... VARIETY for the BOOKSHELF Jacob Epstein's Autobiography: A Book for Wine-Lovers: Historical Miniatures Escapist, Light and Crime Fiction -By Vernon Fane JACOB EPSTEIN has always been a controversialist. Like most artists, he is sensitive to criticism; but, unlike those who are content to answer criticism in their own work, he has seldom missed an oppor tunity to take up the cudgels in print ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. IT is quite usual nowadays to write an autobiography long before one has reached the age of thirty-five, but Mr. Henry Green feels that in his case the under taking needs an explanation. I will quote in full the opening paragraph of Pack My Bag, because it is the key to much that follows in an absorbing but baffling book, from which emerges an original and fas cinating ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. WE assisted this week at a melancholy and historic occa sion-- the swan song, if reports are true, of Shirley Temple, too old at twelve. Personally, I take leave to doubt the reports. Watching her in YOUNG PEOPLE (Odeon), I find myself unable to believe that this is the last we shall see of Holly wood's pocket Duse. Miss Temple, as an orphaned stage child bringing light and ...

... SERIOUS WORKS OF SERIOUS TIMES J. B. Priestley's Postscripts A Modern Macaulay Sir Charles Harington's Memoirs And Some War Letters to America --By Vernon Fane I AM very glad to see that the collection of Mr. J. B. Priestley's Sunday night wireless talks has been published. We are all listeners-in, one way or another; including the man who declares he never turns on the beastly thing except ...

... By Herbert Farjeon The Scarlet Pimpernel Threshold) ALTHOUGH a normal enough choice for an amateur society, The Scarlet Pimper nel is a surprising piece for a small professional and seemingly go-ahead play- producing organisation to tackle, and I couldn't help wondering all the afternoon why on earth the directors of the Threshold Theatre Club elected to tackle it. Did they commercially expect ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE title of Mr. Arthur Bryant's new book, English Saga, 1840- 1940, explains what it is about. It tells the story of England in the last hundred years; and it is not so much a history as the biography of a country, for to Mr. Bryant, England is not only a geographical expression and a nation, but a person, a person he loves and whose welfare he has passionately at heart. ...

... TlCL-. Notes and Notions By James Agate HOW I should like to distil my dis esteem of my contemporaries into prose so perfect that all of them would have to read it! So says that exquisite writer, Trivia Smith. It is not the remark I was searching for in his book. But there it is, like a lovely lost thing re-discovered in a rummaged drawer. Somewhere else he has an aphorism about boredom, ...

... The Theatre Anglo-Polish Ballet (Apollo) By Herbert Far j eon THESE Anglo-Persian Ballets are divided (as all Gaul used to be, and now, alas! as all Gaul once more is) into three parts, beginning (as so many ballet programmes do) with that miracle of tremulous formalities, Les Sylphides. Than this no ballet in the whole catalogue of ballet is more exquisite or more rigorously exacting. One ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. I WANT to intro duce you to one of the most moving films ever made. And no sooner have I written that than I feel a qualm. Will you, I wonder, share my enthusiasm for OUR TOWN (Pavilion), or will you find the film mannered and exasperating? One woman I know came out of the show with streaming eyes. Another friend of mine, a man, walked out after three reels Couldn't be ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Pantomime 4s Usual A LITTLE while ago-- some months, to be more precise, before the war-- I witnessed a remarkable sight. I was sitting on the outskirts of a wood in one of the outlying districts near London. It was a very beautiful wood more beau tiful than any I know within business distance of town. One or two birds were singing a white rabbit-- yes, a real white rabbit ...

... ASK a dozen people what type of books they want to read these days, and you will get a dozen different answers. But generally speaking it boils down to two classes, those who feel like books they can get their teeth into for a solid read, or those who prefer some thing they can pick up and enjoy at any odd moment. Robert Hichens has produced one of the latter type in The Million (Cassell 7s. ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. SO Charlie Chaplin's new film is really here. After weeks of apprehension over its fate on the high seas, months of ex cited rumours about its contents, and years of hush-hush preparation, the pre cious celluloid is meekly curled up in its little tins, unspooled daily for the benefit of the Gaumont, the Marble Arch, and the Prince of Wales' customers. Only once before has a ...