... 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 ...

... IT is some years since Mr. Somerset Maugham wrote in a preface to a volume of short stories, significantly titled The Mixture as Before, I shall not write any more stories. In the preface to CREATURES OF CIRCUMSTANCE (Heinemann. ios. 6d.), Mr. Maugham blames the proof-reader and claims that he had written many and not any. He says that some of the stories in Creatures of Circumstance were ...

... MANY of his friends, among them men who are them selves famous writers and historians, have combined to pay tribute to John Buchan, in a volume that is both sincere and touching, and which bears witness to the many-sided activity of this remarkable figure whom more people knew as the author of Thirty-Nine Steps than as Lord Tweedsmuir, Governor-General of Canada. JOHN BUCHAN, by His Wife and ...

... MR. MALCOLM ELWIN'S triple biography of Words worth, Coleridge and Southey is an ambitious and, in the main, a successful undertaking. He has seen these three poets as THE FIRST ROMANTICS (Macdonald. 15s.), and as three figures whose lives should always be considered against the political background of the times in which they lived. They were born in the 1770's within six years of each other, ...

... CESARE BORGIA AND RUDOLF HESS Books About Two Totalitarian* and Other New Publications Briefly Reviewed Cesare Borgia, known to all the world as a sinister, Machiavellian figure who stopped at nothing in the achievement of his ambitions, whose indifference to human life was as much a byword as the luxury and debauchery of his Court, has for these very reasons been revealed but seldom in ...

... DOING JUSTICE TO WASHINGTON A Novel More Discerning than the Biographies; and Other New Books Briefly Reviewed In the anguish of defeat and frustration it is possible to read most dearly the character of men. We should, if that reasoning be sound, know George .Washington truly well, but historians have not seized their opportunities with regard to the great Virginian. Mason Weems, who recorded ...

... ESCAPE TO TEXAS A best-belling Novel and Its Brooklyn Author A Memoir of Dunkirk, and Other Books Briefly Reviewed In the past half-century American writers have excelled in the territorial novel. In this medium they have found a niche secure in modern literature. They have taken the history of their country, the rugged story of pioneering and adventure, and they have brought it to life. Edna ...

... THE ENGLISH CHARACTER AND THE ENGLISH SCENE Two Authors and Two Artists Give Their Individual Viewpoints Chesterton called the English The Secret People. Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget: For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet. That was how he wrote, but in doing so he was more concerned with the England of his imaginative reckoning, still the ...