... 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. ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. I CAN'T say I ever thought the day would come when we should see Franchot Tone, that earnest member of Hollywood's intel lectual set, in the Stetson and buck skins of a Western hero, but that's how he appears in TRAIL OF THE VIGILANTES (Odeon). I still don't think that Mr. Tone is quite the cowboy type, but I am so glad to see him back on the screen alter months of ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THIS week it is my pleasant task to welcome a new series, Britain in Pic tures; or, to be more accurate, three new series, for, besides Britain, the Penns-in-the- Rocks Press are publishing illustrated commentaries on the countries of the British Empire (The British Commonwealth in Pictures), and illustrated anthologies of the English poets The English Poets in tures). ...

... KING GEORGE V Mr. John Gore's Personal Memoir --By Vernon Fane TO my colleague, Mr. John Gore, better known to readers of The Sphere as The Old Stager, the King and Queen Mary entrusted the task of the writing of a personal memoir of King George V. It had been wisely decided that an official biography should be postponed until comment can freely be made on the political aspects of his reign ...

... By Herbert Farjeon No Time for Comedy (Haymarket) SMART is the word for this play, which is as smart as they make them. As smart as Noel Coward, though it is by S. N. Behrman. As smart as Schiaparelli, though Diana Wynyard's costumes were de signed and executed by Paquin and Victor Stiebel. As smart, twice, thrice as smart, as the Haymarket Theatre, where it is being played. And the ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE most unusual film of this or many weeks past is VICTORY (Plaza), from the Joseph Conrad novel of ideals and adven ture in the sticky South Seas. It is pos sibly a little more unusual than the producers reckoned for, since they have done their best to make recognisable movie material of it the sort of film for which South of This, and East of That, and West of the ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE present century has produced few novelists capable of being com pared with the masters of the last; and the chief cause of this is, not that our novelists are necessarily inferior, but that their subject-matter lacks the stability essential for a work of fiction. The structure of society may not have changed' as much as some people think, but it has changed and is still ...

... (tA Hut By James Agate Good Material and Bad THE incommunicable mystery of the sea. I forget who said this. Perhaps nobody. Possibly it is merely the crystallisation of what all seafarers, and landfarers too, have felt about the world's changeless, ever-changing high-roads. Whatever its origin the phrase sums up the informing spirit of that great writer, Joseph Conrad, which is at once ...

... REMINISCENCES of theGREAT A mbassador Dodd's Diary Viscount Mersey's Memoirs John Buchan's Last JJovd -By Vernon Fane FROM 1933 to 1938 the United States Ambassador to Germany was Mr. William Dodd, formerly Professor of History in the University of Chicago, and the holder of a Doctor's degree from the University of Leipzig. Presi dent Roosevelt appointed him because he wanted for the post a ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. DO plays make films? It sounds rather like Alice in Won derland's celebrated Do cats eat bats?; but it is pertinent, neverthe less, as pertinent as Lewis Carroll is, too, when you come to study him. The question turns up again this week, over the case of MA J OR BARBARA, at the Odeon. I must confess that Major Barbara confirms my earlier doubts over How He Lied to Her ...

... , By L. P. HARTLEY. THE weakness of much anti-totalitarian propa ganda is that it repre sents the movement as based on a creed which no one in his senses could subscribe to, or as a form of madness which no one is likely to catch. We are shown the horrors it brings with it, the injustice, cruelty, perfidy, bloodshed, the lower ing or liquidation of moral standards but we are not told how it is ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Orchids and Onions (Comedy) ALTHOUGH there are quite a lot of people in this more or less intimate revue, it is really a one-man show, and that one man is George Doonan. When I first saw Mr. Doonan, I jumped to the conclusion that he was going to turn out commonplace, which is not a good thing for a comedian to be, as well as turning out common, which is quite a good thing ...