T 0 understand the background of the bus strike—and, indeed, of the industrial scene in general today—it is necessary to study the tensions that have built up in the Labour...

SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828 NUMBER 6735 - FRIDAY, JULY 26, 1957 - PRICE NINEPENCE

T HE new hangman of England wears a bow tie, he is assisted by his son, and he would like the hangman's job to remain a family affair. This devotion to the hereditary principle...

From a Correspondent p OLITICS in Oman is a bewildering affair : com- pounded of tribal rivalries, religious differ- ences, and geographical peculiarities, complicated by...

'The urgency has been NIded to. as far as our friends in the Persian Gulf are concerned, by the near treachery of certain Members opposite.' HUGH FRASER, MP. The Member for...

B y DARSIE GILLIE T obe a stop-gap government is not necessarily a weakness if nobody else can stop the gap. That is the lesson to be drawn from the vote by 280 to 183 last week...

OW MY PAPA! —Bristol Old Vic Company, Theatre Royal, Bristol. Among the various musicals of today this one has, not perhaps as a whole but certainly in its main idea, something...

'THIS debate will be regarded by many people outside, I'm afraid, as unreal.' Thus Mr. (( Aneurin Bevan, winding up for the Opposition in the de- bate on disarmament. Before I...

Elsewhere in the Middle East, Colonel Nasser has arrested a number of political rivals on charges of planning his assassination. These include the ex-Foreign Minister, Mohammed...

Country (reviewed last week by Lord Altrincham) the author was introduced by the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Selwyn Lloyd. The book is very offensive indeed about Mr. Nehru and Mr....

our correspondence columns. The BBC itself, which was eager enough to answer (how- ever inadequately) one or two particular points I myself raised, has not yet contributed to...

a half centuries. It has had time to wither and the Tunisian people with its leaders will uproot a dead tree.' (From the Tunis weekly Action). A green bey tree?

in last Sunday's News of the World: Readers of the News of the World court reports arc fully aware of the vicissitudes of vice.

Company and the Shell Petroleum Company that they in- tend to cease operations in Israel seems an almost incredible surren- der to Arab blackmail on the part of these companies....

lax, when in fact they are non-existent. The regulations to which I was referring were those which insist that a doctor's prescription must be obtained before the drug can be...

athletics world, not to mention some sports- writers, have been casting doubts on the validity of Ibbotson's mile record, on the grounds that he was helped by a pacemaker. Two...

By L. F. RUSHBROOK WILLIAMS p ROMINENT among the governmental activities which are benefiting most directly from the stimulus which Mr. Nehru's return to New Delhi after an...

By HENRY KERBY, MP leg s ? For white-collared and black-coated workers this is a vital question, because if the provincial busmen withdraw their labour, having shown their...

By ROBERT LINDLEY W HEN as senior a Civil Servant as the Joint Permanent Secretary to the Treasury asserts that statutory tribunals are part of the machinery of administration...

By J. GARSTON W HEN, in 1881, Mr. Cardwell carried out his reorganisation of the British Army, and among other things linked the 34th Regiment with the 55th to form 'The Border...

By JOHN BETJEMAN T HE day these words appear in print will be the last in which you can put in an offer for the strange statues the LCC is selling in the Crystal Palace Park. I...

By LESLIE ADRIAN I HAVE just bought a new baby car. As I drove from the dealers', the indicators failed and a new unit had to be installed. After two days, I found the brakes...

Peter Wiles about the BBC's Russian Service have rightly evoked keen interest. Notwithstanding the present political and military stalemate, the Kremlin misses no opportunity...

Euston 3221

Sia.-1 agree with Mr. Dwight MacDonald's view in his otherwise quite flattering review of my book The Breakdown of Nations, that the idea of a determinist world is 'repulsive....

overlooked so far in this controversy : I. The BBC Russian Service is designed for listeners in the Soviet Union, not for experts on Russia domiciled in Britain. 2....

me to make it clear that we are continuing the Campaign until capital punishment has been abolished. The Homicide Act only received the Royal Assent on March 21 and it is too...

The Canal and Mr. Connell H. Pinner Too Big Leopold Kohr John Vickers Gerald Gardiner, QC Th e BBC's Russian Service Charles Dimont W. Mykula The Theatre Stakes Sir Stephen...

JULY 28, 1832 LORD ALTHORP brought forth his financial statemen? last night. A Chancellor of the Exchequer on such occasions, like the frugal housewife in Scri.pture, brings...

about my experiences in the theatre world should have made Mr. Raphael puke, i.e. `to eject food from the stomach; to vomit' (Oxford Did.). I doubt whether his hope that my...

SIR,—It is even worse than you may think. Some of these pre-publication puffs, 1 am assured, are obtained for cash. In view of the worthless if not actually poisonous content,...

SIR,—A civil liberty body, by virtue of the fact that it must be opposed to all forms of discrimination in the area covered by its terms of reference, cannot itself make...

mentioned by Pharos this week, cannot be 'ridiculously lax' because regulations are non-existent. The important point raised by suggested regula- tion of tranquillisers is...

SIR,—Brian Inglis's reference to the modern stress theory of disease as American is not correct. It will be found in the books of my brother—F. Matthias Alexander—who was not...

