... 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 ...

... AS Christmas approaches, the bookshop is our Mecca. We are looking, of course, for light and neutral stuff that will do just as well for Auntie Maud if we decide to give that tray- cloth to Auntie Dora after all. We hardly think in terms of weighty volumes like Lewis Mumford's THE CONDITION OF MAN (Seeker and Warburg. 25s.), which nowadays only America has the paper to print. But it is the ...

... STORIES OF PEOPLE AND PLACES --By Vernon Fane A Dramatic and Inspiring Play; An American Woman's Study of Japan; A Causerie on the Modern University A Smalltown Swashbuckler and the Thriller of the Week MR. MAXWELL ANDER SON is one of America's most distinguished playwrights, and I understand that his most recent play, THE EVE OF ST. MARK' (Bodley Head. 5s.), is now being performed in this ...

... The Best Novels of the Week Miss I. Compton Burnett's Story of a Family T. H. White Returns to Form Ffineteenth-Century Italy -By Vernon Fane TO a certain number of people a new novel by Miss I. Compton Burnett is something of an event. The school of her admirers being strictly eclectic, the number may not be very considerable, but there is recent evidence that they are becoming more numerous. ...

... 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 ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE DU BARRY WAS A LADY.-- Although there is plenty of crudely farcical fun-- quite enjoyable if one is in the mood for it-- in this American musical-comedy at His Majesty's about a cloak-room attendant who, having seen a film about Madame Du Barry, dreams that he is not only at Versailles, back in the eighteenth century, but is Louis XV himself, I found my self not only ...

... NOVELS IN VARYING MOODS -By Vernon Fane Civil Servants and the Blitz Miss Georgette Heyers Literary Diversion A Weighty 7\[ovel by Taylor Caldwell A 7\[ew Story by Barbara Goolden TWO things are certain about the author of DARKNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR (Collins. 8s. 6d.); he knows a great deal about the London blitzes, and he knows a great deal about the activities of temporary Civil Servants. ...

... A Long Poem of the Present War; Michael Graham's Angling Book; Alun Lewis's Character Sketches of Army Life The Story of a Fighter Pilot and the Log of a Merchant Airman A Romantic Novel of Heroic Dimensions; Claude Houghton's Book About a Book --By Vernon Fane A MONTH or two ago I heard the lovely, measured voice of Miss Diana Wynyard reading these lines over the radio: I thought with love, ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. LOVE and travel have often been combined, both in books and in life, but never, as far as I know, has the union taken quite the form it takes in Flight from a Lady. Mr. A. G. Macdonell's hero, Ralph (angry throughout the book, he is particularly put out the one time his name is disclosed), has been worsted in a love-affair, and adopts the time-honoured course of going ...

... . By John and Emery Bonnett. Michael Joseph ;8s. 6 d.) This is a reviewer's paradise-- a convincing novel about a murdered writer. ...

... BOOKS IN BRIEF It's My Delight. By Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. (Eyre and Spottiswoode ios. 6d.) And it s mine. The author haS friends on both sides of the fence, and while he makes game-laws and orthodox hunting interesting, his acquaintance with mouchers, tramps and gypsies enables him to reveal some other happenings on a shiny night. I can imagine no better Christmas present for anyone who is ...

... by Ray Allister (Deputising for Robert Done, on holiday.) OF two October plays, one was right for television; the other was just right. I want to demonstrate the world of difference between their qualifications. It 's a honey of a play. We were talking three weeks before the play was produced. The speaker was Royston Morley, senior television drama producer, and the honey was Frank Tilsley's ...