Stalin's policy towards the West was inflexibly hOstile. Malenkov's is identical. Yet there is a difference. While the boorishness of Stalinism spread like a stain to the outer...

T HE physical preparations for the Geneva Conference are coming along. But, in the West, diplomatic prepara- tions have, astonishingly, only just begun. The reason, which is a...

The relationships between authors and their publishers—r o d certainly between authors of repute and publishers of repute" are traditionally personal and even intimate. It...

seems unlikeli that the rains, which are expected shortly, will impose materit greater handicaps on the besiegers than on the b esi ege,t General Giap must, of course, be having...

John Prioleau, who died in Jersey last week at the age ° I 72, had in his day no equal as a motoring correspondent. Fit experience, wit and facility were the envy of...

Arming a Dead Horse ? The prolonged labour which preceded the birth of the new British proposals on the European Defence Community (EDC) may have been disastrous. The proposals...

I N the language of politics the wilderness is the place where parties discover, or re-discover, their souls. Freed by electoral defeat from the cares of office and the...

a controversy now current in The Times," need publishers and booksellers and are, therefore, vitally concerned with their solvency." This is a rattier specious generalisation....

comment in London on the Daily Worker's failure, on Tuesday morning, to make any mention of Mrs. Petrov, whose adventures were given banner headlines in all the other...

Reading Honor Croome's article concerning the statistics of medicine-taking in last week's Spectator, I began to wonder how many people—as long as their luck holds– go through...

were received, I took him for the leader of the expedition. It was* he told me, a Conducted Ramble organised by British Rail , ways. The ramblers, who detrained at one station...

LTHOUGH I have the misfortune to differ from Mr. Gordon Wilkins in almost everything he has written , recently in these columns about • The Wicked Motorist,' 1 :1, 8...

T HREE weeks ago I was in the Foreign Office in Stockholm when a communique was put out concerning the Norwegian-Swedish ministerial discussions about improving and extending...

1 4 THOMAS ' HODGKIN ic OU'D like to visit the Queen-Mother, wouldn't you ? " was so clearly a question expecting the answer ` yes ' that it would have been useless to argue...

Messiaen and Seiber MUCH has been written of the French genius for order, clarity, economy, balance and moderation in the arts; aruil probably these are the qualities which most...

ART Pietro Annigoni. (Wildenstein's.) FASHIONS change, but the truly fashionable does not: immortally supple, slick, and adept, it survives from mode to mode, pre- serving its...

ShakeS 4 peare. (Old Vic.) THE dialectic established between policO interrogator and victim is, it must be admitted, peculiarly a twentieth-centurY phenomenon. Under the...

The Proud Ones. (Curzon.) — Knock on Wood. (Plaza.)—The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (Studio One.) The Proud Ones has been adapted for the screen by Yves Allegret from a novel by...

JACKDAWS and starlings may be a nuisance in the chimneys and eaves, but on the grass field the starling takes a large number of insects, just as he helps to rid an infected...

I have a passion for trees and tree-planting. If I discover some small seedling crowded away in a hedge or wind-exposed on a stretch of moor, I am tempted to uproot it and give...

the blossom has fallen. Cut back the branches to within three buds of old wood and generally tidy up the shrub so that new growth and improved blossom will be encouraged for the...

Sitt,—In Scotland a proposal to reorganise the police brings up certain questions which troubled many at the time of the Conspiracy' Trial in the High Court of Justiciary last...

have been grouped in the last three weeks under the heading of ` Science Teachers.' In particular 1 found myself most cordially in agreement with those who suggest that width in...

SIR, — Writing last week about science teachers, your correspondent Mr. MacPher- son says, with justice, that the secondary school should set the "really able boy" among "minds...

ROAD ACCIDENTS SIR,—Your Motoring Correspondent is far too enlightened to become a partisan of motorists against other road users. He would, I am sure, prefer to work for...

SIR, — In your issue of April 16th Strix draws attention to the growing reluctance of young men to enter the barbering profession. He admits (reluctantly ?) that this grave...

a real Expense of Shame' to the public's hotice. For one who has spent half a life- time in an attempt to solve humanly and sen- .RiblY the problem you set forth (the method...

