COMPTON MACKENZIE: Sidelight D. W. BROGAN: The American Mess YVONNE MITCHELL: Playing in Lear CHILDREN'S BOOKS. Arthur Ransome Garry Hogg Amabel Williams-Ellis Pamela Whitlock

The confederation's claim, originally made in May, for a 1 5 per cent, wage increase is roughly equivalent to an increase of El a week for skilled men and 17s. 6d. fop...

In language impressive by its very dryness and banality the American Army has now given further details of the findings of its War Crimes Division in Korea. Thus case KWC 185,...

N o. 6545 FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 1953 PRICE 7d.

The six Foreign Ministers of continental free Europe met in the Hague last week, ostensibly to discuss the institutions of a united Europe. • They there discovered that after...

The parties that received Egyptian support in the Sudanese elections have won a far clearer victory (almost a clear majority) than was expected by the Sudan Government or anyone...

The deposition of the Kabaka of Buganda revealed, with distressing suddenness, trouble brewing in yet another British African colony. In part the Kabaka has only himself to...

The Kenya court martial of Captain Griffiths on a charge of murdering a Kikuyu forestry guard has ended in his acquittal, but some of the evidence produced in support of the...

S IR WINSTON CHURCHILL was g iven a g reat cheer on Tuesday ni g ht when he left the House with Mr. Eden to board a midni g ht 'plane for Bermuda. His own supporters cheered...

g round for a resumption of diplomatic relations with Britain. Political and reli g ious leaders have been consulted and their co-operation sought, kites have been flown in the...

When the Government achieved its unremarkable majority tof seventeen for the second readin g of the Housin g Repairs and Rents Bill, its .supporters cheered with relief—not...

sometimes amuse themselves in the Press Club bar by debating the question : "What was the greatest period of muddle and confusion you have known here?" And the answer has, in...

By STRIX fin "A Spectator's Notebook" of October 30th Strix undertook to send a brace of pheasants "to the reader who produces the most convincing explanation of what bird or...

By JAMES POPE-HENNESSY H AVING just come back from some halcyon weeks in Rome, I am once more impressed by the fact that almost all the charm of London lies concealed, or at any...

Readers of the Spectator doubtlessly regard Christmas, or the New Year, as the season for recognising and cementing friendships. So do we. For that reason we offer you, the...

GREAT conductors, like other great 'men, are surrounded by many temptations which the rest of us are spared ; but they resemble the rest of us in that they often succumb to...

As an hors d'oeuvre to the FlemiSh exhibition at Burlington House, Londoners might well sample the several collections, 'arbitrary but rewarding, of European masters to be seen...

THEATRE A Day by the Sea. By N. C. Hunter. (Hay- market.)—Someone Waiting. By Emlyn Williams. (Globe.)—Othello. By William Shakespeare. (Sloane School.) "ENGLISH CHEKHOV " has...

The Bigamist. (Odeon, Marble Arch.)— Arrowhead. (Plaza.) BIGAMY is a crime for which one cannot resist having a certain sympathy inasmuch as the bigamist desires...

THE programme with which Roland Petit has opened his new season is more satisfying than any which he presented in the summer. But then Jean Babilee is back with him again,...

[REcoaos are listed, where possible, in alphabetical order of composers. Where several composers are represented on one record, it is listed under the name of; the composer of...

Competitors are invited to submit a " thank you" letter for an embarrassing Christmas present, as written by any one of the following : Queen Victoria, Rev. Sydney Smith, Lord...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No. 196 Report by V. P. Stratford A big-game hunter in Bulawayo is reported as offering a half-a-dozen baby crocodiles to anyone who will give them a "...

A POLICY FOR THE WEST SIR, — Now that East-West talks are a pos . si- bility, a common policy must be decided Upon. And this is not easy, between the Scylla of appeasement and...

SIR, — The Admiralty recently took the unusual course of publishing a committee's report on the entry of naval cadets in order to obtain public reaction to the proposals. The...

to be told, 1 suppose, this revelation of the truth, —and the falsity; yet now that the bones of the anthropological plot have been laid so cruelly bare there are those of us...

SIR, — The maximum salary of an Assistant Master in a Grammar School, before the war £480 per annum, is now £766; the latest Burnham Award offers £821. To this can be added, for...

Although I have seen jackdaws among great gatherings of rooks up on the old stubble. I have noticed that our own natives are back on the chimney pots. They are cawing round the...

