... 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 ...

... Cbb Tfe, Richard II (New Theatre) THIS was certainly the time for the Old Vic to give us the most delicately English of all plays. Seeing the countryside agleam in its verse should be as good as a spring journey through the coloured counties. Shakespeare had a very poor opinion of our forbears, the noble knights and barons bold, who iostled for nosition round hanless Richard's throne. Yet ...

... THE British film version of L. A. G. Strong's novel The Brothers is something be tween a documentary and a melodrama: Man of crossed with one of the tougher French films of lust and vengeance. Technically, it is a very fine piece of work indeed, with beautiful photography of misty mountain and lonely loch, but not by any stretch of imagination could it be called soothing ...

... REVIEWED ON THIS PAGE. L. P. HARTLEY. THE ART OF THE FRENCH BOOK. Edited by Andrd Lejard. Introduction by Philip James. (Paul Elek £2 10s.) THE ROCK POOL. By Cyril Connolly. (Hamish Hamilton 8s. 6 d.) MRS. PALMER'S HONEY. By Fannie Cook. (Heinemann 8s. 6d.) FINAL CURTAIN. By Ngaio Marsh. (Collins 8s. 6 d.) THE ART OF THE FRENCH BOOK.-- Book production, though an enormous is also a ...

... THERE is a temporary lull in the books which tell how the war was won, and while the war correspondents and the ghost writers of the generals pause for breath, we are able to consider why the war was lost. Mr. Trevor-Roper has given us one penetrating piece of history from an examination of the last days of Hitler, and now Major Milton Shulman, of the Canadian Armoured Corps, is able to give ...

... at 1&L We Proudly Present' (D ike of York's) THE theatre likes to show an image of its own life, playgoers like to be taken behind the scenes, and since Mr. Ivor Novello, the self-appointed guide in this instance, is both amusing and knowledgeable all should be well. Any who join the party without knowing Mr. Novello (there may still be a few of obscurantist upbringing who do not know Mr. ...

... ELIZABETH ItllttfVS The Hunters and the Hunted Genevieve Sussex The Black Stocking SACHEVERELL SITWELLS The Hunters and the Hunted (Macmillan; 15s.) reminds one that all the arts, as it has been said, aspire to the condition of music. This writing is an operatic treatment of prose even, there runs through these pages some thread of connection with the Tales of Hoffman, of which from ...

... (bfr TfuL ly 0-* Bless The Bride (Adelphi) Oklahoma! (Drury Lane) BIG BEN loosed a swarm of bees that had long buzzed in Sir Alan Herbert's bonnet. There were redundant nose-pokers, kill joys who would deny the Briton his liquor, legislators thin-blooded and deplorable or full- blooded and admirable, peers humanized by beer and skittles in riverside saloons, London River itself and its ...

... RICHARD JEFFERIES PROPHET And Other New Books Briefly Reviewed Richard Jefferies, essayist and observer of nature, was a lyrical and impassioned writer with a love and an accurate knowledge of natural history. His outstanding work, The Story of My Heart, has brought him immortality, but the Victorian world in which he lived labelled him a malard imaginaire, a poverty-stricken neurotic. We now ...

... A PUKAPUKAN IDYLL And Other New Books Briefly Reviewed A voiceless interdental spirant palatised. That is how a Pulcapukan deals with the letter y; at any rate, that is what Ernest Beaglehole thinks about it, and most of us will no doubt be quite content to accept this scholarly verdict. Pukapuka is an atoll in the South Pacific, 390 miles north east of Samoa, and 715 miles north-west of ...

... Cbt HfL- The Play's Ihe Th ig (St. James's) Is it possible that a private wager lies at the back of this revival? Molnar's comedy, one would have supposed, belonged to the Lost Legion of plays. As long ago as 1928 Gerald du Maurier and a highly talented company put it on at the St. James's Theatre. It met with a politely mixed reception and a brief run. This was not Molnar's first defeat in ...

... , Michael Powell's new film at the Odeon, is such an enchanting bit of colour-work, so beautifully designed and matched, and so captivating to the eye, that nothing else matters in the first instance. It is in Technicolor, and I cannot remember any other work in which Technicolor has achieved the subtle blandishments of this picture. The scene is a wind-blown, long-neglected palace, high ...