C OLONEL NASSER's seizure of the Suez Canal provides a fitting climax to the disasters which have recently overtaken British policy in the Middle East. It is not the...

ESTABLISHED 1828 No. 6684 FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 1956 PRICE 9d.

By DARSIE GILLIE Paris I T is difficult to remember any occasion on which the French press (with the exception of the Communists) has been unanimous as it is today in demanding...

By RICHARD H. ROVERE New York T HANKS to Harold E. Stassen, the President's adviser on disarmament, we have had a few days of fun and comedy in American politics. They were...

E NGLAND has kept the Ashes, but Great Britain seems to have lost the Suez Canal for the moment These were the two news items that dominated the headlines over the Past week. At...

BY ROGER FALK T HE conclusion of a fourth visit to Uganda within a year — and also 'Pattern of Colonies' in a recent Spectator—encourages a few paragraphs of what must be,...

BY CHARLES CURRAN T O adapt Mr. Brendan Behan, the old triangle must now go jingle-jangle on the banks of the Suez Canal. While Britain, France and the United States are...

BY CHRISTOPHER HOLLIS T o one who is more familiar with literature than with company meetings, it was impossible not to have The Forsyte Saga in mind as one made one's way down...

ONE OF THE DIFFICULTIES Of the House of Lords is that it is liable to be laughed at both when its members turn up and when they stay away. More than three hundred attended the...

their lively predecessors. A new collection is being formed and I have, hot from Oxford, the following masterpiece (I have thought it wise to bowdlerise the second line): My...

three things seem reasonably clear. The suggestion that the wicket had been doctored to suit our side at the behest of the English selectors was ridiculous and disgraceful. But...

book- sellers as Dunbar said to the merchants of Edinburgh. 'that sic dishonour hurt your name?' So far as 1 can judge from the reactions of their trade association to the...

College Chronicle these days—what with a leading article advocating the Big Go-By for Early School, a poem recom- mending another pint of beer as a cure for ennui during the...

me a booby, and no doubt he is right—though not, I think, for the right reason. He takes me to task for saying last week : 'to the abbess, the deification of the Mother of God...

BY LORD ATTLEE 0 NE always looks forward with the anticipation of find- ing something new in the writings of Mr. G. D. H. Cole. I have always felt that age could not wither him...

BY EDWIN SAMUEL I N this article I have set myself to answer a question recently posed to me. 'What does a Palestinian old-timer like yourself feel about the Arabs in Israel...

I T was early in August, 1944. about two months after the Allied entry into Rome, that I was invited by the Papal authorities to visit the excavations under St. Peter's. These...

in holiday trains, they do not appear to me to bathe very much in their sea. In the hot weather this time last week I went to a firm, sandy beach within fifteen miles of Cardiff...

I AM pretty sure that I was the first writer to make a new edition of Who's Who the subject of a full-length review. It was rather a good, or perhaps I only mean rather a...

1. What is the difference between? a. The United Kingdom and the British Isles b. Cobbles and setts C. Dumbarton and Dunbarton d. Practice and practise e. Angola and Portuguese...

Euston 3221

SIR,—As 1 can claim no knowledge industrial relations questions, it is humility and doubt that 1 venture to a s o whether, if the right of workers to longer the statutory...

able public service in exposing the political bias and the misleading omissions of Mr. Barker's monograph Some Problems of Incen- tives and Labour Productivity in Soviet...

SIR,—Having been a book reviewer MYs for more than a quarter of a centUrY , know the difficulties and hardships of professional reviewer's life and do not to seem unduly...

but I 011/5 help your Mr. Pharos. He writes: `To the Abbess, the deiticat 1 of the Mother of God was a heresy. The I things are going, it looks as if the heresy soon be dogma.'...

The Golden Chance C. A. Harrison Nationalisation and Propaganda Austen Aibti , MP The Very Devil Lionel Bloch Sauce for the Gander Dorothy Smith Deification and Clarification...

which is supposed to be an independent weekly, employs Mr. Charles Curran as its chief political commentator. He is about as independent of the Tory Central Office as a tortoise...

G.B.S., according to Mr. Brian Inglis, had become senile by 1929—within five years of creating St. Joan! 0 brave new world that can see in The Black Girl and In Good King...

S1R,—Lovers of poetry, and of arguments about poetry, will to some extent understand Mr. Grigson's annoyance with Mr. , Hartley for not providing a detailed criticism of the...

resent with Mr. Grigson 'attitudes to the arts of consciousness and purpose' (Spectator, July 27). Are such attitudes due perhaps to the present withering of creativeness, and...

A Second Programme? TRE BBC has again declared its desire to have a second television programme. I hope it succeeds. As the Corporation's annual report states: competition with...

Sla,.--Chivalry demands that I rise to defend alY most friendly reviewer, Virginia Graham, against the inconsequent attack which has been levelled at her by the reverend Canon...

am most surprised that Strix should r efer, as he does in his contribution 'The nattlefield of Eton,' to the foot inspection as foot 'almost forgotten ritual.' To the fact that...

