... FROM BALLET to BATTLE -By Vernon Fane. Diaghilev, Dictator of Ballet Two New Travel Books The Epic of Dunkirk and a War Thriller IT might be necessary to be a balleto mane to reach the proper degree of excitement at the appearance of the LIFE OF DIAGHILEV, by Serge Lifar (Putnam. 21s.), although the emotional disturbance might vary according to the school. Not being a balletomane, but merely ...

... CHARACTER STUDY NOVELS of TO-DAY The Vagaries of Human Nature As a Fictional Theme -By Vernon Fane AN eminent critic has said of Mr. Graham Greene that he is one of the really significant novelists writing in any language. That THE POWER AND THE GLORY (Heinemann. 8s. 3d.) is a novel which demands more than ordinary attention is apparent to anyone after reading the first three pages. For Mr. ...

... THE THEATRE BOOM CONTINUES Last Week's J\[ew Plays Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE I HOPE all those very serious people who since the outbreak of war have been wringing their hands and wailing that the London theatre has gone to demned perdition because little has been produced beyond flimsy musical shows are now satisfied. For Thunder Rock, the meta physical, political, social-economical, psychical ...

... A WAR-TIME BOOM IN THEATRELAND Dear Octopus Again Presented A Revival of The Devil's Disciple Shakespeare at Regent's Park A New Farce at the Duke of York's Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE FOR some inscrutable reason there is something very like a boom in theatreland. True, it is a rather pathetic little war-time boom; yet a boom it is, and not the least remarkable feature is that it has come at a ...

... BIOGRAPHIES for fhe BOOKSHELF -By Vernon Fane The Lives of Well-known Personalities Make Interesting Reading this Week AT school, I remember, it was a point of honour never to reveal one's second name. It was a jealously guarded secret and, for some reason I have never been able to fathom, rather a shameful one, and it is an odd thing that even in middle life people are still reluctant to part ...

... Armchair Trips to Africa and S. America Two Outstanding Travel Books and Interesting Novels in this Week's New Volumes -By Vernon Fane MR. NEGLEY FARSON is an American and a skilled journalist. His instinct for news of an unusual character at an unusual time led him to disembark at Dar-es-Salaam with the ultimate object of fetching up on the Gold Coast. BEHIND GOD'S BACK (Gollancz. 10s. 6d.) ...

... LITERARY STYLISTS Escapists, Sophisticates and Raconteurs By Vernon Fane IN a newspaper the other clay I saw that among the persons listed in the United States as missing were seventy thousand husbands. With that interesting piece of information the news item stopped abruptly. The charitable view would, of course, be that the seventy thousand were all suffering from amnesia; but I am afraid ...

... ROMANCES OF ROUNDHEADS AND ROYALISTS -By Vernon Fane Two Absorbing Novels of England's Civil War ENGLAND'S Civil War is dealt with in two of this week's novels. Miss Phyllis Bentley's sober and full account of the Yorkshire campaigns under Sir Thomas Fairfax and General Cromwell and Miss Helen Ashton's biographical novel of Henry Vaughan, who fought as a soldier-surgeon in the King's forces up ...

... NEW YORKERS ABROAD -By Vernon Fane Two Books by Confribufors fo thai Well-known American Magazine I REMEMBER being in New York when the first number of the New Yorker came out. Nobody paid much attention. There was a boom on. To an excessively magazine-conscious nation it was just another magazine. In those pre-Time days it was the slickest, smartest, and most hard-boiled of the metropolitan ...

... THE WAR'S BREEDING GROUND A Minister's Account of the Spanish Civil War and the Events which Led up to it By Vernon Fane SENOR ALVAREZ DEL VAYO was Foreign Minister, War Minister and the chief international spokesman of the Spanish Republic. FREEDOM'S BATTLE (Heinemann. 15s.) is his own survey of the Spanish Civil War, and of the events which led up to it. If the statement be accepted that ...

... THE LAST OF THE BENSON REMINISCENCES Final Edition Completes the Memoirs of the Late E. F. Benson By Vernon Fane WITH the sadly prophetic title of FINAL EDITION (Collins, 15s.), the late E. F. Benson has rounded off his reminiscences which began in As We Were, and which were continued in As We Are. I go back, he says, to a day of early summer in the year 1900, when first the green front ...

... NOVELS IMPERIAL AND DOMESTIC --By Vernon F;me The Poet Laureate in Byzantium Fiction and War A Book of Roman Portraits THE Poet Laureate's latest work of fiction, BASILISSA (Heinemann. 8s.), is an historical novel based on the meeting between Theodora and Justinian. Much that is known about Theodora comes from sources which the historians describe as being open to serious doubts. Yet all seem ...