... 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 ...

... 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, ...

... When L'Oiseau de Feu was first produced in Paris in 1910 it was atriumph for Stravinsky, and I have no hesitation in saying that the present recording on Decca K 1574-1576 is a triumph for Decca recording engineers, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Ernest Ansermet, who came over here originally with the Diaghilev company in 1920. Particularly was I taken by the smooth delight of ...

... . By LAWRENCE GOWING. (Standing-in for John Russell on holiday.) THE pleasures of the English comic stage are incomparable. My patent safety day and night light, the plumber calls his Polly in Caste, my brightest bat's wing and most brilliant burner! What endearment could be more winning? And at the other end of St. Martin's Lane from the Duke of York's there is to be seen a yet more ...

... By Darwin L. Teilhet. Darwin Teilhet's book has nothing epic about it; but a great deal of suspense, humour and sharp reality. It is the author's first attempt at straight fiction-- but he had not far to go; and one cannot see why he should ever go back again. As in The Fear Makers, he writes of a wounded soldier back from the war. Alvah said in one of his letters home that after this he ...

... By Erie Stanley Gardner. Then why bother to devise a problem I cannot think; yet how lucky that some writers will go on doing it. Erie Stanley Gardner does it in The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito, set in the Californian desert. A rich prospector, Banning Clarke, has been so mis guided as to house up, and as a natural result has developed heart trouble his only roof should have been the sky. ...

... ELIZABETH BOWENS Lady Gregory's Journals, 1916-1930 More Deadly than the Male Our Bird Book English Glass LADY GREGORY'S JOURNALS, 1916-1930 (Putnam; 18s.) have had as their editor Lennox Robinson. His has been no small task, for the Journals in full comprise 500,000 words, and it was necessary, before publication, to reduce these to 140,000. Not only was abridgment involved-- arrangement of ...

... BOW EN ON BOOKS (January 20th, 1922.) I asked G.B.S. when he would come back to Ireland, but he said, No. I 'll not go. I would be treated as the common enemy. I said De Valera had promised to join the others against the common enemy, so he might come to unite the two parties. He said: I am growing fonder of England now, as Napoleon grew fonder of France than of Corsica because he had ...

... I FEEL more like a godparent than a reviewer in relation to Miss Sheila Pirn's new novel CREEPING VENOM (Hodder and Stoughton. 8s. 6d.). After her first novel last year I urged her on this page to continue the good work, because it seemed to me that her talent was so fresh and her approach so skil fully artless that she was surely bound for a big success one day. Now that Miss Pirn has done ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor ^Allen DR. JOHNSON, Boswell, Piozzi, Mrs. Thrale is there any limit to permutation with such figures to play with? Mr. C. E. Vulliamy moves, relates, transposes them with skill in his elegantly written, Ursa Major: A Study of Dr. Johnson and His Friends (Michael Joseph, 15s.), pointing to old blots and blemishes if only to admit, in the end, that perhaps they were ...

... By Hammond Innes. Hammond Innes' novel takes us from the desert to the Dolomites. Neil Blair has been sent out to Col da Varda bv a film director, with instructions to keep his eyes open. He has no idea what to expect, or why anything should be expected the place is only a mountain hut reached by cable-sleigh. But it does appear to have its secrets the last owner was a German war criminal, ...

... I . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IT seems to be the fashion in certain critical circles at the moment to decry the romantic thriller, the spy him with a handsome hero, a glamorous heroine, and professional actors using make-up and all the trimmings, in favour of the dry, documentary, candid camera affair. There is held to be some special merit in a film that contains bits of newsreel, shots of the ...