... : By A. G. Macdonell MR. J. B. PRIESTLEY took his type writer, a minimum of clothes, three books, some pipes, and a seat in a motor-coach, and set out to see England. What he saw he has written down in English Journey (Heinemann and Gol lancz; 8s. 6d.). He began at Southampton and saw the old West Gate through which the troops marched when they were on their way to Crécy and Agincourt, and ...

... More All-British Talkies By L ionel C oilier BRITISH films are continually gaining ground and their technical qualities improv ing. The talkies have, contrary to general expectation, materially im proved our position in the home market. I had looked forward, therefore, to Lupino Lane's full- length feature, Never Trouble Trouble, but it cannot be re garded as anything other than ...

... CELEBRITIES in CAMEO No. 133 The Countess of Warwick Potted by Charles Gay ROSE WARWICK'S life to date is exactly that of the heroine of a properly luscious Edwardian novel. Lovely daughter of the best-looking young couple in pre-war London (her father was a very gallant soldier, and was killed in the first few days of the war, while her mother, Lady Rosabelle Brand, is still extra ordinarily ...

... : By A. G. Macdonell IT used to require courage, as well as old age and vast experience of men and affairs, to write your auto biography. Nowadays it seems to be the usual thing for young men or women who have written half-a-dozen novels and cannot think up a plot for a seventh, to sit down and pour out to a presumably eager world the story of their lives. Usually the result is exceptionally ...

... LITERATURE LAMBKINS J A Hz mmerton Writes on Two kinds of reading matter have an irresistible fascination for me: publishers' advance lists and the end papers in books. They attract me for reasons that are different. The spring or autumn catalogues, especially when they contain brief and shamelessly biased descriptions of the books they herald, afford me the delights of antici pation, so ...

... Avarice and Arias The Late Christopher Bean St. James's THE tubercular Bean that was Christopher died owing his benefactor, the village Doctor, twenty pounds, and leaving behind a score of pictures. On the back of one, Ada Haggett, the Doctor's elder daughter, had perpetrated a monstrosity of buttercups. Some stopped leaks in chicken-houses and attic; the majority were eventually sentenced to ...

... By A. G. Maedonell MR. EDWARD SHANKS'S new novel, The Enchanted Village (Mac millan; 7s. 6d.), is about a single clay in the life of a hamlet of the Sussex Downland. The action begins at six o'clock in the evening of the great cricket match, the village against the team of gentlemen from London. It had been a terribly hot day in a terribly hot summer. It was in that month when, day after day, ...

... By V. S. Pritchett GEORG KAISER, the German drama tist, is well known outside of Germany as the author of that startling piece of theatre, From Morn Till Midnight. This play showed, with bizarre theatrical effect, how a bank clerk robbed the till in order to satisfy various romantic illusions and ended his course of disappointment by blowing his brains out on a crucifix. Intoxicating symbolism ...

... By Alan Thomas IN 1936 the fifty-year ban placed on the publication of documents relating to one of the most remarkable women in the social and political world of the early nineteenth century was lifted, and instalments from the archives are begin ning to appear. The lady in question was the brilliant Russian Ambassadress, leader of London fashion, close friend of the Prince Regent and of ...

... The Little Doclor By Alan Thomas IN We Are Not Alone (Macmillan; 6s.), Mr. James Hilton presents the modest little doctor who lives in a small cathedral town, is devoted to his work, bears his troubles patiently, and neither knows nor cares which side his bread is buttered on. The story of how he was summoned to attend a little German ballet dancer, how he brought her to his own house, how on ...

... The Theatre The Women (Lyric) Is it funny? Or is it nauseating? Both, I think, if you do not happen to have been brought up in America. That is to say, there are lines, heaps of lines, and even situations in The Women, Miss Clare Boothe's play brought by an American company to the Lyric Theatre, at which it is hardly possible not to laugh. These lines, these situa tions, ought not to exist, ...

... 44 The 'Ole Phenomenon of Life Bv V. S. Pritchett AFTER reading Mr. St. John Philby's Sheba's Daughters (Methuen; 21s.), which describes his north to south crossing of Arabia, his visit to Shabwa, the hitherto unknown city on the spice road of the Hadhramaut, and his testy quarrels with the British Government officials in Aden, one reflects that all the leading Arabia travellers have been ...