... . By Sheila Kaye Smith. (Cassell 7s. 6d.) A brilliant study ol the impoverished landed gentry of to-day struggling to keep up appear ances. The Alards were, needless .to say, Sussex. Their lands were their life. For Alard old Sir John sacrificed his children. Peter, the heir, threw over the girl he loved to marry money, and came to grief. Mary married money, and came to grief in the Divorce ...

... BY MICHAEL ORME. (New Oxford.) THE novels of Robert Hichens lend themselves admirably to production on the screen. Apart from a dramatic story and vivid portraiture, his atmosphere and milieu, which the legitimate stage cannot catch, are translated in terms of photography, completing a picture at once compelling and beautiful. I have nothing but praise for this Lasky production. The ...

... . (Palace Theatre.) Those who saw the dramatised version of this successful novel were frankly dis appointed. The gaps were many and often, and if you had not previously read the book, you were left wondering. I was one of those at the time, and to satisfy my curiosity as to what constituted a best seller, I put it on my library list. I found it was much better written than I expected, and ...

... ?The Literary Lounger. By Keble Howard. O. Henry's Friend. Everybody knows by this time that O. Henry, the American short- story writer, spent a certain portion of his life in prison, and that this experience, which does not come the way of every writer, proved of great benefit to him in his subsequent literary career. Not onlv did he get many of his plots from the stories he heard in the ...

... LOVE AND THE GYPSY. By IConrad Ber- covici. INash 7s. 6d.l LOVE AND THE GYPSY. By IConrad Ber- covici. (Nash 7s. 6d.) Mr. Bercovici, who found an interested public for his former book, Gypsy Blood, again writes of Rumania. He gives us tales of a vivid and passionate human nature, sudden and quick in quarrel. The strongest and most original situation is that of the duel between the aged chief ...

... . By Helen de Courcy Wilson. (Sampson, Low 7s. 6d.l . By Helen de Courcy Wilson. (Sampson, Low 7s. 6d.) An old situation to begin with. Jessica married out of hard necessity in order that her child should not come into the world nameless. The man who married in ignor ance of the reason separated from his wife for twenty years, and then, when they met again, he found that he loved her. This is ...

... Criticisms in Cameo. i. LORD O* CREATION, AT THE SAVOY. WITH a pal, on a cruise, he came to Scotland; he saw a bonnie lass, and married her. For sixteen happy years they lived together; and if he was not often at home-- for he had a job in the mer cantile marine that called him often to England-- love remained strong and there were three bairns in token of it. In reality, and in spite of his ...

... pThe Literary Lounger. By Keble Howard The Little Armistice. Mr. Maurice Baring's latest volume, entitled generally Half a Minute's Silence. leads off with a delightful idea. It is the custom in Russia, he tells us, for people when they are starting on a journey and leaving a house, to sit down and spend half- a-minute in silence. Not only the depart ing guests or members of the family, ...

... AT THE SIGN OF THE CINEMA. BY MICHAEL ORME. A MODERN DON TUAN. (Release July 4.) LEON MATHOT, the French star, has proved himself so fine an actor that no film in which he is cast for a leading role can be quite devoid of in terest. As the middle-aged Don Juan in this extremely French and complicated romance of love, he is once more a pillar of strength. Around and about him lesser love ...

... The Literary Lounger. 1 By Alan Kemp. Suffering Fools. A book like Mr. Sinclair Lewis's The Man Who Knew Coolidge raises a question which must have exercised, and probably baffled, anybody who has ever tried to create real people on the printed page. Suppose you want to draw the character of an unmitigated bore. You put into his mouth a succession of unmitigatedly boring things the kind of ...

... . . By Elizabeth Charlotte Webster. (Chapman and Hall 7s. 6d.) (Chapman and Hall 7s. 6d Everybody who enjoys something new will thank Elizabeth Charlotte Webster for writing her book (a first novel round the great diamond rush at Grasfontein in 1927. This is excellent raw material and an excellent story she has made of it. Not too easy, that. The rush itself is described with such vivacity ...

... The Literary Lounger. By Alan Kemp '-fi Genius in Slippers. There is something to be said for the view that the less known about the personal lives and characteristics of geniuses, the better for our appreciation of their art. The close-up view is notoriously liable to show crows'-feet; and some of the geniuses of olden time undoubtedly have an advantage in that they can be recon structed ...