... : T^eviewed by Noel Thompson HEIGH-HO for a cheery bunch of books this month in which the war plays little part. For the most part our novelists seem to have said to themselves, Let us be gay, thereby anticipating Mr. A. P. Herbert's famous postscript. Of course Agatha Christie, despite the murders inherent in her novels, always writes with a light touch, but her latest Hercule Poirot story ...

... The Storytellers Hold Court Virginia Woolf's Last Jsfovel E. M. Delafield's Family Saga; A Vfapoleonic Refugee Divorce^Court and Other Reminiscences --By Vernon Fane ALMOST anybody will admit that Virginia Woolf's last book, The Years, was not easy to read on first sight, though the kind of reader who would be unprepared to make the effort would be denying himself much aesthetic and ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Quiet Week-end (Wyndham's) WHEN Turgenev says A Month in the Country, we know that he means a month in the country, and a month in the country it is. But when Esther McCracken (who wrote Quiet Wedding) says Quiet Week-end, we know that she does not mean quiet week-end, and quiet week-end it certainly is not. Unrest to the point of commotion is the keynote of this comedy. On ...

... 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 ...

... By PHILIP PAGE ALL the principal ladies-- and there were four of them-- in Lady, Behave (His Majesty's Theatre), a musical-comedy, behaved immaculately, except for occasional bursts of ill-temper, rendered necessary by the plot, or possibly the lack of it. In the case of the chief of the bunch, Miss Sally Gray, so pretty does she look when she is angry that it must be well worth while having a ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. VIRGINIA WOOLF'S post humous novel, Between the Acts, is the signal for us to raise our hats to the memory of a rare and ex quisite gift, a will-o'-the-wisp among more stationary and consistent luminaries, now tragically extinguished. But it is more than that, more than the final flicker of a light which, brightly as it burned, sometimes served only to em phasise the ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. WE have learnt, in The Prime Minister, that Disraeli interested him self, amongst other things, in a Bill for Public Baths and Wash-houses. I n .The Young Mr. Pitt, we shall pre sently see Robert uonat piaying at Brooks' Cltib a game called Hazard, that was the forerunner of America's modern craps shooting. Currently, in LADY HAMILTON (Odeon). we discover that ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Close Quarters (Apollo) THE characters in the order of their appearance are Liesa Bergmann and Gustav Bergmann. In other words, there are only two, so that it is clear from the word go that the play, which is in three acts of regulation length, will be something of a feat. How will the author accomplish this feat? A tricky business. But there are the steps of unseen ...

... Russia Stalin's Complex Land Caucasus Journey Lions are not like That The Wives of the R.A.F. An Analysis of Invasion: Reds, Pinks and Russians --By Vernon Fane BY some extraordinary felicity of timing, Mr. George Sava has only now published his account of a journey made in 1918 from Baku to Tiflis across the mountains of the Caucasus. His VALLEY OF FOR GOTTEN PEOPLE (Faber and Faber. 12s. 6d. ...

... Lady Behave (His Majesty's) By Herbert Farjeon IT is some time since we last met the heroine who, being an archduchess or a million airess or something similarly unspiritually dazzling, rejects the gifts with which fortune has blessed her and temporarily swaps hats with her maid because she wants to be loved for herself alone. She became, I suppose, a bit of a laughing-stock, or, if not a ...

... Fictional Finesses in Varied Form C. S. Foresters Yankee Hero; ]\[orah Hoult Guys the Deep South School A Tough Tyro; Sassoon and Saroyan Seltcted MISS DOROTHY THOMPSON VISITS THE CZECH FORCES IN BRITAIN The famous American journalise now visiting this country has just paid a visit to the Midlands to inspect Czech troops. She was accompanied by Mr. Jan Masaryk (Czech Foreign Minister on left ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IF ever there was a film that carried substan tial insurance at the box-office, it is ZIEGFELD GIRL (Empire, Friday). Ziegfeld Girl, if it adds very little to the esoterica of f i 1 m m ak i n g simply can't go wrong with the cus tomers. Costing round about a quarter of a million pounds (we can make it sound even more impressive in dollars), it is showy, shrewd and ...