... THE WAR ON LAND AND SEA --By Vernon Fane A Cruiser Epic Bromfield versus the Boche The Fifth Column Reaches Bloomsbury Miss Sitwell Reflects and Ponders Mr. C. S. FORESTER is supreme in his field: the dramatic, ingenious and poetic presentation of British sailors on the high seas. In the past, his novels (for he is essentially a writer who is happiest in the elastic bounds of imaginative ...

... LIVELY READING IN FACT AND FICTION -By Vernon Fane The Biography of a Flying Pioneer Eighteenth-Century American Frontier Battles A Ffovel of Occupied France, and a Thriller of the Week BILLY MITCHELL is known as the stormy petrel of American aviation, and his life is still regarded by many as an example of a man fighting against inertia and prejudice in high places, and against a re luctance ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE THE little Windmill Theatre, with its non- stop revue (which has not stopped, save for necessary rest and refreshment a few hours in the twenty-four for the company, for ten years or so) has other claims to consideration in addition to its record of hard work and the fact that it is the only London theatre to have had a play written about it and produced in New York. I ...

... MEMOIRS, MURDER AND ADVENTURE -Bv Vernon Fane Sir Henry J\[ewbolt's Autobiography, and His Lighter Side Three J\[ew Thrillers The Balkans Under Fire and let- or SIR HENRY oOLT (Faber and Faber. 2 is.) comprise the second volume of his memoirs which he started writing in 1932, six years before his death, and they have been edited by Lady Newbolt. This part of his reminiscences and diaries ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE PANAMA HATTIE.-- Rarely have I heard such witless dialogue as there is in this Cole Porter musical at the Piccadilly; every one was talking through his, or her, Panama hattie, and most of them seemed to need a microphone (and in one case a megaphone as well) in order to enable them to do it. Cole Porter's tunes are well below his usual level; indeed, the only music ...

... THE BEST BOOKS OF THE WEEK -Bv Vernon Fane M lie. Curie as a War Correspondent Biographical Essays of Two Saints The Story of a Bomber Pilot The Fate of the Islanders of Bonin MLLE. EVE CURIE, besides being the biographer of her great mother, is a war corre spondent of no mean ability. Her JOURNEY AMONG WAR RIORS (Heinemann. 15s.) is a brilliantly written journal of her experiences during the ...

... TWO good reprints figure in this week's list of books: the first, RAFFLES OF SINGA PORE (Collins. 7s, 6d.), which was written and published some years ago, but is well worth acquiring in its revised edition. Sir Reginald Coupland, who is Beit Professor of Colonial His tory at Oxford, is a superb biographer, as witness his Wilberforce, and this life of the founder of Singapore is not only an ...

... 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 ...