SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828 - NUMBER 6756 - FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1957 - PRICE NINEPENCE

T HOUGH, at the time of writing, it is impossible to say what the final conclusions of the NATO conference will be, there have been signs that Western European opinion has been...

By DARSIE GILLIE Pail SEEN in the future the NATO con- ference had been enveloped in the gloomy smoke of prematurely ex- ploding rockets while hostile sputniks piped their...

T HE report of the French Commission for the safeguarding of human rights on the be- haviour of the security forces in Algeria, which was published last week in Le Monde, hardly...

THE meeting of NATO Heads of Governments and 'their Foreign Ministers opened with a great flourish in Paris on Monday after weeks of flurry, speculation and sometimes re- cr...

By CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS T is not easy to interpret the exact detail of Mr. IMintoff's resignation and return. Mr. Mintoff, it is well understood, had pressed hard for guaran-...

CHRISTMAS is coming and the heads are getting fat. Will you,' I asked a Tory member whom I wanted to see, 'be in the House today?' Not,' he replied (he is a man of forthright,...

I HEAR that once again rumours are circulating in Budapest that a secret trial of major political importance is now taking place in Hungary. The trial centres on the most...

Times caught up with the story a fortnight later. The 'Hampstead set' was becoming 'a term of derision for professional type Socialists who live within hailing distance of Mr....

case against him was exceptionally weak. For his soldier's oath was taken to serve the President and Government of Hungary. Certainly President Dobi could not have considered...

`THE AFFAIRS of the ETU must be handled by the members themselves . . . nothing is more cer- tain to unite Communists and anti-Communists than outside interference . . , it will...

by trade union MPs against Mr. Gaitskell and the people who are presumed to advise him. Though there undoubtedly have been stirrings, these stories are due, I think, more to...

will go to press earlier than usual : with D. W. BROGAN on Henry Ford BERNARD LEVIN on My Books of the Year and The Spectator Christmas Game

By- D. W. BROGAN `THE Pacific isn't terrific and the Atlantic isn't I what it's cracked up to be.' So wrote the most' famous living Yale poet, but we may be sure that Mr. Cole...

to heart. They might, however, ask themselves whether playing at politics and jour- nalism should really be taken with the deadly pomposity which traditionally surrounds the...

Allen does, that 'Communists can be beaten in the ETU only by the use of their own methods.' Surely the reason why, sooner or later, the Government will be forced to intervene...

By VICTOR ANANT oR as long as I remember come Christmas- "' time my normal state of social inadequacy is - sharpened into a perverse sensation of being singled out for assault...

By' ANGUS MAUDE, MP E VERYONE knows that the purchase tax is un- popular and, of course, there is nothing sur- prising about this. When someone has worked hard to earn some...

By JOHN BETJEMAN AN MP said in Parliament last week that the Tower Bridge would have to be taken down in twenty or thirty years and that he personally would like to see it...

By STRIX HAD completely forgotten about Baron Fukushima. Yet there he is in the front row, seated in a vaguely simian posture next to Major the Reverend J. C. Chute and...

Back to the Old Banger ! By LESLIE ADRIAN IKE many other humble things, sausages are la now big business. The small makers, with their individual recipes and flavourings, have...

Set by Six Fellows of St. John's College, Cambridge 1. What have the following in common? (a) Lichfield, Norwich, Chichester, Salis- bury. (b) Long White Lop-Eared,...

inaccuracies in her essay on Blake in The Divine Vision. Here are some examples of the kind of thing I mean. In her letter Miss Raine says that 'Earth's Answer' is earlier than...

SIR,— Leslie Adrian's article of December 6 is, I feel, misleading as it gives the impression that colour photography is rather difficult and expensive. In fact it is simple and...

SIR.—All Mr. David Astor's friends admire his instinctive amiability in helping lame dogs over stiles, even when the dog might not wish to take the hazard. But it is doubtful...

one thing that strikes me in the same way as the failure to ,bark on the part of a certain house-dog struck Mr. Sherlock Holmes. I mean the total absence of any real argument...

issue. Will you allow me to ask a sub- sidiary question which arises from his letter? It con- cerns his apparent distinguishing between 'priests' and 'clergymen.' What exactly...

in your issue of December 13, and especially with his last paragraph. I have already drafted and torn up several letters to you, but now Mr. Astor's over-charitable letter...

How Not To Be a Liberal Angus Maude, MP The Public Schools Patrick Cruttwell Colour Photography W. H. Dimsdale Behind The Times Randolph S. Churchill, G. Wren Howard, Rev. H. R....

SIR,—Twenty-five years ago I began an association with an American newspaper that has happily con- tinued ever since. From the first I was determined to do whatever an...

Sm,—What a remarkable mind Mr. Curran has! in his article 'The Politics of Envy' he analyses with some shrewdness the social climate of envy and jealousy and discontent. Much of...

SIR,—For the new Strix long-range weapon to be effective the gunner would have to be quite sure that his singular enemy was exactly 'on the spotnik.' He couldn't do that. But,...

SIR,—Your correspondents are right to suggest that it should be made compulsory for motor-cyclists to wear crash helmets, but a regulation in these terms alone would not be...

