1962 ENDED wan A WHIMPER, after the bang misfired. The United States was provoked into discovering its own strength and used it to edge Khrushchev out of Cuba. The Central...

T an agreement reached at Nassau between President Kennedy and Mr. Macmillan appears on the face of it (for there are almost certainly secret protocols) to be the result of a...

T tie really important events of 1962 were two: for the first time, America and Russia con- fronted each other directly, each threatening to use its nuclear power, and each...

From SARAH GAINHAM BONN S OME weeks before the release of Rhine Army plans for other ranks' housing in Germany, I accompanied a colleague from a popular Sunday paper to Minden...

From MURRAY KEMPTON UNITED NATIONS, NY N old inhabitant has observed that many A riambassadors to the United Nations are there for no better reason than for having been i...

The Dog's Chance By R. A. CLINE I N a recent case in the High Court, a dog- owner had every reason to be grateful that the English procedure for reforming laws can grind to a...

By J. M. COHEN A SUB-COMMITTEE of the University Grants Commission is at present considering how best to promote the study of Latin America in the universities. This brings...

asked for 1 . 14 :: whiskies. 'Yes,' said the barmaid, 1°°1‘17t strangely at the Highlandman. 'Yes, but I ° p ri n t know about him.' She came back in a 111°171- 4., e with the...

By OLIVER STEWART A T least I think it will be. Composed of Air IAFrance, Alitalia, Sabena, Lufthansa, Union adromaritime de Transport (a merger with TAI :s in the offing) and,...

` — ritrat.'s no fool like an old fool: said my I wife and children and grandchildren, who will use any old saw to keep me trimmed to proper size. Well, I dare say. Some old...

But I was drawn out again after dinner. A pipe band was screaming 'The Haughs of Cromdale' under the walls of the hotel, and the streets had been abandoned to Glaswegians on the...

So. cutting my losses, I shouldered my : pack and went out, with some dignity, into the dark- ness. It was now close on midnight. The door of the Lady of the Lake Hotel was...

The manager was fizzling with rage. 'No friend of M acLachlan's will spend a night under my 1.°0 f.' 'Look,' said I as mildly as any saint could Say it while being heaved into...

Outside the Clachan Hall stood a police sergeant and a constable. 'Yes, MacLachlan, said the sergeant; 'just so : you've been at it a gain , ' 'You've been creating in the...

By DONALD HORNE 0 NE of the embarrassments of being an Aus- tralian comes when a visitor from a 'new' nation tries to bring you into the conversation with a brotherly: 'Of...

By J. JACKSON T HE number of motor vehicles in Britain has been increasing, in recent years, at the rate of about 700,000 a year. If this increase con- tinues, there will be by...

By NORMAN LEVINE H UGH FINLAY, thirty-nine, BA, showered briskly, then dried himself. Put on his blue and black silk dressing-gown, black slippers. Then he made a cup of...

SIR, —Whilst it was pleasing to read the manner in which Mr. Adrian welcomed the proposed Bill for the Registration of Estate Agents it would, we feel, have been pertinent for...

SM. — The statement in Leslie Adrian's column of December 14 that retailers have to charge necessarily rather higher prices for their washing machines is simply not true. I...

comments on the Government's new moves in the field of indust- rial training. The fact that the White Paper is long overdue does not make it less welcome. On two points though...

V. Mortimer Back to the Charter C. P. Walton Estate Agents S. R. Nevelt, S. L • Mould and H. C. Phillips Washing Machines D. M. Keegan Pistol-Packing Nicolas Walter Brunei Our...

SIR,--One may sympathise with Mr. Robert Bolt's plea on behalf of the Association of Victims of Nazism. which, he says,' is threatened with pro- scription in West Germany, but...

Silt,—David Rees says, in defence of Western espionage, that 'a pistol held by a law-abiding citizen in self - defence is hardly the same as One wielded by a robber.' Why? Is it...

SIR,—While endorsing all Mr. Kerr says to explain the rising in Brunei with that territory's limited op- portunity and still more limited Sultan, I fail to see what any of this...

Stn,-1 think your article under this title admirable, but I feel that one reason for the irritation Mdr: Acheson caused was — possibly purposely —olist Unlike the US, the...

threatens to come out 3f itS aerial socket. Britain, we are told, is played out as r an independent power. Royalty itself is in da ng n c from a European federation. This view,...

