... RECORD DF THE WEEK THE musical taste of the general public often takes a curious' twist, and those who are sworn anti-jazzites suddenly become conscious that something of this day and age is worth while. In the same way the jazz fiend discovers that the basis of this type of music is often directly traceable to a solid knowledge of the classics. Thus it is interesting to see that Sidney Torch ...

... Elizabeth Bcwen s BROWNS AND CHESTER: A Portrait of a Shop (Lindsay Drummond; 15s.) has an unusual author-- Mass-Observation. Up to now, this form of research has been applied to contemporary affairs; and enlighten ing, if sometimes startling, have its results been --we have been documented, if one may so put it, up to the hilt. We may still be ignorant as to our neighbours' ways of life if ...

... THERE are two recent recordings of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, and though it may seem too much to suggest that both versions of this major work are heard, no one who really enjoys and appreciates music should miss listening to one or other set of records. Apart from the actual performance of the orchestras concerned, both recordings show how much in advance British recording systems are ...

... By K. JOHN. By Taylor Caldwell. BECAUSE the country is vast, remarks Taylor Caldwell, Americans have evolved an architecture on the same scale. One might add that in recent years the inspiration has been at work on some of their novelists. As applied to fiction, it may be a true analogy, or a case of Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat; either way, it seems responsible for a number of ...

... NOEL COWARD sets his last scene in May 1945. Visitors who come, unprepared, to the Lyric Theatre, may assume from a glance at the programme that a drama of the war years will end with an orthodox VE-Day scene and, possibly, with a speech that will be a parallel to the famous toast in Cavalcade. Later, reading the programme more carefully, they may wonder what a batch of S.S. Guards and ...

... BOOKS IN BRIEF It's My Delight. By Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. (Eyre and Spottiswoode ios. 6d.) And it s mine. The author haS friends on both sides of the fence, and while he makes game-laws and orthodox hunting interesting, his acquaintance with mouchers, tramps and gypsies enables him to reveal some other happenings on a shiny night. I can imagine no better Christmas present for anyone who is ...

... GISSING AGAIN A New Edition of A Life's Morning, and Other Publications Briefly Reviewed George Gissing died in 1903. To-day, owing to the exigencies of war and a certain measure of neglect, his rather joyless novels are hard to get, and the author is known to a diminishing circle of readers. Gissing's early experiences in Manchester preoccupied him with poverty and its brutalising effects ...

... THE ANGELIC AVENGERS (Putnam. 10s. 6d.) is definitely an oddity, since in style and plot it has a marked resemblance to the Gothic literature of the past two centuries, and that is a literary manner that is now almost forgotten and almost never practised. The novel is, how ever, much more readable than the term implies, and has great force and even a queer kind of excitement. The publishers ...

... MR. PETER DRUCKER will be remembered as the author of The End of Economic Man. Published be fore the war, it was the chal lenge of an organised industry working under a democratic system of free enterprise to the then Nazi menace, and it set forth certain economic argu ments which postulated the eventual destruction of historical ideologies in the struggle with the powerful forces which were ...

... BALBOA to MUSICK The Story of Pacific Conquest, and Other Books Briefly Reviewed When Vasco Nunez de Balboa, that roystering, ambitious and avaricious soldier of fortune, that prince of stow aways, set out for the New World, it was with the object of evading his debts in Spain. What he found was the Pacific Ocean and gold enough to pay off many times over the creditors he had left behind in ...

... THE story of the beginnings of the wartime Ministry of Information is a fairly chequered one, full of storms, trials and tribulations, and nearly always at the centre of these tempests was to be found a censor, or censors. it tOOK nearly three years of total war tn arhipvp mme sort of balanced I policy at the Ministry, and it says a great deal for the personality of Rear-Admiral G. P. Thomson, ...

... A SATIRICAL novel by a witty American woman is one of this week's best dis coveries. WE HAPPY FEW (Macdonald. 9s. 6d.) has been high on the best-seller lists in its own country for some time, but, as you know, that is no guarantee that a book will be equally popular over here. In this case, I think it has a fair chance of being extremely successful, and this in spite of the wholly and ...