... AN OUTSTANDING WAR-TIME NOVEL Nevil Shute's Stirring Tale of the R.A.F. The Love Story of Goethe and Lofte Kestner Victorian Hilarity and Stuart Intrigue -By Vernon Fane IT is time the British public sat up and took notice of Mr. Nevil Shute. Not long after Munich, and just about the time when this country was becoming A. R. P.-conscious, a novel was published called What Happened to the ...

... THE GALLIC TOUCH French Authors in Form This Week --By Vernon Fane I HAVE read three detective stories this week, two of them by a Frenchman and one by an American lady, and I must say, with more honesty than chivalry, that the French product is infinitely the better. In fact, since the stories are by M. Georges Simenon it may be said that they are in a class by themselves, and almost hors ...

... VARIETY for the BOOKSHELF Jacob Epstein's Autobiography: A Book for Wine-Lovers: Historical Miniatures Escapist, Light and Crime Fiction -By Vernon Fane JACOB EPSTEIN has always been a controversialist. Like most artists, he is sensitive to criticism; but, unlike those who are content to answer criticism in their own work, he has seldom missed an oppor tunity to take up the cudgels in print ...

... FICTION IN MANY FORMS A New Sinclair Lewis Novel Among Others in a Mixed Bag -By Vernon Fane FOR the past few years Mr. Sinclair Lewis has been giving evidence of a growing interest in the theatre. He has written for it, he has studied it, he has attended it, he has even, on a number of occasions, acted in one. It was obviously inevitable that a novelist of his gifts-- and he remains one of ...

... THE ESSAY-- A LOST TECHNIQUE A Fictionised Biography of Charles Lamb, the Master Essayist --By Vernon Fane THE art of the essay having lain in the doldrums for so long, it is not surprising that there should be a genera tion at large which knows little of and cares less for Charles Lamb; allowing itself to be unshaken by the fact that its elder brothers were Eliaphobes almost to a man, ...

... PHILIP PAGE on the Behind ihe Schemes at the Shaftesbury A Farce on Nudism at the Comedy DO the public like to he introduced, for entertainment purposes, to the inner workings of certain professions and to see the wheels go round? The answer is that obviously they do, particularly in the case of (i) the theatre and (ii) the newspaper world. It is true that few, if any, plays, except ...

... MEMORIES AND MERCHANDISE --By Vernon Fane Compton Mackenzie's Islands; Vicki Baum's Department Store and Some Melodrama MRS. COMPTON MACKENZIE'S first volume of autobiography ended with the year 1918. The second volume, MORE THAN I SHOULD (Collins. 12s. 6d.), takes up the story at the Casa Solitaria, Capri (Too-- too-- oh, beloved Solitaria ), where Mr. Mackenzie was recupe rating from ...

... NOVELS SET IN DISTANT LANDS A Sfory of the East English Country Life A Blood from the West By Vernon Fane MR. LIN YUTANG is a Chinese who writes in English. Many readers will remember how much they enjoyed, and were impressed by, The Importance of Living and My Country and My People. Now Mr. Lin Yutang has published a novel of contem porary Chinese life, MOMENT IN PEKING Heinemann. 15s.) ...

... MURDER AND MUSIC A Thriller at the Lyric; The Proms Again Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE IN spite of the sort of weather one expects to get in August (which is surely a sufficiently safe way of putting it) and sundry alarms and excursions, the theatrical boom which started a month or so ago not only continues but (as I write) is increasing. It is true that last week only one new play was produced, ...

... SERIOUS WORKS OF SERIOUS TIMES J. B. Priestley's Postscripts A Modern Macaulay Sir Charles Harington's Memoirs And Some War Letters to America --By Vernon Fane I AM very glad to see that the collection of Mr. J. B. Priestley's Sunday night wireless talks has been published. We are all listeners-in, one way or another; including the man who declares he never turns on the beastly thing except ...

... ACCIDENTS IN THE BLACK-OUT The New Regulations Will Do Little to Prevent the Number of Casualties Which Now Are so Numerous at Night By A. PERCY BRADLEY, M.I.A.E., A.M.I.Mech.E. (C/erfc ol the Course, Brook/andi) IN a way it is a good thing that the appalling casualties on the roads have stirred the Government into action. But the measure that they have taken, namely, the imposition of a 20 m ...

... BIOGRAPHY of a POLITICAL GENIUS -By Vernon Fane Richelieu's Effect on European Nationalism LIVING as we do in days when history is being made, the lessons of history may be said to be that much sharper, and to have just that extra edge of interest. Yet it was one of Disraeli's wiser remarks, addressed to the occasional student, that he should read no history, nothing but biography, for that is ...