Skip to main content
The largest online newspaper archive
A Publisher Extra® Newspaper

The Observer from London, Greater London, England • 6

Publication:
The Observeri
Location:
London, Greater London, England
Issue Date:
Page:
6
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

THE OBSERVER, SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1950 At the Theatre At the Galleries The Open Air At the Films 6 Radio Spivs, Bards and Kings Interpretation! Island Story A Star By C. A. at Eve LEJEUNE BROWN Pohniath. he is taste a Rumanlic, in aumg he favours Regality and Splendour, vet, oddly, he says nothing of Mr Nnvello. who embodies Mr Tynan's ideals and the title of this book to the enormous and enduring delight of the public.

It is quite impossible, with the present size of newspapers, to review all the theatre books. Mention of a few is possible To the gigantic literature on one single play D. S. Savage adds Hamlet and the Pirates (Eyre and Spottiswoode, a highly ingenious argument that the Pirate episode refers back to the pirating of the text by the compilers of the First Quarto On Producing Shakespeare, by Ronald Watkins (Michael Joseph, one guinea), and Producing Shakespeare, by C. F.

Pur-dom (Pitman. 15s cover a good deal of the same ground. Both authors have practical and approved experience, both have the history of the English theatre well in mind, and both prefer the Elizabethan stage for Elizabethan plays. Mr. Watkins has a most valuable chapter on the acting tradition of Shakespeare's company and both visualise Shakespeare among his players and his audience.

Trial Trips rHE week bas belonged to the try-out theatres. At the I saw what a wise dramatist had done with a piece that, on a Sunday night nearly four years ago, had been oddly vague. Quay South is now de-, fined sharply: Howard Clewes has cut a superfluous character and pared his dialogue, and an anecdote of public and private conflict in a derelict northeast coast port during 1940 comes up freshly and well. The merchant skipper whose brush with the military enlivens Quay South should be an actor's joy. it is Milton Rosmer's.

Again this autumn Douglas Ives (now a slow-smouldering Harbour Commis-sioner) brings reality to a stage merely by stepping upon it. It would be easy to condemn North of the Zambesi (Torch), but the superficial crudities of Noel Goodwin's melodrama of mtirHpr ttr it9i Northern Rhodesia could soon be sand-papered away. Though some of the acting obscures rather than helps, I have met many worse plays. One, Caviar and Chips, a maladroit farcical comedy (Embassy Theatre), last week baffled its distinguished cast. The action passes in the home of Admiral Sir Charles Windthrush, R.N.

drawn by the author as a moron incapable of navigation on the Round Pond. It was pleasant after this to find that the Colchester Repertory, whose celebration luncheon (500 prouueuonsi i attenaea on rriaay, had chosen Othello for its 500th venture. That is the way to do it: the big play for the little theatre. There was no trial-trip uncertainty at Colchester, where Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies and Llewellyn Rees were among applauding speakers, and we knew that Robert Digby's Rep." was alive and kicking c. Trewin.

To-night- Sing Cuckoo (Whitehall). To morrow A Class of Water (Mer-curyi. Tuesday: Red Dragon (Q); Poor OM Gabion (New Lindsey). Wednesday Lady Precious Stream (Am). Thursday Lace On Her Petticoat (Ambassadors) By IVOR VERY little theatres nid do a lot of good in the world, but ihev can neither pay their toilers according to merit nor stage plays of any size to best advantage.

Ronald Duncan's Nothing Lip My Sleeve, at the Watergate, profits by the fact that actors are uncommercial folk, at least when young; he has a large cast, brut he is handicapped by the smallness of the stage. Kenneth Tynan, his producer, has to cram a gallon of crowd-scenes into a nipper-Ln of space and manages to make the huddle as little like village theatricals as possible. The play begins as a Bartholomew Fair of the Spiv Age and then proceeds to chivvy the Modern Poetic Drama with the red-bot poker of satirical clownage. An agreeable zany who works ineffectively in Spiv Corner our ancestors would have called him a natural discovers, while trying to sell a fraudulent cure-all, that he can actually heal cripples by laying-on of hands This wonder-worker is taken up, publicised, almost ensamted. established in Harley-street, and featured at the Albert Hall; finally his powers wane; he concludes, on returning to the gutter, that God prefers men in their simple wickedness Hero is a sour termination lo a rough kind of intellectual rorno which has its moments of savage wit.

