... bOOKS: Reviewed by Trevor Allen WATCHMAN, what of the night? Alternatively: Publisher, what are you doing to lighten our blackout evenings? If a nation's wartime morale may be judged to some extent by the books issuing from its presses, then the batch in front of me implies that all's well with the home front. They give cause for pride they show that we remain staunch to our heritage. Is ...

... My Royal Past, by Baroness von Biilop as told to Cecil Beaton (B. T. Batsford, Ltd., 21s.) STOICALLY and long have we suffered the memoirs of Teutonic ladies with royal pasts. Mr. Cecil Beaton has parodied them deliriously, with just the right flavour of satire, in a fragrant skit, a souffle of wit and malice. The baroness I can recall, when three and a half years old, dressed in broderie ...

... ACCIDENTS IN THE BLACK-OUT The New Regulations Will Do Little to Prevent the Number of Casualties Which Now Are so Numerous at Night By A. PERCY BRADLEY, M.I.A.E., A.M.I.Mech.E. (C/erfc ol the Course, Brook/andi) IN a way it is a good thing that the appalling casualties on the roads have stirred the Government into action. But the measure that they have taken, namely, the imposition of a 20 m ...

... AN EXPONENT OF FEMININITY -By Vernon Fane A Japanese Soldier's impressions Von Papen's Luck Roland Pertwee's Career THE author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden has, in her time, been fruitful on the subject of husbands. Her wit, which can be as illuminating and elusive as a dancing sunbeam, never fails to be exhilarating when one of her characters stands revealed as a husband. The very word ...

... PHILIP PAGE on Good Hellish Effects at Sadler's Wells-- A Naughty Butler Tries to Blackmail at the New Theatre A Powerful Play af the Westminster THE season of Ballet at Sadler's Wells has been far too short-- the company has now gone on tour again-- but it has been an important event in its way. Also, it has been marked by the production of a new work of great skill which should take a ...

... . 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 ...

... The Theatre Herbert Farjeon Desire Under the Elms (Westminster) THIS is a strengthy play by Eugene O'Neill about an old Middle-West farmer with three sons who marries again. Desiring a fourth son by his new wife, who is young and comely, he appears to be under the impression that he can achieve this by going off and sleeping all alone in a barn, leaving spouse in bed and spouse's step-son in ...

... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE Funny and Unfunny ONE man's meat is another man's poison. In other words, you cannot argue whether a comedian is or is not funny. If a comedian is funny to you, then both you and the comedian are in luck. On the other hand, if a comedian strikes you as unfunny, the plight of both of you is desperate. Let me chronicle this week how I have been both in and out of luck. ...

... ROMANCES OF ROUNDHEADS AND ROYALISTS -By Vernon Fane Two Absorbing Novels of England's Civil War ENGLAND'S Civil War is dealt with in two of this week's novels. Miss Phyllis Bentley's sober and full account of the Yorkshire campaigns under Sir Thomas Fairfax and General Cromwell and Miss Helen Ashton's biographical novel of Henry Vaughan, who fought as a soldier-surgeon in the King's forces up ...

... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE Musings About Civilization THE other day I read in the paper how some young woman who had been a hairdresser's assistant was rung up at two o'clock in the morning to get a band leader out of a jam. Never before, I read, had Miss Blank stepped straight out of bed to sing, almost unrehearsed, a bunch of difficult songs with a strange band. Is my mind wandering, or is ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. WHAT is going to happen to John Garfield, star of DUST BE MY DESTINY, at the Warner Theatre? It seems to me that he is standing at the cross-roads of his film career. One road leads to the world of high acting where Paul Muni and Bette Davis, for example, have earned the right to hang up their hats. The other road leads downwards to those B pictures in which so many ...