... Elizabeth Bewehs Novels of High Society from the Victorian Age Certified So Long at the Fair Penguin Guides NOVELS of HIGH SOCIETY FROM THE VICTORIAN AGE (Pilot Press; 18s.) is an omnibus which pursues a pro mising route. The conductor is, one might put it, Anthony Powell, who, having selected the novels, very ably suggests, in his Introduction, some outstanding features of the bygone ...

... 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 ...

... OUR BOOKSHELF Rupert Croft-Cooke REVIEWED ON THIS PAGE. CREATURES OF CIRCUMSTANCE. By W. Somerset Maugham. (Heinemann 10s. 6 d.) MEN OF TASTE. By Martin S. Briggs. (Bats ford 15s.) RETURN TO NIGHT. By Mary Renault. (Longmans, Green 10s. 6 d.) THE DEADLY PERCHERON. By John Franklin Bardin. Gollancz 8s. 6 d.) CREATURES OF CIRCUMSTANCE. From Mr. Somerset Maugham's new book of short stories ...

... (Mr tfcu ft \JUUIajl^ Peace In Our Time (Lyric) TH Anthony Cookman and Tom Titt VERY likely Mr. Noel Coward's latest play will run for a long while. Yet it is not, I fancy, the kind of play that he had hoped to write, and should it succeed merely on its incidental brightness and easy appeals to patriotic feeling, possibly he, no less than his admirers, will be disappointed. Peace in Our Time ...

... Reviewed by Trevor Allen WHAT better for the holiday month than a charming book, My Country-in-Law (Michael Joseph, 10s. 6d.), about a little- known corner of France-- that rugged, granite, heather Creuse country near Vichy where the men are mostly stonecutters and masons and the women toil in the fields? To reach the St. V ri pi v-1 a -Mnn fx ptip home of the French artist whom she had ...

... 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 ...

... By John Courtenay. TRESPASS (Globe) is a play by Emlyn Williams to the time of A-haunting we will go. He chooses a castle in Wales, seated pleasantly in the middle of a lake, and appears him self as a Cardiff draper who is not the fake medium he thinks he is. We are with the blither spirits during the first half of the play-- thanks largely to Marjorie Rhodes, delightfully candid as a ...

... By C. A. Lejeune. THE WEB (Tivoli).-- One of the smaller but slicker Hollywood thrillers, done with a deliberation that almost makes its extravagant postu lates acceptable. A poor young lawyer is framed on a murder charge by the smooth business-man he has been hired to pro tect; a sleuth from the Homicide Squad uses his own methods to unveil the real killer. Vincent Price, as the business ...

... LES DISPARUS DE ST. AGIL THERE are three things, roughly speaking, that seem to be foolproof material for the screen-- running water, running horses, and of small boys. e screen has hardly ever made a mistake v, pictures of children in the mass, and there is mistake about the French film at Studio One, Disparus de St. Agil. The film is technically lis J, that must be allowed. It was made in ...

... Elizabeth Boivens IT has been my experience (remarks Collie Knox, in his foreword to People of Quality) that when human beings have attained their ambitions, they become, except in isolated instances, much nicer individuals. They have ceased their biting and scratching. Whereas once they stamped with both feet on those who stood in their path they are now kindly and not at all violently ...

... OUR BOOKSHELF Rupert Croft-Cooke REVIEWED ON THIS PAGE. EUSTACE AND HILDA. By L. P. Hartley. (Putnam 10s. 6 d.) NINETEEN STORIES. By Graham Greene. (Heinemann 8s. 6d.) MINUTE FOR MURDER. MINUTE FOR MURDER. By Nicholas Blake. (Collins, Crime Club 8s. 6d.) (Collins, Crime Club 8s. 6 d.) TENNIS WITHOUT TEARS. TENNIS WITHOUT TEARS. By Susan Noel. (Hutchinson 10s. 6 d.) (Hutchinson 10s. 6 d.) ...