... . 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 C. A. LEJEUNE. IF you want to see the best new acting perform ance in town, you must put up with a very grim prison film, and go to see James Cagney in EACH DAWN I DIE, at the Warner Theatre. The story is just another ex posure of racketeer ing, and the brutal methods of discipline practised in the past tense in certain American prisons. An honest reporter, who gets too near to the ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. AT one time or another most novel-readers have felt, and probably fallen to, the temptation of skipping dense black passages of analysis or description and going on to the first paragraph where inverted commas, letting in air and light, announce the arrival of the human voice. it may not be a pleasant voice or say anything particularly worth saying, but it is com ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHING TON (Regal) is the best film Frank Capra has made since he sent Mr. Deeds to town three years ago. The two films, in point of fact, have a great deal in common. Jefferson Smith and Longfellow Deeds might easily be blood-brothers. One can imagine them as lads together in some small mid-West town, playing hooky, paddling their feet in river mud, ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. A CIRCUS leads a picar esque, as well as a pic turesque life, and most novels about circuses belong to the category of picaresque novels. It is an honourable category, small and select, and can boast more successes, and fewer failures, than any other single class of fiction. One reason lor this is that the very nature of his book confers on the author certain immunities ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THERE is good news this week for the young lady in Highgate-- or is it Hamp stead?-- who keeps writing to ask me when, if ever, she will be able to see Laurence Olivier in the film version of The First and the Last made two and a half years ago at Denham If she cuts along to the Plaza quickly, she may though I don't promise be able to see him now, along with Vivien Leigh ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. WAR AND SOLDIER is an account of the Japanese campaign in China, beginning with the fight ing at Hangchow in the autumn of 1937 and ending with the capture of Canton in 1938. The writer, Mr. Ashihei Hino, was a business man and a novelist before he became a soldier. To read a partisan novel in a non-partisan spirit is by no means easy. War is a controversial subject in ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. FOR some reason --whether it is in the nature of women or the nature of the cinema I don't know-- the film-actress is much less liable than the film- actor to be remembered as a creator of characters. It is the actress her self, not the part, we mostly go to see. Ginger Rogers, Deanna Durbin, Irene Dunne, for instance, are adorable, but as Ginger Rogers, Deanna Durbin, ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THOSE who are looking for escapist literature (and why should they not?) cannot do better than read The Romantic. In any age this would have been a novel of escape. There never was a society that enjoyed the things that money can buy and re mained so gracefully uncon scious of the money that bought them. I here never was a society so fully liberated from the outward ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IT was beginning to snow as we came out of THE STARS LOOK DOWN. An evening paper bill announced 3 British Submarines lost. They were turning out the shop lights for the black-out. Some body asked cynically What 's the nearest way to the Embank ment I 'm afraid The Stars Look Down (Odeon) isn't the brightest of entertainments for these winter war days. It is let 's face ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. BAND WAGGON (Leicester Square) is not so much a picture as a party. In one noisy, absurd and informal gathering, it presents Arthur Askey, Richard Murdoch, Jack Hylton and his Band, Pat Kirkwood, Freddy Schweitzer, television's Jasmine Bligh, Moore Marriott, Mr. Middleton, Michael Standing, two Fleet Street journalists, the goat Lewis, Henrietta the Hen, and the shades-- ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE agreeable expectation with which one takes up a novel by Miss Helen Ashton is rarely disappointed. She is a novelist who always gives good measure. Not neces sarily in length. Length is a fashionable quality, but often it implies on the author's part laziness rather than industry. Miss Ashton is nothing if not industrious, but her industry is only another aspect of her ...