I T is an ironic thought that at this time of the break-up of the Federation of Central Africa the best hope for that territory as a whole may well be a review of the Federal...

needst not strive officiously to keep alive.' President Kennedy seemed determined to stick to this harsh attitude in the bargaining over Britain's independent deterrent....

the longer it goes on and the gloomier it ends. In offices there are decorations and mistletoe and by 2 p.m. on Friday there will be tight directors (who at other times of the...

T nu opening of the talks between President Kennedy and Mr. Macmillan finds the North Atlantic alliance in more danger of dissolution that it has been since its creation. If,...

I T is possible, as we say above, that the United B ritain is resolved on a policy of squeezing main out of the nuclear field. If, however, it is not, the British nuclear force...

From DARSIE GILLIE PARIS T HE Edwardian trappings of château lomacy displease me. Perhaps because I can't shoot. At all events, when Mr. Macmillan shot that preposterous...

I would have said that the most modern of all nineteenth-century figures . . . was un- doubtedly Disraeli.—Mr. Macmillan. There is something infinitely moving about the way in...

Matins, December 21: Job 42, v. 6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Evensong, December 21: Isaiah 35, vv. 3 - 4 Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm...

By ANGUS MAUDE All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. —Edmund Burke. W HEN...

The Israel Supreme Court's decision that a Jew ceases to be a Jew when he adopts another religion solved one problem for the Israeli autho- rities and their fellow-Zionists, but...

us, like the fog through which the garish Christ- mas trees of Oxford Street and the artier oriental kings of Regent Street were glooming the other week. In one form or another...

L ORD SANDWICH is right when he says that the proposals of the joint committee on House of Lords reform are 'ideally made for Mr. Wedgwood Berm.' They would solve his problem,...

`Beware of turning traffic,' say the posters, and well may we heed their warning. At two busy intersections near this office one may see, at any time of the day, both young and...

steps have been taken to remedy some of the more glaring weaknesses in the conventional equipment of the British forces in Germany. The feeblest arm of the ser- vice is the...

Commenting last week on the BBC's That Was The Week That Was, I assumed that the obliging people turning up to have the mickey removed in front of the cameras knew what they...

By JOHN COLE N o one will celebrate the arrival of 1963 more thankfully than students of industrial relations. Most will write off 1962 as a year that the locusts have eaten. We...

Architects on how to modernise Venice (and how not to!) is well worth seeing. It has been mounted by Italia Nostra: this is the youthful equivalent of our own National Trust,...

By ENDYMION WILKINSON G ORDONSTOUN was established on the basis of Kurt Hahn's views on education. Al- though Hahn retired from the headmastership some ten years ago the school...

SIR, — Mr. Cairns recalls with undisguised pleasure the occasion when Forest Murmurs managed to get itself included among the month's 'Novelties' in the Festival Hall diary. I...

Sitt,—If Mr. McKern had produced less, noise and more speech in The Alchemist your critic would not have misunderstood so much. It would also have been kinder to those of us who...

Sra,—Sir Richard Powell might well be reminded of the gramophone record by Paddy Roberts which contains the words 'Just grab a handful and damn the finesse.' His letter does...

SIR, — May I remind such a very cross Miss Manning that one reviewer's meat is another reviewer's poison. I am a fan of quite, a few non-thematic children's writers, especially...

'Brunei' (December 14) is something like a quarter-century behind the times! 'The great Meri oilfield' (actually it's Miri) is in point of fact in Sarawak, some fourteen miles...

SIR, — In reference to Starbuck's paragraph `Gli Italiani in Scozia,' I would like to mention that the relative concerned was not my grandfather, but my great-uncle....

'Betrayal' Musical Novelties Capt Henry Kerby, MP Bridget Tisdall Geoffrey Kerr Charles Forte John Schute M. S. Deol T. E. Bean KENYA 'BETRAYAL' SIR,—In 'Over to the...

By ALAN SIMPSON TN order to extend my holiday last summer I 'took a job in a seaside block of fiats on the south coast of France. One day the water was cut off without warning...

Sublime Compassion By DAVID CAIRNS THE BBC's Westminster Abbey performance of Britten's War Requiem was, to judge by the broadcast (a tape-recording of which I have just...

The Artist's Mind By NEVILE WALLIS MR. MICHAEL AYRTON'S acute and calculating intelligence may remind one of the late, Paul Nash's. Both have sought to reconcile contrary...

Only Just By ISABEL QUIGLY MOST artistic movements have a work that appears both characteristic and prophetic, niter • that crystallises what has been happening and suggests...

Tours and Nurseries By CLIVE BARNES To my mind the lack of creative opportunity in British ballet is a worrying thing. In the nightly Covent Garden programme there appears a...

Child's-Play By CLIFFORD HANLEY `Top CAT' has returned, an event which clearly has more importance for television 's largest audience than any of the, high-toned experiments...

Unhappy Families By BAMBER GASCOIGNE All Things Bright and Beauti- ful. (Phoenix.)—King Lear. (Aldwych.) IF you're writing at what I hope is the tail end of a very jaded...

Cardinal Virtues By DAVID LODGE THE biographical fortunes of the eminent Vic- ." torians have tended to follow a uniform curve, beginning with a solemn, eulogistic official...

Monitor. Edited and introduced by Huw Whel- don. (Macdonald, 18s.) The Truth about Television. By Howard Thomas. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 25s.) ON November I Monitor, the...

Myth and Maneater. By David Kenyon Webster. (Peter Davies, 25s.) ONCE at Manly—it was in 1944, 1 think—we missed one of our friends as we were leaving the surf. He had been...

I spread more wide than the bounds of the worl d ' 1 am smaller than a worm, outstrip the sun, I shine more brightly than the moon. The swelh" of the seas, The fair face of...

Translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland Monster and man are both associated with the posing and guessing of riddles . . . for example , the Sphinx and the citizens of Thebes,...

1 am supple of body and sport with the wind, re al I am clothed with finery, and the storm's B re friend, Ready to travel, but troubled by fire, A glade in full bloom, and a...

FROM the swamps of the last days of the Fourth French Republic, or even from the lofty heights of the Fifth, it is perfectly possible to look back with nostalgia on what now...

Affinities. By Vernon Watkins. (Faber, 15s.) MR. Slow has a distinct and unfair advantage over the others. His poems come beautifully ac- companied by seven plates of Nolan...

COLIN MACINNES'S novels show him to be a, acute observer of London who avoids sentimen- tality by an approach which is at once in sympathy with the city, yet from a quasi-...

The Edge of the Alphabet. By Janet Frame. (W. H. Allen, 16s.) NOT for the first time, I must remark with ad- miration and uneasiness how well professional painters are apt to...

Stone sparrows perch in air all stone; The petrifying morning looks A tree to stillness; a fossil flower Clutches the light with stony hooks. As though a moment had come to...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE way things are going at Brussels it looks as if the Prime Minister will really be forced to play the card which he has been keeping up his sleeve all...

By CUSTOS F THERE will be no festive season on the Stock I Exchange this year. Turnover is shrinking, equity prices are drifting and even the gilt-edged market is sagging —...

C ONSIDERING the difficulties with which J. Brockhouse had to contend last year, it did well to record a pre-tax profit of £1,119,406 for the year to September 30, 1962, against...

By JOAN ERSKINE I LOOKED round my pleasant flat the other day, wrested from the hands of agents, lawyers and owners with surprising difficulty `(considering they were the ones...

Christmas Mixture By ELIZABETH DAVID A good method shown me by Charles Bdrot, chef-patron of the Escale Restaurant at Carry- le-Rouet near Marseilles, is to put the roe in a...