▪ e problem of rehabilitation and resettlement of the disabled under the heading 'An Expense of Shame.' This is a problem of integrating various ministries, hospitals and...

I suppose I can claim to know something about both phonetics and poetry. My feeling is that both Miss Hansford Johnson and Sir Compton Mackenzie are dangerously infected by the...

SIR, —The correspondence in your columns on the above subject has been of value in so far as it ventilates the present public perplexity concerning the outcome of the apparently...

people have been undoubtedly feeling but have lacked the ability to express. I venture to predict that whichever political party first declares its readiness . to examine this...

SIR,—Struck by the first two paragraphs of ' Sidelight' in the Spectator of April the 16th, I should like to congratulate Compton Mac- kenzie on retaining to this day his...

26th issue of the Spectator. The Welfare Section of the Infantile Paralysis Fellowship dealt with 700 individual cases of disabled ex-polios last year. Most of them just wanted...

But she must be aware that today in many :of our schools 'Look and See' methods of leaching have rendered her protest out- ' i dated 7 The old-fashioned Aah-Ber-Ker . System...

Albert Memorial. Temperance has a cracked head, Fortitude is broken and atonally holds a wobbling candle. The usual prize of JO is offered for a conversation of not more than...

Fahrenheit 451 Mr. John Metcalf says that Bradbury has been grven a lot of publicity as "the white hope of the "science fiction boys." But most of the enthu- plasm for Bradbury...

similar form of' L'Impossible' by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore: Qui me rendre It's fours on la vie a des ailes, Et vole, vole ainsi que l'alonette aux deux, Lorsque tent de clone...

I N the course of arranging my library I came across The Cock-house at Fellsgarth by Talbot Baines Reed. I was carried back to the early summer of 1891 when it was appearing...

Parachute By PETER UNWIN (Christ Church, Oxford) T RAGEDY pays only flying visits, but she leaves her mark behind her. She visited our beach last summer, stayed a few hours,...

by JENNY NICHOLSON E ASTER week is a brilliant crescendo of the Roman year. The golden city usually looks its best: buzzes with optimism. This •year the wind blows cold from the...

tomb to face .the glorious rage : But from that toil the image that emerges Fades in the lost conventions of its age.

It is not merely the stirring of a windless veil, The jumpy table, the keys leaping from their locks, The dragging footstep on the vanished stair ; Nor yet the rain of...

The New Estate Ify J. D. SCOTT ISS GLADYS KENDON describes herself as "the product of an Edwardian boarding school," and I would deduce from her book* that she had a rigorous...

The Spectator from time to time invites authors to reply to criticisms of their work. Mr. Philip Toynbee here reviews the reviews of his latest book Friends Apart, published by...

CHARLES AUGUSTUS HOWELL has waited sixty - four years for his grapher. Both Violet Hunt and Ford Madox Ford toyed with the projeol, but abandoned it. Countless amateurs of...

Mn. ATTLEE'S autobiography reveals no secrets about the Labour Party or about the Governments of which he was a member from 1940 to 1951, first as Deputy Prime Minister and from...

Jonathan Swift: A Critical Biography. By John Middleton Murry. (Jonathan Cape. 30s.) THE extreme reluctance of Jonathan Swift to place himself completely within the confidence...

Flame for Doubting Thomas. By Richard Llewellyn. (Michael Joseph. 12s. 6d.) Th e Acrobats. By Mordecai Richter. (Andre. Deutsch. 10s. 6d.) African Diversions. By Ernst Juenger....

By CUSTOS THERE was quite a shake-out in the last few days of the long Easter account and the equity market is all the better for it. For a short time it was possible to buy...

time of the year—the budget having come and gone without anyone noticing it—for investors to take stock of their market position. I have been looking back at my own articles to...

one guinea and a copy of the De Luxe edition of Chambers's Twentieth Cen- tury Dictionary. These will be awarded to the senders of the first two correct solutions opened after...

M00013000010MMM MBOMITIOF4 Solution will be published on May 7th.