... : Reviewed by Trevor ^Allen PROBABLY the most tense episode in our naval war was the hunting and killing of the Bismarck after the loss of the Hood. One may relive the radio excitement of that chase in Commander E. Keble Chatterton's The Royal Navy: January, 1941-- March, 1942 (Hutchinson, 21s.), a period which included also the Balona bombardment, Cape Matapan battle, and loss of ...

... Books Reviewed by Noel Thompson IF you want to read the private diary of a public man, I recommend Off The Record (Hutchinson, 10s. 6d.). At the beginning of the war, Charles Graves, then writing a daily column for the Daily Mail, started putting down at night all his doings, the people he had met, the subjects dis cussed, and his private reactions. Much of this material could not be ...

... books: Reviewed by Trevor Allen GREAT boys are the Japs in China! They had a master plan drawn up in Tokyo for backward cities like Sungkiang. There should be lovely broad roads! They made them by ripping through bedrooms, kitchens, court yards without compensating the owners. There should also be a new canal! They dug it by grabbing every able-bodied man they saw and giving him a bowl of rice ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor zA lien FANNY KEMBLE was an unusual actress. The theatrical profession, she said, was utterly distasteful to me, though acting itself was not. Cast to play Desdemona, she confessed, I feel horribly at the idea of being murdered in my bed. She would dissect her own acting more ruthlessly than any critic, with no illusions that she was an inspired genius. She ...

... Sweet Home wwwww S 'cylS a fascinating story the evolution of Home, Sweet I Home from primitive hut to steam -heated mansion. The Tudor fireside was an open central hearth with but X a hole in the roof to draw off the smoke. When grates and firebacks came in both they and windows were long S regarded as personal property distinct from the rest of i) the house, and often listed separately in ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor lien NO man, they say, is' a hero to his valet: To his cousin, Mrs. Clare Sheridan-- when she sculpted his head at morning bedside sittings at 10 Downing Street-- Mr. Winston Churchill was the Hogarthian figure with cigar and spectacles, patting a hot-water bottle affec tionately, and, incidentally, twiddling his toes under the bed clothes to amuse a black Persian to ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor tAllen CHRISTMAS is a happy time for book buyers; they can impose on others their own particular fancies and thus double their pleasure. Instead of merely saying You must read so- and-so, they pack off the book, which is much more satisfying-- to the sender if not always to the recipient. JNo doubt the new Bernard ralk biography, The Way of the Montagues (Hutchinson, ...

... Reviewed by Trevor oydllen THERE is a story in Mr. Charles Graves's Great Days (Hutchinson, 12s. 6d.) that when Mr. Churchill once twitted Montgomery on his. silence, the General said he was very sorry, but he was a teetotaller, a non- smoker, and had little conversation. The P.M. is supposed to have replied: I smoke cigars, drink all the good wine I can find, and am a hell of a good Prime ...

... l^^'-w HISTORY will have a place for the home front as well as battle-front chronicler. I can see posterity turning to Mr. James Wedgwood Draw- bell's All Change Here (Hutchinson, 10s. 6d.) to know what we did, thought, and talked about through these anxious days of war, for he is a lively, alert Pepys of journalism, netting the pass ing moment with the whoop of a boy after a butter fly. ...

... : Reviewed by T revor Alle7i AN eighteenth-century eccentric of some note was Dr. Messenger Monsey of Bury St. Edmunds and Chelsea Hospital. His idea of painless dentistry was to tie an aching tooth by catgut to a perforated bullet and fire the bullet from a pistol. His habit in the country was to hide his banknotes in the fireplace under sticks and coal, for safety; and once he returned ...

... Books: Reviewed by Trevor Allen MR. COLLIN BROOKS, editor of Truth, croons no lullaby over the 1930's decade. It came in like a ravening wolf, and went out like a roaring lion. It began in world economic chaos, and ended with the world at war, he writes in Devil's Decade (MacDonald, 15s.), focusing the period mainly through pen-portraits of its monarchs, statesmen, politicians, financiers, ...

... : Reviewed by Noel Thompson THE war, with its variegated intermingling of tragedy and comedy, has given writers a thousand themes on which to draw. It will probably be some years before the really great novel with a war background appears, but meantime the stopgaps of well-done true-life pictures are building up the background. Amy J. Baker takes the journey back to England of the Riviera ...