When phoney Healer is established in Harley-street, almost canonised in Publicity-street, and carries a copy of The Cocktail Party." the target is fairly obvious. If the new Poetic Drama is to he satirised it is just 3s well that it should be done by one who is himself a leader in this school, can hold the mirror up to himself and his fellow-scholars, and roar with laughter at the spectacle that he sees. "Nothing Up My Sleeve' is a fragmentary and turbulent kind of plai, but it has sting and energy, and is a powerful pill to purge the new poetics of pretentious unction Duncan was lucky to have George Rose in his cast, and Harold Lang got a fine double-edged silliness into the part of the Healer. But he muttered far too much. To have to strain one's ears in a tiny cellar-theatre is intolerable.

Kenneth Tynan ought, of all people, to correct him, sine in his recently published book, tie Who Plays the King (Longmans, 12s. he is ail for valiance and the big attack in performance. His book is largely a bundle of old notices, but he avoids scrappiness. As a parodist of to-day's criticism he manages to fail I could manage better pastiche of self and colleagues myself. Having listed our faults in his preface, he gaily commits most of them in his text, but his rangv knowledge of Eng.

Lit stage-history, theatrical practice, and the alms-basket of words that is the English language makes him immenseh readable, and his descriptive reporting of performances is exact and exciting Some of his pictorial writing about the clowns, as well as the tragedians, of our time is in the finest tradition of English dramatic criticism. Having lately ceased to be a teen-ager, he emerges with all the panoply of a pundit as well as the gusto of an O.U.D.S. maestro. By learning a i I i I I I Restless Hero By W. E.

WILLIAMS QNE of the advantages which the wireless play seems to have over the theatre is that it can indulge in plenty of scene-shifting. To keep expenses down the modern playwright contrives, as a rule, to deploy hts drama within a single scene or, at least, within a mechanism that requires a minimum of transformation throughout the action. This necessity, I think, is not such a handicap after all, for it imposes upon the dramatist a discipline that encourages unity and precision. The radio play, on the other hand, licensed to enjoy the freedom of the air, often comes to grief for that very reason Because it can transport the characters to a dozen different locations in ninety minutes it is inclined to become spasmodic and invertebrate. Thus it was.

last week, with The Battle for St. David's on the Third Programme. The hero, finely impersonated by Hugh Griffith, was Giraldus Cambrensis, that volatile and turbulent Welshman who carried a chip on his shoulder, three times running, all the way from Pembroke to Rome. A fine romantic figure, this, for a larger-than-life revelation. But because it is so easy, on the air, to follow our hero Wherever he goes, there was about as much drama in the proceedings as in a railway timetable.

If Giraldus had been allowed to stay put somewhere en route, he might have come to life. But the restless, episodic treatment to which he was subjected reduced him to the shape and colour of a historical phantom. In the wilderness of wireless enter tainment Take It From Here is a happy oasis. It has abandoned that tiresome game in which the principals teased and pinched each other, and is now full of wit and invention. I most enjoy its antics with the distorting mirror such as last week's Weather Reports delivered in the conventions a grand opera.

Would that Ray's a Laugh," contrariwise, could achieve anything as subtle or spontaneous as its wholly misleading title. I am coming to believe that I best enjoy wireless talks when they occur at the very end of the day, when one's mind is more willing to meditate than at any other time. The Third Programme gives me many such pleasures, of which the most recent were A. P. Ryan's delightful causerie on London clubs and J.

E. Morpurgo's shrewd reflections on the American Mind. To-day's Programmes HOME (330 1.9. News; ft. 24.

Morning Melody: Service: 18.15. 11.15. Talk. 11.30. Music Magazine, 12.10, Critics; I.

