... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE WHAT PLEASES THE PUBLIC THE other day I read somewhere-- precisely where doesn't matter-- an attack on the quasi-musical person. It was a witty and an erudite attack, but completely invalidated, to my mind, by the notion, undeclared though implied throughout the article, that great composers write their music for the benefit of musical critics only! I think I never ...

... The Theatre liy Herbert Farjeon Cottage to Let (Wyndham's) As soon as I set eyes on Trently (Peter Rosser), I came to the anxious conclusion that he was up to no good. It was not only that his complexion was pasty-- a bad sign in a spy play-- but that, having given notice to leave John Barington, the eccentric scientist (Leslie Banks), a few months before, he had now come back, on the eve of ...

... NOVELS SET IN DISTANT LANDS A Sfory of the East English Country Life A Blood from the West By Vernon Fane MR. LIN YUTANG is a Chinese who writes in English. Many readers will remember how much they enjoyed, and were impressed by, The Importance of Living and My Country and My People. Now Mr. Lin Yutang has published a novel of contem porary Chinese life, MOMENT IN PEKING Heinemann. 15s.) ...

... MURDER AND MUSIC A Thriller at the Lyric; The Proms Again Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE IN spite of the sort of weather one expects to get in August (which is surely a sufficiently safe way of putting it) and sundry alarms and excursions, the theatrical boom which started a month or so ago not only continues but (as I write) is increasing. It is true that last week only one new play was produced, ...

... THEATRES OF WARTIME LONDON. By THEODORA BENSON and BETTY ASKWITH, Authors of Foreigners or the World in a Nutshell. No. 17. BALLET AT SADLER'S WELLS. IT isn't true, said Paul, to main tain that We of The Press spend our whole time drink ing. We also pull strings. He was justly proud of having produced two good stalls for the season's three new ballets all on one pro gramme. in response to ...

... . OF making many books there is no end. Of course, one shouldn't say that; of course it 's far too hackneyed for repetition. But now and then it comes home to one quite alarmingly. Think, for instance, as I have just been thinking, of the way certain books produce other books. You can buy the tragedies of Shakespeare in one thin volume but to house the writing they have caused, vou would need ...

... Films of the Day Adaptations Roberts, Wallace, and Poor Shakespeare By George Campbell DURING the Seven Years War, when both British and French used Redskins in North America, the most appalling raids on British settle ments came from the Indian village of St. Francis, away up on the St. Lawrence. It was there that the savages took prisoners for torturing, and hundreds of scalps to decorate ...

... . THE great American novel is a familiar idea, but it 's an idea I 've never quite understood. No one talks of the great English, or Russian, or French novel; and as for the great European novel-- let alone attempted, it can't be thought of, even vaguely. So why America why this dream of putting all America in one book Now to be inconsistent. If my objections have any force, they must ...

... . THE late Colonel Lawrence was a good writer and a great leader of men. Either of these distinctions would have been enough to bring him fame; yet for some reason his fame transcends them. It depended on some thing more than the sum of his achievements'. Part of himself he expressed in writine an other, perhaps more integral and essential part he expressed in action. But the central core of ...

... Round the New Shows At the Theatre Margin for Error (Apollo 8.25) MISS CLARE BOOTHE'S latest play is about the Nazis in New York, which it mightily amused. Whether London, where we are rather too near the Nazis to regard them as an unlimited source of fun, will be equally tickled, I rather doubt. Not that the sight of pompous people strutting about a stage, with guttural accents and a swastika ...

... THE CINEMA By JAMES AGATE Maker and Material SOME little time ago I wrote an article on this page in which I said, not that film directing was unimportant, but that its importance was overrated. I gave the reader six films of world reputation and twelve lesser known films, and challenged him or her to name the director of each, supplying all the directors' names at the end of the article. lne ...

... The Theatre By Herbert Farjeon The Body ITas Well Nourished f Lyric) HERE, for a start, is a body in a piano. Why in a piano How in a piano That would be hard to say, but bodies must be put some- where, and in a new comedy-thriller it is up to the authors (in this case Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat) to find a new place to put them in. Imagine the thrill when some of the notes won't play. ...