... Books.- 1 Reviewed by r Noel Thompson LET us start off this month with a book which is surely going to be a winner, The Thin Blue Line (Hutchinson, 5s.) by Charles Graves. It does not matter what Charles Graves writes about, you will always learn something new, and this book, his first in novel form, is no exception. He has taken seven young men who joined the R.A.F. in October, 1939 as his ...

... : Reviewed by Noel Thompson TWO books this month have their setting for the most part on board ship. The first is Life Boat by Signe Toksvig (Faber and Faber, 7s. 6d.), and a very unusual book this is. The plot is that of the American wife of a German husband on their way back to Germany. The husband's former governess is on board, now a missionary, and terribly wounded about the face by the ...

... : Reviewed by Noel Thompson IT must be almost a burden to have written a book of which five million copies have been sold. Henceforth in comparison everything you produce must seem puny. Erich Maria Remarque wrote All Quiet On The Western Front and caught the tide of anti-war feeling. His latest book Flotsam (Hutchinson, 9s. 6d.) deals with the fate of those people without a passport or ...

... Reviewed by Noel Thompson I DO not like being asked to decide at third hand in what proportion Rasputin was a saint or devil, a mere peasant or a clever courtier, especially when the evidence may or may not be genuine. But there is an undeni able fascination about reading Rasputin Speaks (Faber and Faber, 8s. 6d.). The author is George Sava who is a doctor, with Russian blood, and a number ...

... I GIVE full marks to H. B. Saxe. He has taken an Edgar Wallace style of plot, the Damon Runyan present tense, and a nice selection of slang and called it The Ghost Knows His Greengages (Constable, 7s. 6d.). The result is as good and as funny a thriller as you can want, set in the familiar West End of London with a Moat House with underground dungeon for variety. The ghost is a good character ...

... Rural TLngland and, the VJar TWO well-known writers have decided to put on record a picture of the England of the countryside in wartime, and a valuable record it should prove to be. The Middle West of America and the Dominions would undoubtedly be puzzled by some of the allusions to country customs and manners, but I should like to see these books read there to show how war came to ordinary ...

... Reviewed by Noel Thompson THERE have been stories in the newspapers recently, Your Canaries Can Still Sing and No Need to Kill Your Pets, dealing with the shortage of birdseed and enumerating substitutes for adequate feeding. When a few days later I picked up Bechhofer Roberts's book The Bird seed Pool (Robert Hale, 7s. 6d.) I looked at the title with amazement and then dived into it. ...

... : i 'Reviewed, by SNoel Jhompson IT is natural, I suppose, that this war becomes a dividing line, a dating line, for histories and autobiographies. How could it be otherwise when the war period itself and anything that may come afterwards must be in a new world from what has gone before. To some people, too, the war has meant the clean break and the enforced change necessary before pen can be ...

... WE may laugh at the days of Queen Victoria; we may listen dubiously to reminiscences from parents and grand parents and think how dreadfully dull those times must have been; we may thank heaven that we escaped being born into that period of black bombazine, and yet there is a fascination in reading about it. Small things mattered more they took the place of those things we worry about so much ...

... n THERE is always so much of interest behind any theatrical production of which the public never knows, so many personal dramas, that whenever I pick up the auto biography of some star I can lay the odds that I am in for a fascinating read. Miss Julia Neilson and Mr. Matheson Lang have not let the public down. What a good title This For Remem brance (Hurst and Blackett, 15s.) and what a good ...

... Two Views on Tife TWO books about artists, one written by a woman who combined married life with her career, and the other dealing entirely with the Bohemian side in Paris provide an interesting contrast and also considerable parallels. steua oowen was Dorn m Australia ana orougnt up in a rather Victorian atmosphere which for years she could not forget. In Drawn from Life (Collins, 12s. 6d.) ...

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