U NTIL last weekend it was possible to imagine that the Communist leaders of the Electrical Trades Union would be astute enough to make some concessions— or at least pretend to...

SPECTATOR ESTABLISHED 1828 - NUMBER 6754 - FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1957 - PRICE NINEPENCE

T HE increase in the gold and dollar reserves in November was very good, but slightly less good than had been expected by many people in the City. As soon as the results became...

P RESENT events in Indonesia must be set against their background, if they are to be understood. The basic cause of the anarchy reigning in Djarkata must be sought in the geo-...

to Sir Hugh Foot DEAR SIR HUGH, So you have arrived in Cyprus. The purpose of this letter is (1) to urge you to take immediate action to restore confidence and good will in...

By RICHARD I N the present situation, the following obser- vations seem relevant : 1. The President isn't going to resign his office right now. He would, it seems clear, have...

AFTER a week of fierce specula- tion it appears that Mr. Eisen- hower is little the worse for his stroke. He has been seen at a Thanksgiving service, on the lawn of the White...

VV NILE the fourteenth Earl of Home was speaking your hawk-eyed correspondent was astonished to see that there were some 140 members present in the House of Lords. Aston- ished...

THE CHAIRMEN of the Women's Section of the Conservative con- stituency parties have their faith regularly strengthened and con- firmed by a four-page _leaflet called Madam...

I shall treasure one of their dis- closures : about the order of precedence in which public figures are called to Ile given notice of the Government's intentions on such...

and gone without too much fuss being made about it by anyone. An article in The Times by Dr. Leavis — Printing House Square seems a long way from Downing College—scattered...

I found the headquarters of the Blue Men's army in the Street of the Camels behind my hotel. — Daily Express, December 4. In the back - garden of Allah, I suppose. PHAROS

some advertising magazines; has she ever heard in them a word of criticism of the products? Whereas she can see for herself that in a supplement, such as the one in the...

By CHARLES CURRAN U NDERNEATH the national controversy about inflation there lies a fact that nobody ever examines. It is a submerged magnetic mass that makes all the political...

is calling the kettle black, when people like myself abuse commercial television for putting on advertising magazines. What, she asks, about our supplements? Well, to begin...

the other, what he was going to do about Bank rate? Silt WILLIAM HALEY: No. I did not even realise that Wednesday came before Thursday. I think I can help Sir William here....

pretty embarrassing to read. Gigli's Memoirs, published earlier this year, are one of the exceptions. Possibly he had some help with the writing, which is very polished. But no...

By CYRIL RAY W HEN the Bolshoi Ballet was in London, one of our more smugly chauvinistic daily newspapers, gleefully reporting that Ulanova was buying scent and cosmetics here,...

By LAWRENCE C. VAMBE* safeguard the interests of the Africans. An African Affairs Board was created as a watchdog to prevent legislation of a discriminatory nature against...

By STRIX T SUPPOSE that in almost every club there is a imember who, though he uses the place a great deal, never really seems to belong. He is not exactly aloof; he is not...

By LESLIE ADRIAN TN the same way that the long-playing record 'brought the gramophone back into fashion, so the colour-negative print has given a new sophistication to the old...

By JOHN BETJEMAN to afford'a public-school education later on: I would ask you not to worry too much if at the age of eleven your boy is not up to average, or to rejoice too...

to Invest in Wine' by one on 'How to Realise Your Investment in Wine.' Sell- ing wine is easy for the wine merchant; people in need of wine see his shop and enter. The amateur...

SIR,—If the innocent party is free to marry, then the divorce is real. Why, then, cannot the guilty party marry? The barrier to marriage (apart from the prohibited degrees or...

SIR,—I a,m glad to see that Mr. Terraine agrees that it is a myth that Passchendaele was fought to save the French, and that my article was 'absolutely right in saying that...

SIR,—After all the mush one has had to wade through about Dylan Thomas during the past two years, Kingsley Amis's article came as a refreshing draught of cool, clear water; and...

lages and denuded countryside that characterise so much of mid-Suffolk. But if he had gone south, towards Essex, he would have found at Stoke-by- Clare, Clare, Nayland,...

How Not To Be a Liberal J. Grintond, MP, Mark Bonham Carter Passchendaele B. H. Liddell Hart An Evening with Dylan Thomas Sir Robert Boothby, MP Investing in Wine Jossleyn...

want today is a lot of sensible people in Par- liament. After all, the world can, blow itself up at a moment's notice. Let's fill the House of Commons with 'honest,...

controversy about marriage after divorce. Inter alia, he states baldly that my claim that 'the marriage of divorced persons, at the parochial incumbent's discretion, has been...

SIR,—My thanks to Mr. Levin—Swift redivivus. What a cosy feeling it is to read something and say : 'That's just what I've always thought.'—Yours faithfully,

SIR,—Mr. Mursell has missed my point. If is precisely because Socialists are not more high-minded than Conservatives that the question I raised in your columns is a question....

SIR,—II is shocking and saddening to find the pages of the current Spectator sullied by a slang American term to describe the natives of this island. Do you—or your...

SIR,—I notice with interest that Pharos has joined the many writers in high-class journils who complain that in ITV's 'advertising magazines' advertisements are 'masquerading as...

SIR,—Pharos is quite correct (November 22). There is a very good case for the compulsory wearing of helmets by motor-cyclists, and many of us have been advocating this for...

SIR,—May I answer the questions about this Associa- tion raised by Miss Elaine Burton in your issue of November 22? It is quite true to say that Which? is not available on the...

SIR,—One of the pleasures of my week is Taper's `Westminster Commentary,' but I was disappointed that in last Friday's instalment he referred to Mr. Norman Dodds's request for a...

SIR,—When I was helping Mr. Charles Wilson with his History of Unilever I read several hundred letters of the first Lord Leverhulme, besides diaries and a great deal of other...

