... 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. ...

... War, Hens, and Omelettes -By Vernon Fane The Darting Vivacity of Lin Tutang Sadie Thompson in Paradise A Restoration Rake Carthage in Colour Michael Innes Amuses Himself What Tfapoleon Said to Hitler MR. LIN YUTANG'S WITH LOVE AND IRONY (Heine mann. 10s. 6d.), is a collection of essays, sketches and impressions which have all the darting vivacity of an aviary of birds. He writes of everything, ...

... --By Vernon Fane Somerset Maugham's New Tale The Golden Wall Street Touch A Novel of Suffolk and New England Neil Gunns Silver Darlings MR. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, having vowed to write no more, has just published a new book, UP AT THE VILLA (Heine- mann. 6s.). It is too short to be called a novel, and too long to be a short story; in other words, it is the kind of book which publishers are supposed ...

... Nineteenth-Century St. Petersburg Sacheverell Sitwell's Diversion The Swashbuckling Trelawny Another Last to Leave Paris Book Tennis, Cocktails, Love and War -By Vernon Fane THE Wellsian mantle of pro phecy having descended upon the astrologers of the Sun day newspapers with a sickening thud, it would be unwise to assume that anyone out of touch with these dubious sources would have ...

... By PHILIP PAGE ALL the principal ladies-- and there were four of them-- in Lady, Behave (His Majesty's Theatre), a musical-comedy, behaved immaculately, except for occasional bursts of ill-temper, rendered necessary by the plot, or possibly the lack of it. In the case of the chief of the bunch, Miss Sally Gray, so pretty does she look when she is angry that it must be well worth while having a ...

... Books for the Story-Lover Robert Graves and Sergeant Lamb Peter Cheyney' s Tough Detectives Jerome Weidman' s Horse and Two Lady TJovelists -By Vernon Fane THOSE who have read Mr. Robert Graves' Sergeant Lamb of the Ninth, will pleasantly anticipate the sequel and conclusion to the fictionised story of that remarkable character published now under the title of PROCEED, SERGEANT LAMB (Methuen. ...

... LIFE-STORIES OF THE GREAT Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton A Pungent and Vivacious Family Study The Clamour Boy of Adventure, and the Cash Value of an Elephant Ride -By Vernon Fane IN his autobiography, G. K. Chesterton told the world very little about his life, but a great deal about himself and about his intellectual activities. It has sometimes been said that no man can write a book, much less ...

... THIS WEEK'S RECOMMENDED READING A Treasury of Letters The Fabulous Woohuorth The Bali Lotus' Eaters Nelson's Hearts of Oak Two Women Novelists on the War --By Vernon Fane OF all forms of writing, the letter is, perhaps, the most individual, and cer tainly the most revela tory. This is more apparent in modern times, when biography so often takes the form of a Life and Letters. In the more ...

... The Blending of Fact and Fiction Charles Graves' Story of the R.A.F. Margaret Ferguson's Childhood Reminiscences A Powerful South African Ffovel, and Two in Lighter Vein --By Vernon Fane IN times of stress like these, memory appears to play strange tricks. What a long, long time ago it seems, for instance, when Mr. Neville Chamberlain announced the declaration of war. From what almost ...

... Stories Grave and Gay Hell and the Soviets Round England with a Circus Delilah Bouleversie Mr. Cary's Undreamlike Children -By Vernon Fane THE life of a political prisoner in a totali tarian State has often been described by those who have been fortunate enough to stay alive to tell the tale. Whether it is Dachau, the Solovetsky, or the Lipari Islands, the story invariably produces the same de ...

... THE PASSING OF PATERNOSTER ROW Thomas Burke's Streets of London, and Some Reflections on a Bookselling Blitz By Vernon Fane MR THOMAS BURKE begins his preface to THE STREETS OF LONDON (Batsford. 10s. 6d.) with these words: As the proofs of this book are being passed for press, the streets of London are under bombardment. X write tms to tne accompaniment 01 Dumps anu Dangs from the enemy, ...

... The PASSING of SIR HUGH WALPOLE A Brief Pen-Portrait of the Herries Chronicler Four Flying Books Rupert Downing s Light Comedy An American Heiress in Italy -By Vernon Fane THE first book on my list this week is the current choice of the Book Society, and the moment is not inappropriate to offer a tribute to the memory of that Society's first chairman. Sir Hugh Walpole. It was largely because ...