B. New; l.K, Country Magazine; l.4t, It' Good Theatre: 2.5. Gardening; 2.30. Folk Songs; 2.50, Play, Kenilworth 4.0, Opera Orchestra. 5.0.

Children; 6.0. News. 6.15, Talk, 6.30. Symphony Concert; 7.45, Service; S.25. Good Cause: 8.30, Our Mutual Friend 9.0, News; 9.15, Reuh Lecture 9.45, The Story of Brigid Jungmittag 10.45, Epilogue; 11.0, News.

LIGHT (1. 500 17 .0. Piano; 8.20, Way Out West. 8.40, Serenade: 9.0. News; 9.10, Silver Chords; 9J0, Sandy Presents; 10.0, Have A Go 10.30, Family Favounles: 11J0, Service; 12.0.

Calling All Forces: 1.0, We Beg to Differ: 1,30. Band Show, 2.0, Educating Archie 2.30, Song Parade. 3.0, Life With the 3.30, Play 6 4.0, Ray's A Laugh, 4J0, Down Your Way. 5 JO. Take It from Here 6.0.

Quiz: 6.30. Records, 7.0. News; 7.30. Grand Hotel. S.30, Hymns: 9.0.

Variety; 10.0, News; 10.15. Piano; 18.30. Hvmns: 10.45. Organ; II. 15, Light Music.

11.56. News. THIRD (464 194 6.0, The Lady from the Sea," by Ibsen; 14, La Passione, by Jomelli Pari I. 8.55, Talk; 9.15, La Paione Part II, 9.5S, Story; 10.5. Haydn and Ravel; 11,5.

Talk. 11.25-12. Schumann Kreisleriana. TELEVISION. 5.0.

For the Children: 5.50-6.10. Chanukah, S.0. Pouishnoff, Piano, 8.20. Film The Nobel Prize 8.30. Play Jonah." bv Bridie: 10.15-10.30, News Sverv branch of Smith's is organised ro satisfy quickly your book needs.

At Smith's shops you ill find a wide ranga oi books in stock and at the bookstalls, a smaller, but always interesting selection. Should the book you want not be in stock, our Daily Supply Service from Head Office ensures prompt delivery, whether ordered from shop or bookstall. W. H. SMITH SON Branches throughout England and Wal Book Tokens Books are the best of all gifU if in doubt, send Book Tokens.

Five new designs this year, obtainable at all good bookshops. Exchange values 36 5- 76 106 126 21-. Plus 4d service fee AND FOR THE CHILDREN Book Tallies 120 designs available. 7id. adk CONSTANT HOT WATER from your prmnl back-bmlmr ffro FittlnM oaadr tat mi greplac a U4.

tiia Ewrbiuaa annni cee and iMj eo any aolldftut. hmnwrpmt. fl i oat feature-pfaD rouulMrtma1 fire, umplrlifti oft. Cam mim 6 mmd In moat ordinary mrmtmm to homo yomr Hr 'in mu day or night 66- tax trm Smnd for fall detail NOW EVKRBURNB LTD. (Bwt I t), HARROGATE, YOaOCS, LECTURE ITALIAN 39.

S.W I Napoleon and Italy." a lecture In fagffii by Prof A. Passer in d'Entrevet, Serena of Italian Studio, Oxford. Dee. U. Entrance free.

When all is said and done, however, the film belongs to Belte Davis There are few actresses on the screen to-day who can beat Miss Dans at her best, and she is at her flaming hcsl in this one. As a hard-working, impulsive, nerve-ridden theatre stjr of forty, who looks every year ol her age and knows it, she uses no take i aids to persuasion, nor pretends lo a youthful beauty she has lost if she ever had it. By sheer integrity of per-i formance, by thinking deeply about the woman she is playing, by usinK all the technical tricks she has learnt 1 in her long career as a public entertainer, she magnificently suggests an actress who must inevitably dominate any stage, and still, with all her tantrums, inspire Ioalty and atiec-lion off it. When Miss Davis disappears from the screen, a reel or so before the end of the film, the tire seems to go out and the embers die. although they flare up again at last wun a teasing little splutter.

