... PETER HEPPLE on mister ten percent' All mis and IU%. by Jim Oodbolt (Robert Hale. £4.95) It memory serves, this is the f book ever to be written by an agent, though Jim Godbolt was a very special kind of agent. In the early forties he was a stalwart of the Rhythm Club movement, which comprised young jazz fans who met in pubs, drank half-pints of bitter and played 78 rpm records from the ...

... Costume drawing for impresario C B Cochran's 1918 production of Cyrano de Bergerac. with Robert Lorraine in the title role. As with the set. Dulac 's designs owned much to Leon Bakst. whose ballet Cleopatra'' (presented by Diaghiley in London in 1911) he must admired But he hated the work, writing in a letter to his friend W B Yeats The Play is a very second-rate melodrama totally ...

... Introdiiclnp Ballet by Mary Clarke and Clement Crisp (Studio Vista. £13.25). Just about everybody seems to have written a book on ballet, many of them just pretty pictures and easy reading for the mildly interested, but a few of genuine value and usefulness. This new book falls into the latter category, for the authors offer carefully considered enlightenment iu muse iruiy imeresieu in ...

... Musical Stages by Richard Rodgers (W. H. Allen, £5.95) The most notable feature of Richard Rodgers' book is that it is one of the kindest autobiographies ever written. Throughout its pages Richard Rodgers seems to tread a troublefree, if not exactly a primrose path, and there is very little about temperamental stars and obnoxious producers, though between the lines one can read that not ...

... DOUGLAS BLAKE reviews Sibley and Dowell Sibley and Dowell Photographs by Leslie Spatt, Text by Nicholas Dromgoole. (Collins, £9.50.) Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell constitute a dance partnership much loved by audiences everywhere, and unique in that it is the first great one to have emerged from the Royal Ballet School. Nicholas Dromgoole, rather than choosing to write a long text ...

... and the player queens The Player Queens by Richard Findlater (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £6.95) Richard Findlater has followed his notable book, The Player Kings, appropriately enough, with The Player Queens, ranging through the centuries with the women who, one way and another, have adorned our theatre. Nell Gwynn is here, a charmer and a personality, if not a great player. But the great ...

... 'All You Need is Love' All You Need Is Love, by Tony Palmer (Weidenfeld Nicolson and Chapped, £6.50) I mean no disrespect to Tony Palmer when I say his book shows all the signs of being written by a telly person, the main one being that each chapter ends with the kind of assertive statement which usually precedes the rolling of the credits. But as is so often the case with television, its ...

... on Tyrone Guthrie R.B. MARRIOTT Tyrone Guthrie James 1 orsytti (Hamish Hamilton £7.95). Tyrone Guthrie strode the theatre of his time, and. it seemed, was seen as well as felt to do so. He was tall, large, dominatingly impressive, which made him immediately outstanding. He was highly sensitive, imaginative, restless; a perfectionist and an experimenter. He was iisn ana aeariy iovea ...

... JOSHUA LOGAN'S role in theatre and films makes 45 entries at the back of his new book, just out from W. H. Allen at £5.95. The chronology stretches from 1935 when To See Ourselves was produced at the Ethel Barry more, to 1976 when Rip Van Winkle. a musical, was? sented at the Kennedy Center. The book itself, his autobiography, start: a bit earlier with days on the line oi Texas and ...

... Iden Payne a pioneer in the great age of change I MET Ben Iden Payne in Texas in 1974. He was 92. He had recently suffered a broken hip following a severe fall. I was allowed to meet him for half an hour. He made a marvellous entrance into his sitting room walking with a stick and the impression on his entry was of a man? completely aware and totally in control. In the conversation that ...

... SHORTS The Facts About a Symphony Orchestra, by John Amis (G. Whizzard/ Andre Deutsch, £2.25). A remarkably high price for a book of 40 pages, even if the pages are large and the photographs by Philip Sayer, some in colour, are excellent. One of a series designed to initiate the young into the mysteries of various arts and occupations, this one is about the London Symphony Orchestra and ...

... Blades: a touching professional Drum Roll, by James Blades (Faber and Faber, £6.50) Percussionists, it might appear, have always been a race apart, being attracted to music by rhythm rather than melody and harmony. James Blades, now the doyen of orchestral percussionists, may or may not have had a typical career for drummers of his generation, but one suspects that he has, for during his ...