... 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. ...

... 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 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 ...

... 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 ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE LADY EVE (Plaza) has all the stamp of the classic screen comedy. It is smooth, it is subtle, it is mature and full of worldly wisdom. It has, too, the har mony of a one-man composition, for Mr. Preston Sturges, who believes he can get the best effects that way, both wrote the script and directed the picture. It proves that those other earlier films of his, Down Went ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Black Vanities (Victoria Palace) FOR reasons which will appear, I shall have to be careful what I say about this show. I don't want to get Mr. George Black into trouble. But I can begin by letting myself go over the production. What a production! --so deliriously expensive that you wonder how Mr. Black dared to take the risk in blitz time; so frantically sumptuous that you ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. ALL literary reputations rest on opinion, but some, and those not necessarily the highest, are much more firmly established than others. Few critics would say that Anthony Trollope belongs to the first rank of English novelists; still fewer would deny that he takes a foremost place in the second. Much greater claims have been made for George Eliot or Meredith but, on the ...

... 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 ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. WE have heard so much from the other side about the new technique'' of KITTY FOYLE, the film for which Ginger Rogers won her Academy award, that we went along to the Gaumont with some curiosity to see it. The problem, it seems, was to adapt the autobiographical style of Christopher Morley's novel to the screen without losing the punch of its first-person technique. ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. MR. L. A. G. STRONG is a very talented novelist, and his talent shows to greatest advantage when applied to some unusual, one might almost say pathological, type of experience. He has a wide range of imaginative sym pathy, and can draw all sorts and conditions of men, but the plain man is the subject that suits him least. Perhaps it would be an abuse of words to call the ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. TWO of the screen's most distinguished actors-- Paul Muni and Spencer Tracy-- appear in new films in the West End this week, and it is rather interesting to go, as I did, from one show to the other and compare their methods. There was a time when I very foolishly, as I see now-- used to think of these two men as much the same type of player. Totally unlike in looks and ...