King Solomon's Mines (Empire) bears hardly any relation to the Rider Haggard novel, but combines the pleasures of a visit to the Zoo with the edification of reading the National Geographical Magazine during, the intervals of a folk-dance maHnee. The animals and the natives seem properly at home; the white actors much less so. Miss Deborah Kerr, as an explorer's widow who won't leave well alone, punctuates the narrative with piercing screams and sudden faints every time the sight of a new specimen of local fauna reminds her that Africa has been described as the white man's grave. On each occasion Mr. Stewart Granger, as Allan Quater-main, clasps her courteously to his torso, only pausing to swipe at a cobra or two with his fur-trimmed hat; all the while preserving the decencies of an English gentleman who hesitates to suggest to the lady of his choice that she has strayed into the wrong club-room.

The Eric Ambler story, Highly Dangerous (Leicester Square), which sends Margaret Lockwood to the Middle East as the only British entomologist competent to investigate the breeding of disease germs for use in warfare, is either a very bad joke or a very bad drama; too silly to be taken seriously, too grim to be funny. Between Midnight and Dawn (Pavilion) is a smooth streak of artificial excitement about American police patrols and gangsters, who gobble up the miles of highway in sieeK, blacK, screaming limousines, with the impugnable intention of telling the world that a good police- man is very, very good, but a brutal policeman is terrible. My Son, the Professor (Conti- nentale) is a tentative work by the interesting Italian director, Castellani, i who hasn't yet struck full form, but I gives Aldo Fabrizi the chance to dis- tinguish himself in the sort of rich, sentimental part that might have been i written for Emil Jannings. HI Get By is an optimistic title for the musical at the Odeon, which I introduces what is probably the least tactful number ever written about Europe by an honest, patriotic, and neighbourly American; and acclaims it, with all the delicacy of a stampede of buffalo, as just the job for a benefit performance for the Free French. NCC TJ9M1 By NEVILE WALLIS JN his speech before the opening of the Royal Academy's winter exhibition (which must be con-considered at proper length next Sunday) Mr.

Desmond MacCarthv seemed to regret that the art critic to-day should be more concerned to note his particular emotional response to a work of art than to describe and appraise it according to his critical canons. The method of description and judgment has often appealed to men of letters; sixty years ago it served Shaw and Moore, Henley Somerset Maugham, the only portrait Graham Sutherland has painted, is reproduced in the book discussed below. and Gosse, and it may still be applied 10 more man nan me contemporary paintings seen in London. But subjecUve painting, it is plain, invalidates this mode: and the individual world of a Sutherland or Bacon calls surely not for dogmatic opinion or, indeed, accurate description how coniure ud a mental picture of the meandering lines and toomy shapes ot Sutherland Sun Setting Between Hills but rather a hint of the artist's motives and of the kind of enchantment he may (or may fail to) communicate to the sympathetic spectator. It is a daunt ing tasK, as Mr.

Robert Melville knows, and his account of the imagery of Oraham Sutherland seems to me a model of uncloudy interpretation, perfectly intelligible to the student and, in this collaborative venture, as faithful to the artist's intentions as words can express them. While a kindred spirit may enter this barren land of horned or spear-like forms, this thorny path of ours, without the assistance of a guidebook, the uninitiated, too, will need no explanatory footnote to the Northampton Crucifixion," as remorseless as a Grilnewald, or the portrait of Somerset Maugham, taut skinned with lack-lustre eyes, surely one of the most searching studies of our time. Mr. Robert Colquhoun, another uncompromising individualist has lately spent some months feasting his eyes on the brilliant riot of the carnival and the fairground crowds in Florence and Siena, and one might suppose that something of his excitement had been transferred to his paintings at the Lefevre Gallery. Grotesque indeed they are, as carnival figures are; but his pictures have been so ruthlessly planned so strictly organised as patterns that a reclining woman must be twisted like a jointed lay-figure that all the exuberance of the scene has fled.

