... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... Elizabeth Betvens Creatures of Circumstance Treadmill Leave to Presume the Death The Novel Since 1939 QUITE an interesting study for the sub- historian could be: errors which gave rise to famous false alarms. These, I imagine, would be found to thicken with the approach to our own fortunate day: the type writer must be responsible for many. I advisedly say the typewriter, not the young lady at ...

... (M Deep Are The loots (Wyndham's) THEY are the roots of racial hatred and fear that still bedevil the relations of white people and coloured folk in the Deep South. The problem thus perpetuated is purely American; but to assume therefore that you won't be interested in its treatment will be to deny yourself an evening of exciting theatre. It is exciting theatre because the authors (Arnaud ...

... Elizabeth Bewens THE sad part about many monuments is their stoniness, which may seem to place the person they would commemorate back in the coldness of other time. But John Buchan, by His Wife and Friends (Hodder and Stoughton; 12s. 6d.), is what seems ideal-- a living monu ment to a man who lived life to the full. In part a composite memoir, in part a series of portraits by different hands, ...

... 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, ...

... THE name of Jeanne Demessieux is well known in France, but not particularly so in this country. Admittedly she broad cast in the Third Programme some few weeks ago but I am sure when you have heard her playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor you will know that here is an organist who will make her mark throughout the world. Walt Disney introduced this music to a very wide public in ...

... C Ur 7fc- Dr. Angelus (Phoenix) Anthony Cookman and Tom Titt AN eccentric Glasgow doctor poisons his wife's mother. His innocent young partner obligingly signs the certificate regularizing the death. The eccentric then poisons his wife, and again the partner's signature is forthcoming. But youth and innocence do not last for ever. The good young man's suspicions are aroused, he sends for the ...

... Cbt 1&L- Fly Away Peter (St. James's) Anthony Cookman and Tom Titt MR. DEARSLEY'S comedy of suburban family life is for those o us who go to the theatre, not to ask awkward questions, but to be innocently beguiled into a good laugh or a good cry. At the St. James's we shall enjoy both, and much good acting into the bargain. The whole thing hinges comfortably on Mr. J. H. Roberts, ai actor ...