N) NEWS OF THE WEEK A) - ARTICLE W) - AT WESTMINSTER - SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK C A) - CONTEMPORARY ARTS L) - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SPECTATOR COM COUNTRY LIFE BOOK REVIEW POEM...

course of the American economy in the year 1954 has flooded the British press in the past few days. The Times leads the way to a guardedly jaundiced conclusion; the Daily Herald...

the advantages of air supply and a strong concentration of supporting arms, should be able to make the Viet Minh's victorious advance seem, in perspective, like a rather aimless...

Now that the brief break for goodwill is over (and the spend- ing spree which made the Labour assertion that the cost of living is away ahead of wages look rather silly), the...

The willingness of the Western Powers to fall in with the Russian demand that the Berlin meeting of the Four Powers should be delayed until January 25th, is no doubt mainly due...

Jesuit Order in recalling members employed as worker priests indicates that this missionary effort to reach the industrial working-class, which had already incurred Vatican...

23,000 prisoners of war in Korea who refused repatriation and passed into the custody of the neutral commission. When this period ended on December 23rd only about a seventh of...

N Europe and in Asia, the policy of the Western Powers t, is still based on the principle, defined by Mr. Kennan -e - in 1947, as the " firm containment designed to confront is...

America were spared most of the difficulties and vexations which must be endured by the ordinary Briton in quest of visa, this courteous usage being based on their status as...

great- ness which does not often—unless its possessor happens to be a creative artist—lead to worldly success. This was in any case a commodity for which he showed few signs of...

from my spy in South America. He has not been idle during 1953, crossing the Transandean Railway between the Argentine and of the very few white men who have visited, without...

W HEN, on June 19th, two citizens of a democratically governed Republic to which we are bound by ties of friendship, debts of gratitude and community of interests were executed...

nearly cut the top off one of my fingers with his broadsword during an undergraduate production of King Lear, 1 have taken a keen interest in stage fights. Mr. Michael Redgrave,...

By SIR KEITH HANCOCK HE Commonwealth has suffered an immense loss of power compared with the British Empire of half, or even a quarter, of a century ago. Commonwealth statesmen...

A new series of Spectator articles offers answers to the question —Has Britain come to the end of a period of world power ? Last week Professor D. W. Brogan opened the series...

I call my orderly to fetch his rifle and we walk down the road to the village, a triangle of mud and stone buildings roofed as usual with petrol jerricans which have been beaten...

I T used always to be said that you should not stay more than three weeks in a country if you wanted to write a book about it. A longer stay clouded your vision. I have bettered...

By CLIFFORD COLLINS I T was my first week in the building. A twelve-year-old was kneeling on his pal's midriff, and with a raucous sense of enjoyment beating his head against...

Below are printed the answers to the Christmas Questions Published in the Spectator of December 25th. I. a. Sir Alfred Suenson-Taylor. b. John Buchan. c. Lieut. Co mmander J....

ascent of a beanstalk bending beneath her weight. Perhaps this was not always -so. Nobody likes good, clean fun more than I do. The idea of policemen having buckets of whitewash...

believe, indeed I most sincerely hope, I am not the only critic the great mass of cinema-goers ignores, and I dare say it is good for all our cultivated souls to recall this...

Light was bad and a sudden tide Swinging the sea like a hammock Bore them away, the singers and Their serenade : but not before he heard them call his name. Pride set instantly...

I doubt if anything ever contrived by man could be half so good as the natural camouflage of a crouching rabbit. a woodcock on its feeding ground or a fish hovering in a stream....

Competitors were asked to write a report on 1953 in the form and style of a company report for shareholders, a school report, the report of a Government Committee, a staff...

rhymed couplets, each embody- ing in the first line a New Year resolution and in the second a debunking of the same, some- what in the spirit of Omar's " Indeed, indeed,...

SIR,—In your Christmas number, Mr. R. B. Magor and Strix quote, as precedents for recent actions in Kenya, a number of apparent parallels from the 1939-45 War against Ger- many...

I happened to be out in the early hours of the morning, walking home along a quiet road with my shadow in front of me and the smallest breeze sighing in the yew tree and moving...

hard to encourage new branches on young trees, but on the older ones,,the trim- ming should be light. See that the secateurs have a good edge and are making a clean cut, for...

expressed in the letter by R. B. Magor. Strix's excellent remarks are ,a timely commentary on an affair that seems to have generated unnecessary heat in this country. The...