SIR,—Mr. Amis in his review of the late Norman Cameron's poems castigates us as publishers, saying that our 'way of cramming two unrelated poems on to a page is cheese-paring of...

SIR,—The Rector of Beaumont's objection is valid only in its extreme form. No time-table permit any boy to choose any combination of sixth form subjects that he pleases. On the...

Sig,—A letter which appears in the Spectator over the name of Austin Lee deplores what he considers the horror of pigs being used by Americans in nuclear device tests. It seems...

comfort Mrs. Probert was that her son did not strike him as a man who would commit a murder.' If he did say such a thing, Miss Jesse must realise that he was saying a good...

last October 'the Green Howards fired on the popu- lation.' This is balderdash. The Green Howards, along with other units of the garrison, were called in on October 11 to help...

The Cheltenham Festival THE Cheltenham Festival remains year in year out unchangingly focused on the four concerts of the Halle Orchestra. This is almost inevitable. The...

absurd story, a good deal of zany humour and some music as subtle and enchant- ing as Mozart at his best. Carl Ebert's Glynde- bourne production is now resuscitated with nearly...

IN spite of its lonely isolation at the Alexandra Palace, a geographi- cal exile which is apparently v matched by a curious species of I administrative apartheid (why, for...

Silver Wedding. By Michael Clayton Hutton. (Cambridge).— Jr iih is arguable that any person rash enough to go to the London theatre in July and August is sticking his neck out...

THE whole competitive framework of our modern world hinges on 'success,' yet it remains a personal, almost an unmentionable, private dream. Nor is ambition generally admitted...

Cross-Channel Visitor By PETER QUENNELL A REWARDING anthology might one day be compiled of traveller's tales brought home from England, reports on our manners and morals by...

Avaity's The Sea Dreamer was completed thirteen years ago and first published in French In 1947 with the more mundane title of Vie de Conrad. The present publishers give no...

Franchine raised her Caracalla's curls from the faded - fed and orange vorticist cushion— indeed, except for her short nose, she resembled certain youthful Roman emperors...

The Modern Poet's World. Edited by James Reeves. (Hcinmann, 8s. 6d.) I wisit I could recommend these books, because they both have nice print, nice bindings, nice dust' jackets,...

THE author of this very extraordinary record of Arabian life today was a medical officer in the Afrika Korps. He was taken prisoner by us some- time in the course of the Western...

THIS enormous book (675 pages, of which two' fifths are footnotes) is also an unusually deplor - able book, for reasons which are worth dwelling upon briefly, as they illustrate...

Silk Hats and No Breakfast. By Honor Tracy. (Methuen, 15s.) Pottering about the middle of Spain on buses and local trains is hardly a recommendable way of getting about, but you...

e Poetry of Experience: The Dramatic Mono- i n t) gue in Modern Literary Tradition. By R obert Langbaum. (Chatto and Windus, 21s . ) 1 "E is a certain analogy between fashions...

The Girl on The on e , England Thcir England, by A. G. MacP ey r Flaminia, by Alfred Hayes (Penguin, 2s. A u - . (Macmillan, St. Martin's Library, 3s. 6d.). (Penguin, 3s. 6d.);...

Here's a Villain. By James Mitchell. (Peter Davies, 15s.) The Promoters. By Stephen Longstreet. (Weiden- feld and Nicolson, 16s.) WITH a few notable exceptions, schoolmasters...

ACROSS.-1 Violets, 5 Sell out. 9 Robot. 10 Fancy free. 11 Tutors. • 12 Estrange. 14 Bella. 15 Egregious. 18 Eumenides. 20 Light. 22 Toll-bars. 24 Vernal. 26 Grandiose. 27 Gorki....

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THIS being the conventional silly season anything absurd can happen, even in the staid monetary world, without anyone raising an eyebrow. l a „silliest...

By CUSTOS . f:1; THE slow but steady imprefdement in the gilt-edged market has been brought about by genuine institu- :? tional buying, not by any interven- tion on the part...

A friend has just been telling me that her n called on an _unexpected visit from a place 1 .011 . fifty miles away within a few seconds after O n member of the family remarked...

'I wonder why people are so keen to have bred dogs,' remarks a correspondent. 'The crosc 4 ; ones have so much more brains. We have, a i cr corgi-spaniel and he is quite the...

ACROSS 1 Kiosk and occupant alike? (10) 6 It's to be found in that fatal charm (4). 10 'The dark unfathom'd caves of -bear' (Gray) (5). II A bloater's the thing for a...

Certain varieties of pear fruit on the tips of ne r shoots and not on spurs and these should be f 3 ,„ fully handled when summer pruning, only the n o of the crowded tree being...

By IAN NIALL MANY an amateur naturalist, without much data, concludes that there are fewer hares in his locality or.for instance, more owls than there used to be. The...

By PHILIDOR No, 112. E. BOSWELL ('Svenska Daebladet,' 1928) ot.aca (4 men) WHITE (3 men) witrre to play and mate in two moves: solution next week. Solution to last week's...

is holding a Geophysical Year, and to describe some of the more im- portant projects and experiments that are being undertaken: Entries addressed. 'SpeciatOr Competition No....

. ' • than happy to find that with the exception of 9ne fellahin everybody was at least familiar with ttie original style of the Rubaiyat. The philosophy Ir,I,I 1 L/...