Only occasionally, and more often in his monotypes, does he take us out of his studio and give us a glimpse of Siena. Graham Sutherland, with an Introduction by Robert Melville (Ambassador Publishing 2 12s. 6dJ. Television 'T'HE performance of Puccini's powerful little opera II Tabarro was an exciting event for opera lovers. As I sat by my fireside, and looked at and listened to a music-drama that the great theatres have neglected, I could not but fancy that the caryatids at Covent Garden were slightly shaking.

There is so much that could be done by television in the realm of what might be called chamber opera; so many neglected works Gianni Schicchi," for example as well as the smaller titbits of the opera house, that could be made into household familiars in this way. Dare one hope that television is going to make a practice of producing opera and operetta for the home? Dare one suggest a regular opera evening, with a company of singers whom we come to know, as there is already a regular evening for drama, for ballet, and for variety? 'jit By SIR W. BEACH THOMAS OME few plots of English land have been exhaustively surveyed by co-operative groups of naturalists. Wfcken Fen, Scolt-Head and Skokholm island are three of them. We know of all their inhabitants, mammals, birds, water denizens, plants, geology, in some cases tides and much of their history.

The island of Skomer has now to be added; and the chief harvest of the survey, made by groups of ardent volunteers, is described in a book edited and in part written by two eminent naturalists Island of Skomer," bv John Buxton and R. M. Lock ley. Staples Press. These islands, off the Pembrokeshire coast, have an inexpressible fascination: Skokholm, where the strangest of all experiments in migration were tried out with the Manx shearwater, and Grassholm, where thousands of gannets breed, have already an international reputation, and Skomer will soon have.

Ramsey, which I happen to know better than the more famous tno, has a like fascination. Tearing sea currents divide it from the land; but once after a day on the island my companion successfully swam the mile and more of troubled water without any previous preparation. On one occasion a great buzzard almost brushed the face of two climbers rather precariously feeling their way along the face of one of the splendid cliffs. I have a photograph of the front of one of the caves in which appears the head of a seal which emerged most timeously. How well 1 remember watching a herring gull apparently bowing and scraping by itself for no very obvious purpose.

It was, in fact, as a powerful glass showed, scooping out the interior of an unfortunate guillemot's egg. Ramsey is rich in birds; but it misses the peculiarities of Skokholm and Skomer, where the Manx shearwaters breed in astonishing number, alongside that lovely, almost delicate-looking bird, the storm petrel. I said once to one of the authors of this survey that I hardly knew this petrel. Oh, don't you," he said, and pulling out a bit of hooked wire from his pocket, poked it into a hole in an old bank and pulled out a perfectly good petrel, which after our admiration went quietly back to its egg. That little incident will explain the astonishing intimacy of the surveyors with their birds and, indeed, their mammals, which include the unique Skomer vole." Over 1 ,600 shearwaters were ringed in one breeding season at Skomer, many of them caught by hand at night; and no experience that I know of can parallel the incoming of these noisy birds in the darkness.

It is briefly described by the authors, one of whom is a poet, The island's night entertainment was a delightful experience: above was the vast, black clouded dome filled with a bedlam of weird screams; beneath was the bracken (filled with the fairy lights of the glowworms) and the heather, and the silent, still or suddenly skurrying forms of the shearwaters." There are snakes in this Eden, including the little owl, a special enemy of the petrels; and nature red in tooth and claw is often in evidence; but the most vulnerable species survive and, indeed, often multiply (though they lay but one egg) beyond their more prolific persecutors. Erratum Pink-footed was written by a slip of the pen instead of white-fronted in a recent description of geese arriving from Ireland at the grounds of the Severn Wild Fowl Trust XIMENES CROSSWORD No. 1S4 1. T. E.

Sanders (Walsall). Clue to RABBIT. Saving up a little does multiply it quickly (savings bar, except: does females) 2 P. M. Michael (Whitchurch) 3.

P. M. Newey (Reading). H.C. C.

A. Baker. I. W. Bates.

Maj. H. Carter. J. C.

Chavassc. Cordcry, L. Eyres. Mrs. N.