.providing the final clue about the whys and wherefores of the Lallans verse of himself and his friends. Neo-jabberwocky! Why didn't we think of it before?—Yours faithfully,...

LIKE most other festivals this year, Aix has been unobtrusively dominated by Mozart. To four performances of Don Giovanni, with a memorable Elvira by Danco, a very intelligent...

'A NUMBER of paintings connected With Cubism which happened to be available.' Mr' Philip James's description of this small shoo' at the Tate Gallery of pictures on loan frail...

AUGUST 6, 1831 REFORM WAGGERY.—A hoax was played off on Tuesday on the sexton of Petersfield. In the morning he received a letter, informing him that a funeral would pass...

MESSRS. GORDON AND WILLIS'S feu d'esprit on medical apprenticeship puts the accent heavilY on the jeu; here are all the time-honoured prototypes of English medical fiction—the...

IT isn't often that ballet can show itself in advance of the rest of the theatre as a mirror of contemporary real life; but with its newest new creation of this season the...

Two good Westerns in a week set even a critic purring. For those who lament the Stagecoach days and think the Western has grown too streamlined for vitality, I recommend a visit...

Penguin Prose BY GRAHAM HOUGH F OR many years now anthologies have been under a cloud. Undeservedly, in my judgement; but I can suggest two reasons for it. One is the...

COLLINS GUIDE TO ROSES. By Bertram Park. (Collins, 25s.) PERSONS adventurous enough to have met Miss Gertrude Stein (for it was something of an experience), or to have engaged...

SIR ANTHONY EDEN. By William Rees-Mogg. (Rockliff, 15s.) THE secret of Sir Anthony Eden's success as a politician has been his ability to give the least possible offence to the...

BYZANTIUM AND ISTANBUL. By Robert Liddell. (Cape, 25s.) HIS - TORY lies buried—often alive—in the structures of ancient cities. It may be centred in a single monument—the...

ROMAN MORNINGS. By James Lees-Milne. (Allan Wingate, 17s.) WHEN I saw the title of this book, I immediately thought of Ruskin's Mornings In Florence and the pleasure I derived...

NOT least among the horrors of modern war are the 'fearless indictments' of it that come along in the form of fiction. These, it is said, are devoured by the young. Soldiers who...

A GREAT SEAMAN: The Life of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Oliver. By Admiral Sir William James. (Witherby, 18s.) THE subject of this biography was Chief of the Naval Staff for...

he succeeded Janus as the author of 'A Spectator's Note- book.' Now they know him well as the weekly essayist never at a loss either for subject or for words to adorn it. Rupert...

AMONG the books that have marked civilisa- tion, but whose influence remains obscure to those who have not read them in the original, stands the Koran. We know that it sent the...

TliE Dead Sea Scrolls have often produced more h_eat than light from their would-be interpreters and it is high time that an authoritative and comparatively objective...

NOVELS, ETC. Penguin Books: The Masters, by C. P. Snow (3s. 6d.); The Short Weekend, by T. S. Strachan (2s. 6d.); The Case of the Half' Wakened Wife, by Erie Stanley Gardner...

BY CU STOS WHAT goes up with a rush generally comes down with a rush in the stock markets. Booming oil shares, which had risen on the average 50 per cent. this year, had been...

B Y NICHOLAS DAVENPORT : 1 :„ I IE Prompt action taken by the Treasury reply to Colonel Nasser's unwarrantable ge rnarche is a useful reminder that our e xchang e control is...

comes from a Canadian reader who remarks, 'Yester- day I was reading your article about cowslips and wondered if you knew the trick of im- mersing the stems in boiling water to...

There is no more pernicious heresy in chess than the view that the end-game is dull; sour players even carry it to the extent of regarding it as unsporting to exchange...

writes in reply to my modest list of birds heard in the night. I can't think how I could have forgotten geese, for I spent a good part of my childhood in a place that was on...

Mulching often means the difference between a good crop of beans or peas and a poor one' The application of a mulch in midsummer keeps the soil moist and feeds the plants If an...

BY IAN NIALL A BAD storm several days ago caused flooding once again in the valley of our local river. This happens several times in a year and the people who live in the...

BY PHIL1DOR No. 61.A. ELLERMAN BLACK (10 men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution next week' Q-Kt 3, threat P-Kt 3. 1 Q-B 3; 2 Q-K 3. 1 Q-B 4; 2 Q-Kt 3. Note thematic...

lines of the lyric which Dryden wrote for his Marriage a In Mode, MPetitors were asked to compose a similar lyric, suited to the modern cinemagoer, to introduce the film of any...

'Ph was evidently wounded on the s r acecourse (7). sounds as though his colours should C fast (7). 10 9 N othing bucolic about such a Pope (5). ;Ile bird was so racy (9). \...

legal or society news produced such stories as the Loch Ness Monster, has never been fully revived since the war. A prize of six guineas is offered for a 'silly season' news...