The Child and the Man By BAMISER CASCO1GNE THEY'RE a special breed—the . only creatures which hibernate in the summer. Soon after Regent Street has . burst into bloom and the...

Change and Decay Yrs, well, the strongest sensa- tion I personally get on looking back over a year of television is the medium's capacity for making time slip away unno- ticed...

Voice and Voices By DAVID CAIRNS SPECTATOR, DECEMBER 28. 19 62 voices, the panting tenors who break the phrase every second note, the yelping baritones and woofy basses, are...

By ISABEL QUIGLY Classic and Romance IT is tempting, and theoretically quite possible, to modernise a myth. In fact a good many myths have worked their passage into the modern...

By ED FISHER NEW YORK MILE newspaper blackout in this city is giving I New Yorkers a taste of the hypothetical future (when television will presumably be the chief news...

The Ring and the Book By CLIVE BARNES Si. Petersburg or Leningrad, Maryinsky or Kirov, Theatre Street or Rossi Street, so much that is of value in modem ballet has emerged...

By ALFRED SHERMAN - The Thrills of Tyranny N or long ago I had the job of reading through the writings of British left wing visitors to the Soviet Union during the Thirties. I...

Dickens and the Twentieth Century. Edited by John Gross and Gabriel Pearson. (Rout- - ledge, 32s.) AND what does the twentieth century make of Dickens? Dr. Leavis, of course,...

Addictions. By D. J. Enright. (Chatto and Windus and Hogarth Press, 12s. fid.) ADDICTED, yes, but to what? To irony cer- tainly, an insistent self-critical but sometimes also...

The Age of Revolution (1789-1848). By E. J. Hobsbawm. (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 50s.) As a venture in a series entitled The History of Civilisation' this book is ambitious, but...

Towards a Church Architecture. Edited by Peter Hammond. (The Architectural Press, 30s.) The Architectural Setting of Baptism. By Dr. J. G. Davies. (Barrie and Rockliff, 42s.)...

The Dolmen Miscellany of Irish Writing. Edited by John Montague and Thomas Kinsella. (The Dolmen Press, 9s. 6d.) Tips is the first in a projected series aiming to represent the...

A woman, walking slowly in her proud pregnancy on a hot Bombay pavement, turned coyly from the eyes of knowing men. Folds of her sari were ribbons of cloud round the moon of her...

Night, a black summer, simplifies her smells, makes her a village; she assumes the impenetrable mask of the negro, grows secret as sweat, her alleys odorous with shucked oyster...

The signs are of a bad day. Before waking An apprehension of disquiet, premonition of shaking Foundations, of shaking itself. Yet dreams were real And rejecting morning the...

They blind each other with naked elbows. Their claws are crumpled needles. They gape for the spinning world. They build from wrecks To be launched one day on the watery wind-...

After Wu-TI Never believe leave you From any desire to go. Never believe I live so far away Except from necessity. After a whole day of separation Still your dark fragrance...

The Belfry of Bruges. By Alexander Reissner. (John Calder, 12s. 6d.) THE most pressing reason for buying New Writers 2 is not that it contains Robert Pinget's 'The Old Tune,'...

They gave proportion to this Square by wal ls patterned with glass, due space between °-di stack, lined stucco fronts, and subtly pitched root Is. yet, one side, left a gap a...

Italian Journey, 1786-1788. By Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer. (Collins. 6 gns.) 'ONLY in Rome can one educate oneself for Rome.' Goethe...

Everyman's Ark. Edited by Sally Patrick John- son. Illustrations by John Cameron Yrizarry. (Hamish Hamilton, 30s.) IN his introduction to Everyman's Ark Alan Moorehead comments...

I T is always most instructive and a pleasure to read the illustrated report from Mr. J. S. Crossley, chairman of Barclays Bank D.C.O. Most of the company ' s business is...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT f.g.Z nearly the worst. This divi- sion cuts through the pro- FOR the observer the Stock Exchange year has been fascinating. For one type of investor it...

By HAZEL EAGLE O NE's notion of the United States is carica- ture before one has been there, so when I crossed the Atlantic to teach in a New England independent school I hoped...

By ANGELA MILNE M ucii as I love a party, I've never since reaching thinking age been able to see New Year's Eve as a time for -whoopee. Nor do I want, like the opposite...

Great Scotch By LESLIE ADRIAN The single malts are a distinctive taste, per- haps not suitable for sedentary Sassenachs, except as a rare treat. The experts, who seem to get...