The Macroscopic Eye The Ten Commandments. (Plaza.) THE film epic (the word has now a wholly cinematic, as well as liter- ary, meaning) is a definite genre with its own...

IT is not often that the critic has the satisfaction of knowing that in recounting the plot of a play he is not merely filling up space but actually performing an indispens- _...

SUCCESSIVE Monday concerts in the Festival Hall have introduced two new symphonies, both rather out of the ordinary run, and with a certain similarity of spirit. Mal- colm...

Two portraits by Graham Suther- land of Mme Helena Rubinstein, the cosmetics expert, are on view at the Tate Gallery until Decem- ber 17. In both paintings Mme Rubinstein stares...

DECEMBER 8, 1832 A MAN named Collings, who, about five years and a half ago, was sentenced to transportation for seven years, for a larceny committed at Norwich, Was dis-...

Father Figures The Fathers Without Theology. By Marjorie Strachey. (Kimber, 25s.) A New Eusebius. Edited by J. Stevenson. (S.P.C.K., 21s.) The Didache, The Epistle of Barnabas,...

Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version. (Nelson, 12s. 6d.) The Faith of the Bible:By J. E. Fison. (Pelican Books, 3s. 6d.) The Books of the Old Testament. By Robert H. Pfeiffer....

THE historical roots of Baha'ism lie in Persian Shi'ism and its belief that the last of the legitimate Imams—the descendant of Ali, the fourth Caliph —is not dead but withdrawn,...

Religions of America. Edited by Leo Rosten. (Heinemann, 21s.) The Road to Happiness. By J. W. C. Wand. (Muller, 16s.) Judge Not. By Aymer Roberts. (Linden Press, 16s.) IT is...

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross. (O.U.P., 70s.) E_orr . ED by the Lady Margaret Professor of by at Oxford, compiled over many years...

of Christian Science since 1910, by Norman Bearley (Allen & Unwin, 25s.); Prin- ciples of Christian Worship, by Raymond Abba (O.U.P., 10s. 6d.); The Unfinished Task, by Bishop...

God is an Artist. By Adam Fox. (Geoffrey Bles, 9s. 6d.) Why I am a Protestant. By Rupert E. Davies. (Epworth Press, 7s. 6d.) FIVE characters in Canon Adam Fox's God is an...

Jesus and His Coming: The Emergence of a Doctrine. By John A. T. Robinson. (S.C.M. Press, 150 The Formation of Christian Dogma: An Historical Study of Its Problem. By Martin...

Buddha and Buddhism. By Maurice Percheron. (Longmans, 6s.) Footprints of GautMna the Buddha. By M. B. Bytes. (Rider, 16s.) The Doctrine of the Buddha. By George Grimm. (Allen...

Kidnapping Blake By W. W. ROI3SON T HE bicentenary of William Blake's birth finds him not yet established as an academic classic; the 'English' student, obliged to make at...

AT his best, Stephen Leacock was a most inviV r i ating and amusing writer, apparently intent mere whimsical caricature and farcicalising reality, but in fact never quite...

Unholy Alliance: Russian-German Relations from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the Treaty of Berlin. By Gerald Freund, with an introduc- tion by J. W. Wheeler-Bennett. (Chatto...

'WRITE a novel about Class,' someone once said to me. 'Class is for us what Sex was for the Victor- ians. Everyone adores it, no one dares mention it. And don't forget—if Class...

English Historians. Selected passages compil ed by Bertram Newman. (O.U.P., 18s.) THIS is a collection of short 'extracts from his t°r ; ians writing in English from the...

T he Poverty of Historicism. By Karl R. Popper. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 16s.) R OFESSOR POPPER'S book is a tract for the times. It starts in the guise of a piece of rigorous...

Just Jazz. Edited by Sinclair Traill and the Hon. and Jackson, 25s.) TEN essays by jazzmen and critics, with twenty- four plates and a 220-page critical discography of records...

Come Dance With Me. By Ninette de Valois. (Hamish Hamilton, 25s.) As a Governor of the Royal Ballet School, I wish this book every success. Dame Ninette is the creator of a...

By IAN NIALL EvLav year one seems to comment on seasonal or unscasonal weather at the onset of winter and ponders whether the December primrose is a promise of things to come or...

Depending on the climate, chrysanthemum sto ols are sometimes lifted and replanted under glass. A friend sets his in ashes and finds they come on well for cuttings in the early...

paragraph on the little owl,' says a correspondent. 'I then went upstairs and shut the casement windows, my mind still on the subject of owls. On the landing I turned on the...

By PHILIDOR No. 130. E. POULSEN elV1agasInet,' June, ISO BLACK (9 men) WHITE (II men) WHITE to play and mate in two moves: solution Fle d week. Solution to last week's problem...

Passing a man on the road the other day I noticed that he had a hare which he had either, snared or picked up on the road, victim of an accident. The dead hare was being held by...

R. Pimlott The 'Do It Yourself habit, a necessity in the remoter parts of the world, has now become something of a craze in Britain and the US, especially in such matters as...

SPECTATOR COMPETITION No 405 . May Byron to the idea that the Earth will eventually reach a the path of its orbit. i_terred from the wording of this competition, a „ ,n,d H. I....

ACROSS Disclosure of plans for feathering the nest? (8) Smilingly announced intention to be a doctor (6). 9 Fairy, goodbye! as they say in Middlesex (8). 1 0 She preceded art...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT Pr is pathetic to think that the wait- ing and preparing for the convertible debenture issue of the British Petroleum Company brought instil tutional...

By CUSTOS ALTHOUGH the great £41 million BRITISH PETROLEUM issue is out— scaled down from £50 million by the CIC—there has been little of no revival in Stock Exchange...