... ACCORDING to his dedica tion, Mr. Cyril Connolly appears to have been unable to get an English publisher to take THE ROCK POOL (Hamish Hamilton. 8s. 6d.) when it was written in 1935. It was published in Paris in 1936 by a sportsman called lack Kahane, who waged a lonely guerilla war against English prudery (and who found my book so little salacious that he used to tell me it was a disgrace to ...

... STARTLING, original, pos sibly even shocking to a number of readers, is Mr. Robert Graves' KING JESUS (Cassell. 12s. 6d.). In this long book, which I sometimes felt as I read it was overburdened with the detail that may prove erudition, the author develops a theory that Jesus was born of an earthly father and mother, and that He was the temporal heir to Herod's kingdom. The book is written in ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor zA lien FANNY KEMBLE was an unusual actress. The theatrical profession, she said, was utterly distasteful to me, though acting itself was not. Cast to play Desdemona, she confessed, I feel horribly at the idea of being murdered in my bed. She would dissect her own acting more ruthlessly than any critic, with no illusions that she was an inspired genius. She ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor tAllen CHRISTMAS is a happy time for book buyers; they can impose on others their own particular fancies and thus double their pleasure. Instead of merely saying You must read so- and-so, they pack off the book, which is much more satisfying-- to the sender if not always to the recipient. JNo doubt the new Bernard ralk biography, The Way of the Montagues (Hutchinson, ...

... Elizabeth Betvens Creatures of Circumstance Treadmill Leave to Presume the Death The Novel Since 1939 QUITE an interesting study for the sub- historian could be: errors which gave rise to famous false alarms. These, I imagine, would be found to thicken with the approach to our own fortunate day: the type writer must be responsible for many. I advisedly say the typewriter, not the young lady at ...

... Elizabeth Betvehs PROBABLY no novelist exposed the inside of his working brain as completely as did Gustave Flaubert. The answer to What does it feel like to be a writer? has been furnished by him-- at length, ruthlessly, freely, and with sometimes intimidating results. It was not that Flaubert, a stolid Norman of considerable reserve, went about giving informa tion to all and sundry-- what ...

... (M Deep Are The loots (Wyndham's) THEY are the roots of racial hatred and fear that still bedevil the relations of white people and coloured folk in the Deep South. The problem thus perpetuated is purely American; but to assume therefore that you won't be interested in its treatment will be to deny yourself an evening of exciting theatre. It is exciting theatre because the authors (Arnaud ...

... Elizabeth Bewens THE sad part about many monuments is their stoniness, which may seem to place the person they would commemorate back in the coldness of other time. But John Buchan, by His Wife and Friends (Hodder and Stoughton; 12s. 6d.), is what seems ideal-- a living monu ment to a man who lived life to the full. In part a composite memoir, in part a series of portraits by different hands, ...

... Ctfr tfe- The Anonymous Lover (Duke of York's) MR. VERNON SYLVAINE is my favourite writer of farces that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called intellectual. His fun is simple and usually it follows the same pattern. Some might say that it is a pattern indistinguishable from that of a dozen other farces by different hands; but I find in Mr. Sylvaine's workmanship an admirable ...

... (bfr I AM in no way 'psychic,' wrote Kipling towards the end of his life. I have seen too much of the evil and sorrow and wreck of good minds on the road to Endor to take one step along that perilous path. Yet some of his ghost stories haunt the memory. Seeing the dubious road from a safe distance, he was in a position to know that the most satisfactory kind of ghost must not satisfy, but ...

... 800K REVIEWS ELIZABETH BOWES S The Life of the Heart Westwood How to be An Alien In the A9ey Mayo Trio THE LIFE OF THE HEART, by Frances Winwar (Hamish Hamilton; 12s. 6d.), is the story of George Sand and her times. And what a story! This astonishing Frenchwoman was born in 1804; died in 1876. As a little girl, she exchanged a glance with Napoleon; she was to live through (and at close ...

... ELIZABETH BOWELS War in Val d'Orcia'' Peace Breaks Out R.A.A.F. Over Europe Memoirs of Mipsie WAR IN VAL D'ORCIA, by Iris Origo (Cape; IOS. 6d.), is, as far as I know, the first record to reach us of the war in Italy from the civilian angle. As such, alone, it would be of considerable human interest, but it is a good deal more. This is a diary; the first entry dated January 30th, 1943, ...