M AO TSE-TUNG's speech, and the effect of its release, may turn out to be as big a blow to the Soviet rulers as any of the many crises they have faced over the past few years....

By A BARRISTER F OR a lawyer perhaps the most improbable aspect of the telephone-tapping affair is the assertion by the Home Secretary that conversa- tions are intercepted in...

By ANTHONY HARTLEY PariS The fall of a government seems less serious now than it did ten years ago. The Fourth Republic has established its own style in these matters....

is on holiday. He will be resuming his articles shortly.

'It is reported that after the Whitsun recess Sir Hartley Shaweross will be seen more frequently in the House of Commons, although it is not yet his plan to attend there...

fly VICTOR ANANT A COUNTRY in need of financial assistance has to be capable of far more grace than a country in a position to give that assistance. India is in desperate need...

DON'T know where Miss Elaine Burton went for the hols, but the sun was certainly shining there. In a sleeveless, low-cut blue dress with large white spots on, topped by one of...

LONDONERS have no doubt been delighted to see strange celebrities flooding into town for the conference of Com- monwealth Prime Ministers, r the London disarmament talks (now in...

'GREAT BRITAIN does not feel the loss of India because she gave India her independence of her own free will. But tomorrow she will feel the loss of Cyprus, because she will have...

only symptom of unrest with noire beau pays that Figaro has had to face; I was amused to read their chronicler 'Nicole' this week on the subject of the youth of France, with its...

was this—and the fact that Gasquet always etred in favour of the Romanist position— which led Coulton to regard him as a liar. Pro- fessor Knowles thinks that no 'defence can be...

capitalism very seriously; it is too obviously an uneasy compromise, a piece of facing-both- ways mainly designed to help the party out of its own internal difficulties over...

Historian (Athlone Press, 3s. 6d.) is, as one would expect, an authori- tative and distinguished piece of work. Gasquet very nearly became Archbishop of Westminster, and was at...

By LORD ATTLEE M R. A. J. P. TAYLOR, the well-known television star, has in this book* published the sub- stance of his Ford lectures which he delivered in his other capacity...

By BERNARD LEVIN O NE of the five passengers in the plane (it would have held three more, if 'held' is the right word, which it certainly isn't, the thing having been designed,...

By IAN GILMOUR T 11ERE are only three possible explanations of the Evans murders: I. That Evans was guilty and Christie innocent. 2. That Evans and Christie were both guilty,...

FRENCH MO( orist will now have to P. 7s. 9d. a gallon .—ITV News. June 19, 8s, 2d. a gallon .7-BBC News (sound), June 20. 8s. 3d. a gallon .—The Times, June 20. 8s. 4d. a...

11 y A GRAMMAR SCHOOL MASTER A s I chalk their numbers on their desks, they press their faces against the windows in the classroom as they assemble outside in the quadrangle....

By JOHN BETJEMAN THAVE had two strange experiences lately, both sinister and both worth recording. On Whit- Monday I went to the obscure and attractive Austrian village of...

By STRIX T AM against the employment of words which have no meaning at all. Many such are in common use, but to some must be granted a form of dramatic or poetic licence. It...

By LESLIE ADRIAN T HERE are two alternatives for the town- dweller of moderate means who wishes to buy a house. Either he must be prepared to travel and become a suburbanite (or...

JUNE 30, 1832 DE BEGNIS, in the announcement of his concert, which took place on Monday, promised a duet by Madame DE MERIC and himself, of which he stated— "This duet is...

The BBC's Russian Service A. Earley Telephone Tapping Geoffrey Godwin, George Richards Glyndebourne Food W. H. Oldaker Rani of Thansi A. J. Smith The Liberal Party Unrepentant...

SIR,—The Spectator has been quite superb in its atti- tude to the Marrinan case, and I for one hope it will continue in it, lest the affair be sidetracked. I don't know...

tap telephone lines was only given by holders of his office where State security was involved or to help the detection of serious crime. On p. 67 (Penguin edition) of Against...

Euston 3221

uphold the cause of those who picnic at Glyndebourne. We know our manners about litter, and I have never seen any left behind. I am not so sure about the good manners of bagging...

SIR,—To say, as Mr. Tudor Edmonds said in his letter in your issue of June 14, that pasteurised milk is impure and to hint that it is not even fit to drink is absurd. Milk is a...

your paper for many years and, whilst not agreeing with all the opinions expressed, have always appreciated your sense of fairness. In the June 14 issue, however, there...

I have watched the correspondence on the short- comings of tied houses with special interest. Major Klein's refusal to put the customer first and his contention that a licensee...

the fact that fresh food is harder to come by be- cause of the controls exercised by statutory market- ing boards : eggs may be purchased at the 'farm gate,' as also all dairy...

which says that the Americans have dressed 800 pigs in army khaki and are to explode a nuclear device over them in Nevada to see what effect it has on these help- less animals....