I stood on the hillside on a patch of ground where it was apparent a large number of foxgloves grow. A little ahead there was a belt of bracken behind a mound topped by a...

SIR,—A Monsignor may, be head of the Government in Austria: there may be a "Catholic " 'centre party in Italy without protest from Rome: priests in Italy and Ireland are...

SIR,—Old members and friends of St. Anne's College, Oxford, which was formerly the Society of Oxford Home-Students, are re- quested to write to the College for copies of an...

PLOUGHING goes on while conditions on particular fields are suitable, although a few days of rain bring all to a standstill for as long again. While the wind blows and the rain...

I T might be considered an expression of reactionary opinion if 1 were to denounce all one-way streets. Let me hasten to testify that in London the one-way streets have been...

Playing in Lear By YVONNE MITCHELL W E shocked many of our friends who visited us in our dressing-room at Stratford after a performance of King Lear. They arrived three or four...

The Spectator offers three prizes, each of books to the value of eight guineas, for articles to be written by boys and girls in schools in the United Kingdom. Entries should be...

Any-Other-Burger ANTHONY WATERMAN (Selwyn College, Cambridge) I OST in that limbo of independent Principalities behind the Iron Curtain, decently digested within - ania and -...

DECEMBER 3rd, 1853 IRELAND.—There has been a "run" upon the Abbey Street branch of the Dublin Savings-Bank. Upwards of 40,0001. was " called " for The managers immediately...

THE attraction of any other place or time, rather than here or now, assures at least some success for stories about seaside holidays when read in December. The first glimpse of...

A Hundred Years of Children's Books By ARTHUR RANSOME M R. GREEN'S first intention was to answer the ques- tions that might be asked by children about the authors of the books...

The Faber Book of Children's Verse. Edited by Janet Adam Smith. (Faber. 12s. 6d.) THROUGHOUT her compiling of this admirable anthology the editor had the child between eight...

Don Quixote. By Cervantes. (Dent. 1 Is. 6d.) AT a time when the accent is increasingly on the Future—space-men, rocket-ships, flying-saucers—it is encouraging to find that a...

The Nature of the Rebel By REX WARNER M CAMUS is so admirable a novelist and thinker that one must approach everything that he writes with • respect. In The Rebel* his aims are...

WHO were the Mizners The Mizners were an eccentric " old " Californian family whose most remarkable members were named Addison and Wilson. These two flourished, in all meanings...

THouGH the Cadillac has long replaced the covered wagon, and the Sioux are inoculated each Fall, a yearning for the untrammelled pioneer life occasionally steals over the...

Nine Rivers from Jordan. By Denis Johnston. (Derek Verschoyle. 21s.) WITHOUT reference to James Joyce's Ulysses this is a.difficult book to describe, but with that reference it...

THE modern world was changed by three men. Marx re-interpreted its sociology and economics ; Freud invented the science of man's unconscious ; Einstein rephrased the physical...

Private World of Pain. By Grace Stuart. (Allen & Unwin. 10s. 6d.) A BOOK now and then appears that must disturb the general reader because it is written from the other side of a...

The Balloon. By Henry Phelps Brown. (Macmillan. 12s. 6d.) The Balloon and A Song of a Shirt are both about life in the army during the last war. One is concerned with the early...

Teapots and Quails. By Edward Lear. (John Murray. 12s. 6d.) Tins small collection of hitherto unknown poems and drawings is notable to lovers of nonsense because it introduces...

30s.) PROFESSOR Wean, who is one of 'America's most distinguished historians, has written an erudite book based on the assumption that European society in the days of Chris- '...

THE MONTH'S REPRINTS WHEN Benjamin Jowett died in 1893, he bequeathed Balliol his writings, to be " republished from time to time." His monumental translation of Plato, first...

BEMELMANS'S newest picture-story book is far too good to be kicked round the house by a child of the age for which, at first glance, some might think it had been produced....

• IA Book token for one guinea will be awarded to the sender of the first correct solution opened after noon on Tuesday week, December 15111, addressed Crossword, 99 Gower...

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By CUSTOS IT will be obvious to readers'of my previous notes that I have a preference for shares of companies supplying the building trades. Mr. Harold Macmillan is constantly...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Mr. Clore and the Savoy Board But I cannot believe that Mr. Clore, who is a past master at property deals, had any intention of bidding against Mr....