SIR,—Contrary to what Mr. Watkins writes, my re- view of Professor Popper's Poverty of Historicism contained no 'unpleasant innuendoes.' When I said, of Professor Popper's...

to learn that he was apprenticed to the art of government under Conservative auspices during the war. Accord- ing to Robert Blake that was the case. However, I am not so much at...

SIR,—Professor Eysenck, of the Institute of Psy- chiatry, Uniyersity of London, has sent me the following letter, which I have his permission to quote : I think your question...

Barnacle Bill. (Empire.)—Danger- ous Exile. (Odeon, Leicester Square.) — The Sad Sack. (Odeon, Marble Arch.) Barnacle Bill is, to be frank, a big flop, but it is rather hard to...

The Heroes t ot The Rape of the Belt. By Benn gab N, 60 Levy. (Piccadilly.)—Dinner with the Family. By Jean Anouilh. (New.) ZEUS: I say, Polly, what about a stiff nectar...

A CERTAIN kind of painting and sculpture is being practised in England at the moment which is a little awkward and uncouth in the degree to which vision and techni- cal...

(RECORDING COMPANIES: D, Decca, OL. Oiseau Lyre; R, RCA; V, Vox). OPERA AND BALLET : The latest Rigoletto (R, 2 records) has in Merrill, Bjorling and Roberta Peters a trio of...

DECEMBER 22, 1832 A CLERK being asked to vote for Mr. RAMAGE, de- clined, on the ground that he was the inventor of the Calculating-engine, which might hurt the interests of...

Crying in the Wilderness By JAIN HAMILTON O H, sun, beaches, and the islands in the path of the trade winds, youth whose memory drives one to despair.' Camus puts the words...

The Way of the World. By 'Peter Simple.' (The Daily Telegraph, 5s.) THE Daily Telegraph, both before and after it swallowed the Morning Post, enjoyed for many years the...

The Fine and the Wicked: The Life and Times of Ouida. By Monica Stirling. (Gollancz, 21s.) LITERARY judgment is never so much at a loss as when confronted by extravagance of...

IT is now nearly eighty years since Marcellino de Sautuola's little daughter discovered the great polychrome paintings at Altamira and so dis- covered Upper Palaeolithic cave...

The Bayeux Tapestry. Editor, Sir Frank Stentoo ti (Phaidon Press, 47s. od it The Female Nude. - By Jean-Louis Vaudcyer • ti (Longmans, 45 51 n The Picture History of Painting....

Picasso. With an introduction by Fernanda Wittgens. (Andre Deutsch, 3 gns.) Van Gogh. With an introduction by Marco Valsecchi. (Andre Deutsch, 52s. 6d.) The Moderns and Their...

The Gods are Angry. By Wilfrid Noyce. (Heinemann, 15s.) The Price of Diamonds. By Dan Jacobson. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 13s. 6d.) The un - Americans. By Alvah Bessie. (Calder,...

Jamaica. By Fernando Henriques. (MacGibbon and Kee, 25s.) My Mother Who Fathered Me. By Edith Clarke. (Allen and Unwin, 18s.) Jamaica: An Island Mosaic. By Peter Abrahams....

APART from the BP convertible debenture and a few gilt-edged stocks there has been little doing on the Stock Exchange. The market was reasonably pleased with the basis of...

SIJNYFR. - 4K 1 bb 1 3N1prq 1 6PR 1 QSpr 1 p2N3k I PPIpIPP1 1 1p1PRPIB 1 b3b2b. Position 53 moves before this must have been 6bb 1 pppNpprq I 3pNIPR I 6pr 16k1 1 P4nIp I...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT PERSONALLY, I would feel very much 46 . ;, safer at home in north-west Berk- shire if the Heads of Government were meeting in Paris not to discuss the...

By PHILIDOR No. 132. DR. 0. T. BLATHY' (VielzOgige Schachaufgaben, 1890) BLACK (12 men) WHITE (8 men) WHITE to play and mate in one hundred and two moves: solution (given space...

Stopping to await my turn at the level crossing, I put my head out of the car window and asked the old fellow when the train was due. It couldn't be by the mere whim of - the...

A reader asks about fumigating his new greenhouse after its first season, and I can only' suggest that he buys one of the proprietary fumigators designed to burn or vaporise,...

Walking up the footpath past the Dutch barn, it seemed to me that the day was wearing away fast, for the birch' were silent and mist would shortly come out 'of the 'hollow,...

By IAN NIALL THE weather has a great effect on the number and sorts of birds seen in the gardens in the vicinity of the village - these days. Blackbirds always seem to out-...

ACROSS 1 Postpone the meeting ori`account of a rascal? (8) 1 5 Twin edifices at each end of the old city become one (6). 2 9 Stale jokes, in fact (8). 3 10 Source of gold in a...

a National (not international) Atithent—in. any sure—for the new realm of outer space recently conquered by Sputniks I and II. 4imit: 10 lines. Entries, addressed "Spectator...

I. (a) All have cathedrals with spires. (b) All breeds of pig. (c) All States bordering on Texas. fin All are iron ores. (e) All counties not playing first-class cricket. (f)...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 407 Report by Barbara Smoker tree, card, shop, toy, present, gift, holly,lrustle- . (kacns) 'Fix guineas was offered for up to fourteen lines of...