... 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 ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE reaction of most English people to the collapse of France in face of the German invasion was one of stupefaction and bewilderment. Afterwards that reaction changed, in some cases to indignation, in others to sympathy, or sorrow; but the majority of us are still puzzled and eager for enlightenment. No sensible person wishes to accumulate more enemies than he need which ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. IT is notorious that nearly all short stories are diffi cult to sell, and short stories with pretensions to literary merit can hardly be given away. The magazine or wish-fulfilment type of story goes best. Such stories often contain good writing, Dut tney can hardly be considered works of art, since the writer's atti tude to life which must affect the way he handles all his ...

... C(A -Hu Th/biAJls} By James Agate A Daymare SOMETIMES I tease Sunday morning's lady- wags, but almost always I admire and envy them. What, for example, could be better than Miss Lejeune's epitome of Public Deb. No. 1? Let me repeat this for the benefit of any reader who may have overlooked it: Public Deb. No. 1 (Dominion).-- Startling revelation of what the Russian attack on Finland did to ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Strike Up the Music (Coliseum) WHEN I entered the auditorium of the Coliseum Theatre, some three minutes after the starting time advertised on the bills, the opening number of this revue of happiness was already and com mendably in progress. The scene (I discovered later from my programme) was a dream bed room, numerously inhabited by the fair sex. variously clad. ...

... 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 ...

... MINISTERIAL MIRTH Fed Tape and Birdseed Fun with the Civil Service A Fine Californian Tale and a Grim Scottish One -By Vernon Fane ONE of the sounds which it is popularly supposed could be heard in Whitehall in September, 1939, was the Civil Service stirring in its sleep. It is generally agreed that as a peace-time institution the Civil Service is to be admired and respected on many counts; ...

... Londoners Would Rather Forget! -By Vernon Fane The World of Books- A Growl Jrom a Blitzed Londoner; Alfred J\eumanns and Lvan Johns Historical 7\[ovels A A[ew Detective and A Tough Guy MR. NEGLEY FARSON recently returned from an east-to-west trip across Central Africa which he described in a book called Behind God's Back. Using the now familiar technique of the peripatetic journalist, he made ...

... : R eviewed By i Noel Thompson WHEN an authoress chooses a subject, writes a novel which draws the moral she wishes to make, and then finds just as she completes it that what she has written is coming true, she has every reason to feel pleased at her perspicacity even if she worries as to whether she will be believed that the book was written before the events. Storm Jameson wanted to write ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THERE'S this to be said about the anti-- Nazi films that have been filling our theatres of late with such aban don-- they have thrown up some re markably good acting. Even if you are as tired as I am of screen swastikas, and storm troopers, and concentration camps, you must admit that there is something about their tense atmosphere that seems to bring out the best in young ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE CANYON is a story of adolescence; Californian adolescence, which means that the symp toms are much aggravated. Whereas ordinary schoolboys in England, and probably in New England too, are content with ringleaders of only moderate wickedness, with inflicting on each other tor tures from which recovery is possible at the most in a few hours (though the wound to the ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. ALTHOUGH ARISE, MY LOVE (Carl ton) involves a foreign correspondent and is set against a background of European war, it shows us no battle scenes, and is mainly bright, light comedy. For which no one is more grateful than your reviewer. This foreign correspondent theme, all the rage in fiction after the last war, is getting increasingly fashionable in Holly wood films. ...