Milken', Park House, Dalkeith, Midlothian

PUBLIC PICTURES 111,-1 was glad to read your critical conv- ents on certain clauses in the National Gallery and Tate Gallery Bill. The effect of these ill-considered provisions...

about English law. A verdict of Not Guilty in English law is an acquittal in fact and in law, for a jury can, and sometimes does, decline to accept a judge's ruling on the law,...

Senator McCarthy was not, himself, quite a 100 per cent. American. His letter published in the Spectator of December 25th bears out this suspicion. For he dates it 27/12/53...

sociological impli- cations of the so-called Scottish Conspiracy, but 1 would like to answer Mr. Eric Orr's somewhat mischievous letter by suggesting to him that Home Rule would...

this Housing Repairs and Rents Bill ? (1) Why is a Local Authority allowed to increase the rents of its houses, while a private owner is refused this permission ? (2) Why is the...

The Spectator offers three prizes, each of books to the value of eight guineas, for articles to be written by boys and girls in schools in the United Kingdom. Entries should be...

N OT being prone to indulge myself in good resolutions on January 1st, which I regard as a parvenu date for the New Year, I reflect instead upon the damage to popular customs...

By ELIZABETH JENNINGS• ANY children take a delight in poetry at a very early age. This was not so in my case. Until I was twelve 1 always felt that the form of a poem, its metre...

three quarters of the game, played as well as any pack I have ever , sea, presenting their outsides with chances without number. These chances were not taken. Time after time,...

iy ANTHONY THWAITE (Christ Church, Oxford) I F there is one type of letter which, more than any other, strikes a chill into the hearts of semi-established literary men, it is...

BY REX WARNER T HE writing of Isaiah Berlin reminds me of the admirable performance of some quick-firing gun. The target is accurately located and is then assailed by a stream...

was not, in any obvious sense, "obscure." The literal meaning of his poetry is almost always clear, and a symbolical path is usually indicated by conspicuous flares. The reader...

MR. JOHN SUMMERSON has probably done more than any living man to make architectural scholarship and criticism palatable to the educated ordinary reader. For one thing, he is...

Sir John Moore. By Carola Oman. (Hodder & Stoughton. 42s.) W ITH an instinctive sense of fairness the British Artily and nation o not judge their generals solely by success....

MR. YOUNG, who was once a master at Eton, describes some of his former pupils who fell in the first world war as a " generation of happy natural aristocrats to whom the world...

Medieval Essays. By Christopher Dawson. (Sheed & Ward. 16s.) given of learning and sane judgment, and when we are far away at sea among celebrities such as al-Mu'tamin and...

THIS book has some of the splendour, the astringency and the plod- ding thoroughness of Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Just as Burton in his majestic treatise set before us...

A Pioneer Family : The Birkbecks of Illinois 1818-1827. By Gladys Scott Thomson. (Cape. 10s. 6d.) EMIGRATI01•1 was a far more heroic matter in the early nineteenth century than...

Bristol, was a member of that strange family which included John, Lord Hervey, the chronicler of George 11's Court; Frederick, the grandiloquent and eccentric Bishop- Earl; and...

part in almost every branch of natural history. They have been the prime, life-long interest of Dr. Ramsbottom, for many years Keeper of Botany at the Natural History Museum,...

SIR AMBROSE HEAL'S monumental book consists of, first, a list of the principal London cabinet makers, upholsterers, car- vers and gilders of the period covered, with addresses...

for Africa. By Vernon Bartlett. (Frederick Muller. 15s.) MR. BARTLETT mentions that Africa is the natural hinterland of Europe. This is true, but his subject is of greater...

the modern archaeologist or antiquarian. They were looted by the Romans who were looking for curios for their villas; Norman abbots ripped them open for the bones of saints...

LADY PACKER is one of those gifted people who can turn a diary into an entertaining descriptive book without the tedium that so often accompanies such writing. In 1950 her...

years and she is now regarded as the best American woman poet. A few years after her death in 1886, a small selection of her poems was published by her relatives, but failed to...

By CUSTOS AFTER a firm close to the old the new account opened brightly this week on the Stock Exchange with a good deal of professional buying of gold shares. Some...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT IN the year which has just closed the nation completed its qujet recovery from the industrial recession of 1952. This is the more remarkable because it...

IA Book token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, January 12th, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower Street,...