... : Reviewed by Noel Thompson THE war, with its variegated intermingling of tragedy and comedy, has given writers a thousand themes on which to draw. It will probably be some years before the really great novel with a war background appears, but meantime the stopgaps of well-done true-life pictures are building up the background. Amy J. Baker takes the journey back to England of the Riviera ...

... Wild Rose (Princes) By Horace Horsnell THIS fond old musical play, first seen, heard, and whistled in London in 1921, under the name of Sally, was even then something of a pastiche. Its action passes in New York in the early 1900's. So now we get, as it were, a double throw-back in manners and melody. It belongs to the gentler vaudeville school. The composer, Jerome Kern, links on to the pre ...

... -By Vernon Fane Sir Philip Gibbs 1 American Tour Ralph Ingersoll Covers All Fronts Miss Emily Hahn's Biography of Three Remarkable Chinese Sisters Donald Cowie's Heartening Record of General Wavell's Campaign Sixteen Stories by Walter de la Mare, and a Book About Bridge THE last ten years have seen the rise to fame, honour, glory and the best-selling lists of the foreign correspondents. Before ...

... FICTION AND FACT PERFECTLY BLENDED By Vernon Fane The Smut'black Harlem Artist; The Technique of 7 Novels and Novelettes A Sudan Scrap-book A Librarian's Holidays at Home; The Shipwrecked Naturalist; Science for the Million WHEN a coloured girl called Augusta idly boasts at a party that she is an artist, and then sets out to prove it to Harlem and the world in general, you've got something ...

... By Vernon Fane A Detailed Biography of Dick Sheppard Stephen Leacock's Humorous Uncle An Old Wives' Tale by Francis Brett Young A Stanyon Family Sequel A Jsfovel by Cecil Roberts after Four T ears SHAKESPEARE, when he delivered himself of the tag-- The evil that men do lives after them, Their good is oft interred with their bones, did not envisage the scope and resources of the modern news ...

... Bv PHILIP PAGE FLARE PATH (Apollo).-- Although there are very many theatregoers who consider, with some reason, that war should be kept out of the theatre, the flood of war-plays continues. In Mr. Terence Rattigan's play there is no actual tragedy. For a time we think there is, and there is some gloom and pathos until the airman who was thought to be missing turns up. dishevelled but cheery. I ...

... By Horace Horsnell Light and Shade Ambassadors THIS dappled divertissement is the latest and, in some ways, the most intimate of Mr. Farjeon's Little revues. But it is intimacy with a difference. It offsets levity with gravity; it has warmth as well as wit. Some of its happiest numbers do not seek to convulse, but, by recalling beauty from the past, touch us with their poignancy. Hitherto, ...

... TL, By Horace Horsnell No Orchids for Miss Blandish (Prince of Wales's) POOR Miss Blandish; poor little rich girl! Hers was not a happy birthday. Theorchids, symbol of the luxury from which the gang sters snatched her must always have been exotic. And, since luxury is more readily described than materialised, we presume they flowered more generously in the pages of Mr. Hadley Chase's novel ...

... --By Vernon Fane Two Thrillers and Mr. Howard Haycraft's Analysis of Crime-Story Writing Mr. Tfeil Bell's Meek Peek The Obituaries of a Soldier Sir Ian Hamilton's Charming Memoir of His Wife THIS week I have read two widely- different who dunits-- a portmanteau name for a novel of crime and detec tion-- and although neither of them had the chills and thrills one most appreciates in such ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. FRIENDS who have recently come back from America assure me that EAGLE SQUADRON (Leicester Square) is an important picture, emphasising the solidarity of Anglo-American relations. Whether that is any justifica tion for the film to be relatively unimportant as a work of art I don't know, but it is as good a reason as any other for putting it at the head of this page. ...

... A CLOSE SEASON (or CORRESPONDENTS? Washington and Dirty Linen, and Unity and Foreign Correspondents The Money Grubbing Vigour of the Victorians Major Jarvis Laughs in Libya Pearl Binder's Charming Russians -By Vernon Fane WHILE American history (revised version) is being taught in our schools and a large number of American young men in uniform are being taught that tea is tea, and not a ...

... Reviewed by Philip Page Salt of the Earth (Vaudeville).-- This clever and moving play, by Michael Egan, is not for your escapist playgoer. With Occupied France as the scene war could hardly be in the background. Whether this is an exact picture of what is happening at the moment in the average farmhouse in Normandy I do not pretend to know. Nor, I imagine, does the author, for evidence is ...