Fisher, A R. Frascr, S. B. Green, J. P.

Lloyd, C. C. Mclnroy. F. E.

Newlove. R. Poslill, G. W. Pugh, W.

Rennie, H. Ridley. A. Robins, E. O.

Seymour, Mrs. E. S. G. Sheehan, F.

Simms. K. Slimmings. Dr. D.

W. Williams. Half-yearly Consolation Prizes: F. L. Constable.

G. Lawrance, Rev. E. B. Peel, and J.

S. Young (four commendations each). (The number of competitors who have figured in these lists is now 788.) By C. A. LEJEUNE 11 Tabarro," apart from the intrinsic value of the work, struck me as a less successful production than the recent, Madam Butterfly and Pagli-acci." It was musicianly work, but too much of it was, perhaps inevitably, played too dark; and I could not help feeling that the interjected film sequences were a mistake.

Tit is true that the French television cameraman gave us some delightful pictures of the River Seine, the watermen who work on it and the houses and quays that stand along its banks; but too much realism may be a distraction in opera, which is essentially a formal, theatrical, and a stylised thing. The men with the sacks in an odd way reduced the stature of the Man with the Cloak, and the rapid adjustments of the eye endangered the concentration of the ear, which must accept an opera in a single and unbroken flow the voice only one other instrument, although the soloist in a full orchestra. XIMENES THE moment chosen to tell the audience All About Eve (Gaumont) is the one at which this singular and single-minded young woman is handed the Sarah Siddons Award for distinguished achievement in the theatre. Smiling, radiant, but prettily modest, as becomes a debutante actress who has just been voted the woman of the year, she stretches out her hand to receive the trophy. The news-cameras flash; the photograph is frozen into a still and, in what is probably the most authentic flashback in cinema history the account of Eve Harrington's spectacular rise to fame is shown through the eyes of the five people at the ceremonv.

two women and 1 three men. who have most cause to know her intimately. These are an ageing Broadway actress; her best friend, who has taken pity on a stage-struck girl and introduced her to the great star; a I director; an author, and a critic. All I five of them have played their parts i in Eve's success, and to all five, in her shy speech of thanks, she pays becoming tribute. I nat is ait i am going to tell you about the plot, because I intend to follow the example of the film and play fair with the audience.

The great charm of All About Eve," apart from its wit and genuine understanding of human nature, is the story's gradual unfolding. A stranger is introduced into a close group of people, who have worked together for years in a I world of their own. She has sufficient i quality to make a vivid first impres-' sion on them all, but it takes them a 1 long time to get to know her well. I All About Eve is an intriguing case of solvitur amhulando. and a reviewer who would spoil its calculated develop-i ment is a cad indeed.

Anne Baxter, as the subject of the inquiry, is a shrewd enough actress to keep her secrets to herself and reveal them in her own good time, and her playing has a candid innocence which makes Eve's popular triumph not incredible. George Sanders is splendid as a critic with an X-ray eye, a clever beast of whom our profession can feel justly proud and ashamed; Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe ring true enough as director and writer; and Celeste Holm manages to make a thoroughly nice woman seem nice, without ever making her seem silly. In Your Garden By V. SACKVILLE-WEST LADY writes to ask what she can grow as an edging to her rosebeds. She wants something out of the ordinary, something that will flower all the summer, something that will require no attention, and, of course, it must be a perennial.

Is that, she says, asking too much? This inquiry rather put me on my mettle. I did not dare to suggest anything so obvious as catmint (Nepela Mussinit), which would have fulfilled all her demands with the singlepro-viso that by way of attention she would have to cut it right back to the base in early spring. Clearly, it is difficult to find something that will at least look neat when not in flower. The rock -roses perhaps provide as long a flowering period as anything, but there again you would have to clip them back after their first rush of bloom (which does last for at least two months) in order to make them break out again later on, and this operation might also come under the heading of attention." The Cheddar Pink, Dtanlhus caesius, I thought, would look neat and gay as an edging, with the additional charm of the exceedingly sweet smell from its masses of pale rosy flowers. Two little speedwells.

