... Enterprise in Bayswater The Scarlet Pimpernel (Threshold Matinees only) DRAMA, for the moment, just does not exist in the West End, but the plucky little Threshold Theatre, down Bays water way, has come to the fore with a more than adequate revival of that hoary favourite, The Scarlet Pimpernel. The choice strikes me as odd, for this tale of the French Revolu tion, which brings back memories ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. MODERN poetry does not as a rule wear its meaning on its sleeve any more than it wears its heart; in some cases both take a lot of finding. One reason why we welcome this new book of poems by Mr. Herbert Asquith, Youth in the Skies, is that here heart and mean ing are discernible at a glance. Meaning is not like a jewel, valuable in proportion to the difficulty of finding ...

... DOOKS: Reviewed by Noel Thompson TWO novels by women head the list of recently published books, and while they are worlds apart geographically, one being set in England and the other in America, in accuracy of characterisation and biting perception they are akin. Monica Dickens, a great granddaughter of Charles Dickens, has chosen in her first novel to write about a girl of presumably ...

... IN these days people are turning to books which will take them out of themselves and away from their surroundings for a few happy hours. Here are three which have a setting far away from the war but which none the less are full of excitement. High Sierra by W. R. Burnett (Heinemann, 8s.) is the story of an American gangster. The author is an obvious expert on his subject, and the tale ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. AS one who believes that screen children, as a race, should be strangled at birth, I am delighted to have found a screen child this week who is both talented and appealing. Her name is Betty Brewer, her age is thirteen, and the film in which she appears is RANGERS OF FORTUNE (Plaza). This, the only new film of the week, is a roystering melodrama of the Great South-West in ...

... THE LAST OF THE BENSON REMINISCENCES Final Edition Completes the Memoirs of the Late E. F. Benson By Vernon Fane WITH the sadly prophetic title of FINAL EDITION (Collins, 15s.), the late E. F. Benson has rounded off his reminiscences which began in As We Were, and which were continued in As We Are. I go back, he says, to a day of early summer in the year 1900, when first the green front ...

... Continued. J Mrs. Harrison-Beddoes, who queened it in the foreign colony, and kept her position with the help of a sharp tongue and a faculty for ferreting out other people's affairs and Robin Rattray, who was not his father's son. To them enter four others Clive Markham, Robin's real father, intent on persuading his sister to return to England and help him to manage the country house he had ...

... 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 ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IT must be nearly four years now since M.-G.-M. pencilled PRIDE AND PREJU DICE into their schedule as a vehicle for Norma Shearer. Four years in the film industry is a long time, and the surprise, now that the film does turn up (at the Empire), is not so much that Miss Shearer should not be in it, but that the picture should have been made at all. Few films that are ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THIS is surely Our Girls' Week in the West End cinema. Vivien, Rosalind, Mary and Maureen-- four such personable and talented young people, in theatres so close together that you could almost use them for a game of rounders. Our Miss Vivien, in fact, achieves the unusual feat of appearing in two adjacent theatres simultaneously-- at the Little Ritz, where she is still, ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. MR. MARTIN ARM STRONG is one of our most enjoyable short-story writers, and lovers of that art will always look forward to a new volume from his versatile and talented pen. They will not be disappointed in Simplicity Jones. It maintains his reputation, which was always high, for quality and craftsmanship, and ex tends his range. Several pieueb 111 Llllo UUUJv, LLIC LI Lie ...

... rue-- This Colour Business By James Agate TRADE-SHOWS happening at eleven o'clock in the morning are not at all my cup of tea. But if wartime exigencies force me to it, and I duly attend at that unearthly and unnatural hour, I do like to see what I have especially risen and travelled to see. Picture my testiness the other morning, therefore, when I arrived at the charming private theatre of ...