... : Reviewed by Trevor Allen HOW that literary wholesaler, Alexandre Dumas, found time to ghost the volu minous travels of a cultivated French woman of a century ago is a matter for wonder; but he did so, evidently from her detailed notes, in The Journal of Madame Giovanni (Hammond, 12s. 6d.), admirably translated from the French edition of 1856 by Mrs. Marguerite E. Wilbur. This vivacious ...

... Reviewed by Trevor Allen STRANGE are the winds of circum stance that blow into men's lives, launch ing them on unusual journ eys-- Captain Roy Farran went east in 1940 at nineteen, fought in tanks in the Western Desert and in Crete, operated as a Special Service commando behind the enemy lines in Italy and France, and finally served in the Palestine Police-- a job that involved him in a charge ...

... Books: Reviewed by T revor Allen Gentlemen, the ladies! is the literary toast this month. They have been impressively busy. Not lightly would I undertake Miss Erica Beal's immense documentary industry in making Royal Cavalcade (Stanley Paul; 16s.). It spans nearly a century, from Queen Victoria's Coro nation to the post-war years; presents ample portraits of the lives and times of Vicky, ...

... Books Reviewed by Trevor Allen YOU have to hand it to the Fat Girl. She was Sophie Abuza, waitress and washer-up in her parents' restaurant at Hartford. She carolled to the customers, then at local concerts, stormed New York's Tin Pan Alley, and in due time became the famous Sophie Tucker, to whom a rich sheik who beheld the most beautiful lady I have ever seen in the film Honky Tonk wrote: ...

... Two Views on Tife TWO books about artists, one written by a woman who combined married life with her career, and the other dealing entirely with the Bohemian side in Paris provide an interesting contrast and also considerable parallels. steua oowen was Dorn m Australia ana orougnt up in a rather Victorian atmosphere which for years she could not forget. In Drawn from Life (Collins, 12s. 6d.) ...

... VV/,vAA/WWr^/,^'AA/^AAA/W/' /'A : Reviewed b y Trevor Alle?i HAVE something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style, wrote Matthew Arnold. It also seems to be the idea underlying The English Language: Its Beauty and Use (Odhams, 7s. 6d.), a handy guide to the correct use of words and the best in our literature. Perhaps one may be permitted to lift an ...

... VWAAAAA' THE Haymarket Theatre has seen 226 years of chequered history, yet to our leading stage S chronicler, Mr. W. Macqueen-Pope, it remains the 2 place it was when Fielding fought for freedom there, Cibber used it to defy Drury Lane, Foote X flouted the law, Liston raised laughs, Romeo Coates made an ass of himself, Buckstone and s Sothern popularized Dundreary whiskers, and Tree did ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor zTfllen IT takes courage to write cheerfully of illness and affliction. The Yorkshire author W. Riley did it, I think, in Netherleigh; so did Wilson Midgley in From My Corner Bed; and some years ago I read a novel which portrayed a sensitive love between patients in a T.B. sanatorium. In The Plague and I (Hammond, 10s. 6d.) Miss Betty Mac- donald writes humorously and ...

... : r Reviewed by i Trevor ...

... : Reviewed by T revor o Allen WE shall have to revise our ideas about the coddling of those Girls of Long Ago. I have been reading the autobiography of a lady of Somerset yeoman stock --Elizabeth Ham by Herself, 1783-1820, intro duced and edited by Mr. Eric Gillett (Faber, 10s. 6d.). The cure for eye-inflammation in childhood, she says, was confinement in a dark room for a year. She was ...

... T he Little S hips HOWEVER you look at Life Line (Heinemann, 8s. 6d.) it is first class reading. Charles Graves has the knack of focusing a story or a section of a story as it were with a spy-glass and leading it up until it gives the impression of being magnified and standing out. In this book Charles Graves has been given by the Admiralty I the chance of studying the small ships of the Navy, ...

... Books: Reviewed by Noel Thompson WHEN the war comes to an end there will be a spate of books about occupied Europe. In the meantime it will be hard to find a better book than Under the Iron Heel (Robert Hale, 12s. 6d.). This deals almost entirely with Belgium both before and after occupation and the most important point is that Lars Moen, the author, does manage to keep such a very fair ...