Rani of Jhansi 'being cut down by a trooper' re- ferred to by your correspondent Mr. D. E. Lysaght. As that brief statement, less the extenuating cir- cumstances, tends to give...

is a pity that Mr. Robert Conquest (Spectator, June 14) did not confine his criticism to poetry. He could easily have done so without being rude to Dame Edith Sitwell. Perhaps...

A Poor Maid St. Joan. (Leicester Square Theatre.) — The Happy Road. (Dominion.) — The Hidden Woman. (Paris- Pullman.)—Marguerite de In Nuit and Seven Years in Tibet. (Cur- •...

compositions issued by Boosey and Hawkes on his seventy-fifth birthday covers half a century's work by the most admired and possibly the greatest composer alive today. He is...

THE trade and traffic in pictures is much in the news, and at a moment When a Gauguin is bought for about ten times the amount of money in the Tate's annual pur- chase-grant...

AMONG the marvels of British tele- vision is that some of its producers manage, between the interstices of American film and native charade, to smuggle occasional slices of...

Across the letter, finely curled Where a neat hand had left its mark, The careful bars looked cold and stark. Her merry eye, that swept the world And soared, ecstatic, like the...

Agonising Reappraisal By D. W. BROGAN MHINGS move with great speed in these in- teresting times, and probably not many public-spirited observers of the commonwealth of nations...

Letters of James Joyce. Edited by Stuart Gilbert. (Faber, 42s.) 'I WANT that information about the star of the Sea Church, has it ivy on its seafront, are there trees in...

Leigh Fermor. (John Murray, 15s.) THIS book, short though it is, divides itself, Gaul- like, into three parts. There is a chapter on the deserted Rock Monasteries of...

Arbella Stuart. By P. •M. Handover. (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 308.) LOOKING back from our relatively republican state of mind today, few fates can appear more uncomfortable than...

LEFT to themselves Keats's devotees would blight the reading of his verse with doctrines and superlatives. The trouble with so many of them, as critics, is that they shut...

Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo. Edited by Hyman E. Goldin, Frank O'Leary, Morris Lipsius. (Constable, 36s.) I ONCE listened to an interminable argument between two...

Poems of Many Years. By Edmund Blunden. (Collins, 18s.) Collected Poems. By John Pudney. (Putnam, 18s.) THE English countryside and the English seasons are the substance of...

Gods and Heroes of the Greeks. By H. J. Rose. (Methuen, 10s. 6d.) STUDYING Professor Rose's exact and scholarly collation of Greek mythology is like being present at an...

Grdgoire. (Cassell, 15s.) I DON'T think that Ferry to Hongkong is exactly a resonant book; I don't think its theme would haunt one's thoughts or its characters linger much in...

By P HI LIDOR No. 108. E. HOLLADAY (American Chess Bulletin, Sept., 1956) BLACK (7 men) WHITE (8 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next week. Solution to last...

Humidity resulting from watering in a greenhouse after a hot day makes the progress of rust and fungus disease rapid. As a remedy Bordeaux mixture can be used or one of the...

The other day I had to slow down to let a lorry turn and unload a mountain of granite chippings in one of those cut-backs that used to shelter, in the long ago, the loneliest...

Don Quixote tilted at windmills, but there were enough of them about in his day. When a reader sent me a little brochure published by the Society for the Protection of Ancient...

Henry Morse : Priest of the Plague, by Philip Caraman (Longmans, 18s.), is a hagiographical life of a Jesuit active in England under Charles L There was little unusual in...

By IAN NIALL AN expression of wisdom concerning the falling of rain on the just and the unjust involves a cliché, but there is equal truth in a remark about the activities of...

For the usual prizes competitors were invited to translate into English verse an e - tract from Baudelaire's La Chevelure : O toison moutonnant jusque sur l'encolurel 0 boucles!...

ACROSS I Counsel of somewhat variegated appearance (4, 4). S MS if it is re-arranged badly (6). 9 1 ".. 1 ..O ,..SCrepallCy in males (8). 10 The writer Lawrence enters in...

all parties, a coup d'dtat has established in office a 'Govern- ment of all the talents.' No sooner have they settled in, however, than a tiresome Opposition, Caucus puts down a...

BY NICHOLAS DAVENPORT ONE of the many excellent activities .,, of the Anglo-American Corpora- tion of South Africa—under the inspiration of that great liberal financier Sir...

By CUSTOS THE stock markets are in a halting mood and I adhere to my opinion i f . Ai* that a fresh advance cannot be ex- pected until the gilt-edged market has been...