... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THERE is going to be a lot of fuss over the screen treatment of Rachel Field's ALL THIS, AND HEAVEN TOO! (Warner), but per sonally I find myself on the side of the screen-writers. You will remember that Miss Field's long novel fell into two parts. The first dealt with the life of a nineteenth- century French governess in Paris. It described how Henriette Desportes, just ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THERE was a time when a man of learning could make all knowledge his province. I imagine that in the seventeenth century it was still physically possible for one man to read all the books that had ever been written. How wonderful to know all there was to be known on any subject! Perhaps Francis Bacon was in that happy position. Shakespeare notoriously was not. Ben Jonson, ...

... 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, ...

... Revudeville DAUNTLESS and indefatigable is the little Windmill Theatre, where the present revue has reached its 143rd year, or 143rd edition-- I forget which, but it is pro- bably the latter. Among the new items is a Paris and the Golden Apple episode, in which the Venus (Miss Margot Harris there is not much of her, and not much on her) is certainly not 143 years old. I am told, indeed, that ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. LOVE ON THE DOLE, which you can see at the Odeon this week, is a very moving transcription of Walter Green wood's Lancashire play. It is the story ot the mill hands and their families in any Lancashire town, but in parti cular the story of the Hardcastles of Hankey Park father, mother, daughter Sally and eighteen-year-old brother Harry. Pennies are scarce enough in Hankey ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE most startling film-- with the possible excep tion of Our Town-- to come out of America since the Coward- Hecht-McArthur Scoundrel is in- town this week. The title is CITIZEN KANE, and you can, and should, see it at the Gaumont. It is the brain-child and hand-work of twenty-six-year-old American Orson Welles, who goes in for .startling things. Welles, as you may ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE New Gallery, I suppose, will again be the Mecca of parents with children to entertain these Christmas holi days. The new Disney Christmas annual is out, and it's called DUMBO, and proves to be the simple, gaudy, straightforward sort of thing that children expect from Disney, without any disturbing innovations. Dumbo is a baby elephant, an innocent, blue-eyed baby born ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. AS Mr. Epstein sculpts, so does he write, without fear and, I was going to add, without favour; but this would not be entirely true. Disguise the fact as he may, every man is his own favourite, and Mr. Epstein, besides being his own biographer, is also his own apologist, or, it would be fairer to say, the apologist of his art. Ut himself he writes with admirable ...

... . Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes for 1941 has just been published. It is one of the most useful of all books of reference, as it is a handy volume, which occupies a small amount of space 011 the writing-desk, and yet it contains over 30,000 biographies arranged in alphabetical order. Many of these will not be found in other reference books, as Kelly's includes not ...

... --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 ...