... BOOKS IN BRIEF It's My Delight. By Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. (Eyre and Spottiswoode ios. 6d.) And it s mine. The author haS friends on both sides of the fence, and while he makes game-laws and orthodox hunting interesting, his acquaintance with mouchers, tramps and gypsies enables him to reveal some other happenings on a shiny night. I can imagine no better Christmas present for anyone who is ...

... By C. A. Lejeune. AN IDEAL HUSBAND.-- This is the first personally signed work for several years of one of the most knowing directors in the business-- Sir Alexander Korda. When Korda makes a film, he certainly makes a film. To argue whether he was wise in choosing this mannered, strictly contemporary, and slimly motivated Wilde play for his sub ject, is beside the point. What matters is the ...

... IN a lawless profession, lawless because there can be no scientific certainty in criticism and a critic's choice must always remain, in the end, an individual's personal opinion, one strict rule of conduct holds: a critic must praise a work he honestly admires, come hell and high water. I am fully aware that numbers of people, people whose taste I respect, will dislike Chaplin's latest piture; ...

... By John Courtenay. PRIVATE ENTERPRISE (St. James's) will delight you or horrify you, according to your political shade. St. John Ervine has never been noted for understatement, and in this play, a prolonged peal of thunder on the Right, he speaks his mind vigorously on the matter of the closed shop. When he put down his pen he probably felt much refreshed. Certainly one can hardly fail to ...

... X By John Courtenay IN reviewing the year on the London stage, let me put the news in the first paragraph. Thus: the best productions in their various departments were Priestley's The Linden Tree, among straight plays; Oklahoma! as a musical; Born Yesterday and The Chiltern Hundreds as comedies; Saint Joan as a semi-classical revival; Tuppence Coloured as a revue; The Alchemist ...

... By C. A. Lejeune IT is an old and well-tried custom at this time of year for a critic to sit back and recall the films that have given him the greatest pleasure during the past twelve months of office. He then takes out a piece of paper and a pencil, and draws up, with many erasures, a list of The Ten Best Films of the Year, or My Favourite Dozen; after which he commits the list to typewriter, ...

... OUR BOOKSHELF Rupert Croft-Cooke ONE FINE DAY.-- The publishers claim for this novel that it is a little masterpiece, and for once it seems that the phrase is justified. Indeed, the danger is to avoid gushing. I could reel off a dozen epithets and stand by each of them-- it is ex quisite, moving and profound. It is a harder matter altogether to convey the inner life of the book, or even to ...

... -ffiocA BEVERLEY BAXTER. THIS is the Christmas Number of The Sketch, and the Editor, like the conductor of an orchestra, turns his mesmeric baton upon his contributors and calls for Yuletide music. It is true that Christmas is not yet here, but editors don't mind that kind of thing. Dickens, of course, was the great exponent of the Christmas spirit. If he had an assignment such as mine to-day, ...

... THE Winter Garden Theatre is not very far from the Aldwych. This farce will send many people back to those nights of the roaring 'twenties when Ben Travers, our most astute writer in the theatre's most difficult medium, would chivvy Lynn, Hare, Walls, and the rest through a few hours of moonstruck bliss. True, the present plot is something to do with the black market; true, alas, that Tom ...