... By Horace Horsnell Rain (St. Martin's) MR. SOMERSET MAUGHAM has a remark able gift for investing fiction with an air of truth. He exercises it, not only in his choice of themes, but in his treatment of them. His best stories seem so credible, their characters so real, that simple readers are persuaded he takes them direct from life. And since his point of view is seldom a soothing one, it is ...

... Reviewed by Noel Thompson JUDGING by the sales of The Thin Blue Line there must be many thousands of people who will want to know what happened to its heroes, Tommy Halton, Henry Ireland, Paddy Tallard, Jock Riddell, Ginger Pleasanton, Kit Crockart and Hugh Claverley. In The Avengers (Hutchinson, 7s. 6d.) Charles Graves satisfies that wish by giving the adventures of the heroes after he ...

... Playbill Looks at the Shows Escort (Lyric) SIR PATRICK HASTINGS'S drama of the Royal Navy in wartime, Escort, is by no means plain sailing. No doubt that is as it should be, for purposes of realism. But Sir Patrick has complicated matters owing to a professional urge to graft police-court cross-examina tion stuff on to ward-room routine. The other play of the dangers of life at sea these ...

... By Horace Horsnell Lifeline (Duchess) A LARGE but possibly dwindling section of the community regards that loyal plant, the aspidistra, less as a botanical phenom enon than as a household pet or member of the family. And even the callous æsthete, who sees in its unassuming tenure of the parlour window merely a target for his wit, must confess that it has virtues. Cheerfulness in discouraging ...

... By Horace Horsnell Snlt of the Earth (Vaudeville) TOPICAL history is as susceptible to fabulous treatment as that which is more remote. It depends on the his torian. Mr. Michael Egan, the author of this busy little play, is too keen a dramatist to be fussy about speculative data or embarrassed by niceties of chronology. Nor is he a stickler for mere chapter and verse, but selects his material ...

... A SATIRIST'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE BOCHE feter de folnay s Adventures; A Jxovel by Hugh walpole; An Historian's Autobiography Summer Holidays of Yester-year By Vernon Fane STILL they come, these hooks by writers who stayed, saw and suffered in the fall of France. One and all they have loved France. One and all they testify to the sickness of equi vocation, bewildered acquisition and frustration ...

... WORDS. DEEDS AND FICTION -By Vernon Fane A Stylist's Anthology Brilliant 'War Reporting Fascism in the Sun An English Miss in the Czardas I DON'T like anthologies. There is almost nothing to be said in their favour, except by those compilers and pub lishers who make a good thing out of them. For the lazy minded they provide what look like short cuts to that to which there is no short cut. They ...

... --By Vernon Fane T hose P. G. Wodehouse Broadcasts from Berlin lan Hay on the Pur moil of Urban America A TJostalgic JJovel of Paris T he TJew Joseph Shearing Another Egotistical Mother MR. HARRY W. FLANNERY was Mr. William .Shirer's successor as representative of the Columbia Broadcasting Sys tem in Berlin. ASSIGNMENT TO BERLIN (Michael Joseph. 12s. 6d.) can, therefore, be read as a ...

... Books Reviewed by Noel Thompso?i IF you are not interested in war books you can skip the first three books on my list this month. But I think you will be foolish if you do so. Not only are they full of interest, but they deal with widely separated fronts and have been treated very differently. In Signed With Their Honour (Michael Joseph, 9s. 6d.) James Aldridge weaves into novel form his ...

... -By Vernon Fane A Novelist's Novel on Keeping with Phantoms Beatrice Kean Seymour's Return Journey Village Strife with Winifred Blazey A Portrait of a Great American THE late Sir Hugh Walpole was fond of holding up that minor classic, Maurice Guest, by Henry Handel Rich ardson, as an example of a novelist's novel. One might almost say the same thing of Mr. L. A. G. Strong's THE UNPRACTISED ...

... By Herbert Farjeon Ridgeway's Late Joys (Player1 s) ALTHOUGH, as mentioned the other week, there is now no music-hall in the West End of London, something very like a music-hall is, after all, what you get at the Player's Theatre, which is one of the places of entertainment I visit at short intervals for pleasure as well as at long intervals for duty; for the company off the stage as well as ...

... By Horace Horsnell The Gondoliers (Prince's) New Russian Ballet (Cambridge) GILBERT AND SULLIVAN are in town for the season, and the faithful will need no reminding of how good they are or how well they wear. The goodness of these Victorian operas is intrinsic; their durability is largely due to the jealous care of the D'Oyly Carte tradition. few things are safe these days trom the vagaries of ...