Veronica repens and Veronica rupestris, would be pretty in their mats of china blue; and the rather taller Veronica incana, with darker blue spikes, would offer the advantage of tidy silvery leaves. Gypsophila fratensis and Tunica saxifraga would both trail in a foam of pink, like small clouds touched by sunset. Or, if my correspondent desired a stronger colour, the low-growing Viola Hunter-combe purple, most intense and imperial, would glow in a manner to attract notice even from a distance. Or, if she desired no colour at all, the beautifully shaped Viola septentrion-alis, pure white, with leaves like a violet. But, I added in my reply to my correspondent, why restrict your rosebeds to a mere edging? Why not allow the plants to ancroach all over the beds? It will do the roses no harm, in fact it will supply a living mulch to keep the ground moist and the roses cool at the roots.

It was, I think, that great gardener William Robinson who first advocated and practised this revolutionary idea. His roses certainly throve in spite of, or because of. it. When one murmured something about manure, he snorted and said that it was quite unnecessary. I fancy, however, that in these davs of comoost- heaps he would have agreed to some generous handfuls being inserted as a I top-dressing annually between the plants; or even some organic fertiliser i such as bone-meal.

Crossword 155 PLAIN Give him warm wishes for Christmas At every Austin Reed shop you will find just the sort of gifts that men like to receive one suggestion is shown here. If you are uncertain, send him an Austin Reed Gift Voucher and let him choose something for himself. We will pack your presents for you, post them, and pay the postage to any address in Great Britain or Northern Ireland. Should a present prove unsuitable, it can be exchanged at any Austin Reed shop. OF REGENT STREET Bridge By TERENCE REESE TPHAT luck can play a big part in duplicate bridge is shown by this hand from the match between America and Europe in the world championship.

M7 0 96 3 2 0 Q94 8 2 KQ 109 CKJ84 0 A K. 6 9 A842 AS 0 753 AQ43 6 5 3 10 7 0 108 2 10765 North dealt at love all. In Room 1 the Icelandic pair, playing their highly conventionalized system, reached Seven Spades by West, after a Vienna sequence beginning: East One Club, West One No-Trump, East Two Clubs. Goren, North, led a Heart, and the hand was then a lav- down, declarer needing to ruff only one Heart. In 'the other room the bidding by Rapee and Crawford was: Cne Club One Heart; One Spade Four No-Trumps (Blackwood); Five Spades Seven Spades.

South led 6, and dummy's 9 was covered by the Jack and Ace. Rapee drew a second round of trumps with the Queen and set out to ruff two of dummy's Hearts; if the third round would stand up, the fourth could be ruffed safely with the 8 As luck would have it, East's 4 was over-ruffed by South's 5. Of the lead in Room 1 it might be said that a trump was less likely to give a trick away than a lead from any of the side suits; in practice, it would have been no better, for after drawing two trumps declarer would have had the A 8 left in dummy with which to ruff two Hearts. Chess By BRIAN HARLEY Godfrey Healhcnic mm V. hue ptd and m3ic ihrtc moei No l.fcSJ.

Marking for sciUers. yh ch(iMT Section A Eah kc 20 Eh forced While vecond mmc (cidudmg short males) with he rcJaue Btarrk tsrtt moe 4 Each disuni md-miHc ujI iz fu (ex ding hcrt male Hh re la me Biack moey 1. eic Each short, mace I f-urther pJa is not wanted Far Section a usual, each kev i correct damn ot nn solut ion -i 1 .62. Member (J K6 mark Thira: R6 Kl -4i Q4 i -O KJ The ihcmc of interference of Che Ki with reciprocal and mjlc i rar'iej run nnh r'urir ntir ir.ei truluJe B4 i 1 A tie i the answer to the knotty problem of vohat he wants there are all kinds in wool, 6 '3; cashmere, 8-; rayon, from 613; silk, from 10,6 to 21- or silk cut rom the square, 23- LONDON REGENT 679 a cold to fZfVTit 6, IOO POH 8J6 fkom chemists okly Vim to Th Crook Laboratories LmL, Dept. ij.

