhard Ritter. (Allen and Unwin, 355.) IF any German reader of the Spectator (or English one for that matter) is wondering what to give as a Christmas...

Back to Life. Edited by Robert Conquest. (Hutchinson, 15s.) THIS extraordinary book—an anthology of recent poems from behind the Iron Curtain—should be on the shelves of every...

THIS.IS a re-make of M. Jullian's Dictionnaire dtc Snobbistne, with English additions and, I imagine, some French subtractions. The entries, by a variety of writers, live and...

9 Haver- sack. 10 Talon. 11 Frogs. 12 Plate-rack 13 Sea-staid. 15 Ephesus. 17 Dresser. 19 Catch up. 21 Impromptu. 23 Silks, 24 Laird. 25 Inanimate. 26 Merrythoughts. DOWN.--2...

GIACOMO CASANOVA, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden Spur; Doctor of Divinity in the University of Padua, priest and confidant of Car- dinals; Ensign in the Army of the...

ACROSS 26 1 I'd turn hack to the brasshats (8) 5 Ready to be hung for a put-up job? (6) 9 'A — of the empire and the rule' (Shakespeare) (3-5) 10 Exhibited in a brilliant,...