LONDON AND PRINCIPAL CITIES OB I207 Why wait to when it's easier wiHk 4t iOu first Give smrHq f-Kis Ckoose 0te of frhe origin! designs 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 5 to jr I aaaa aaaaaa aaamai aaaaaa aaaai "Si 22 23 2G 27 2S 1 29 1 I I I I I I I I I I i ACROSS 1 Current in BraiiL by he sound of it (8) 7 Dog is removed from bone (4) 11 Bst actress for shocking the Dean! (4) 12 I take the in off in a diabolical way a nice brake? (8) 13 Here a warped old man lived here, too. we may see ihe warped old man die 9) 15 Wine (hai keeps ill in a raw hide container (3) 16 You need a car or other means of transport round Ushant (5 19 Laic Queen of he East Riding (6) 20 Ta.nt ihar results when the rough element takes a boy 21 it's hard when grig replaces pig' (6) 23 Beginning of boring trailer, looking awfully dull (6) 25 Primitive craft with small coins lying abom stern 26 Revealed the explanation of one kind of aunt's existence. qua aunP 8l 29 You want a )ug? Look in the kitchen i9) 30 Split up the tin and muscle in for profit (8; 31 Stars reveal how the dollar closes in America 4) 32 Formerly Miss I suffer from middle-aged spread bed in Scotland1 (4) 33 Terminating a d'sease (8) DOWN 1 1 wouldn't a her the regulations esieniial for Home Defence 4i 2 They're heathen, said the statistician 8 3 Provided -with means ro reach the loft, but not really fit to houe calves l8i 4 All thLS poetry is just an idee fixe a sort ffjf 5 The Mule tick leads a double hfe tha: settles things' 6 Once once ihe same he same as 4 only different (5) 8 The biorv aboul me. a sdfc girl led astrav, was "left half-told 9 The 'hird class collection are iu-- concrete' (4j 10 Heres the Persian leader lei be sure our skirts do, cried ihe modesi madeni' (8i 14 Quarrel (ha: sounds like what a gentleman of Verona wanted to do i1 16 The Holy Devil," torturer of Punrans fBl 17 The sub-enani's peevish afrer dismissals in France 8t No. 155.

PRIZE RL'LLS 1 Book rokens aluf 2ls 1s I'K fd for clues judged hesi correci solunon essen1 al Solution on -pi mied d.ag am avid due 10 erlace dchn von clue a sic risked. rirs' pjst Saturday Ximenes. CROOKES HALIBUT OIL 18 The Italian ladv in Perrdult i stones with an aiiraction for the men 22 Tawny owl eyeing whai 11 already its prey1 iM 23 You 11 have 10 face breakfas" wnh lexers unread f(ii 24 My mother's a valuable laver do produce a few small grains! (5 27 Negligible rcmna'it surviving nuptials of immature melanochroous otrichan 4) 25 Moderate nowad and api 10 cheat used lo be keen (4) Chambers's TwentH Ji Centura Die Ufjrtar ret iminended 22. Tudor-slreet. EC 4 Notes optional One entry only.

Slips wnh deraili of successful clues supplied lo senders of td stamped addressed envelopes i not s'jmpsi 4 Halt-early constilai ion prizes il' frd tokens) for non- prizewinners who ija.n most commerdai'ons CAPSULES 35 POR 3 FREE! StnJfor the booklet 'A itory you cart hardly txhevj fully UlusTraud talcvr tf Park RcyaJ, LcnJin, -V TO. l6 CROSVENOR STREET LONDOM ttf.S and leading fashion houses throughout the courvcr.

Get access to Newspapers.com

  • The largest online newspaper archive
  • 300+ newspapers from the 1700's - 2000's
  • Millions of additional pages added every month

Publisher Extra® Newspapers

  • Exclusive licensed content from premium publishers like the The Observer
  • Archives through last month
  • Continually updated

About The Observer Archive

Pages Available:
296,826
Years Available:
1791-2003