... 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 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 L. P. HARTLEY. THE translator-- one might say the reincarnator-- of Chinese Poems and The Tale of Genji has now put his incomparable gift to a task which may not have been quite so congenial as either of those. Monkev is an immensely long Chinese fairy-story, A Pilgrim's Pro-' gress that is religious without being pietistic, written by an author who flourished between 1505 and 15S0. ...

... THE CHRONICLES OF A SPITFIRE PILOT -By Vernon Fane A Week-end Airman in the Battle of Britain Two l^ew 7 Novels Where to Spend One's Leave France's Sole Enemy FLIGHT- LIEUT. CROOK, D.F.C., was one of the handful of pilots who fought the Battle of Britain. During it he kept a journal, so that his book, SPITFIRE PILOT (Faber. 5s.) has the merit of being fresh and first-hand. He was a member of ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES Two Big Films By James Agate FOR some time I have been inveighing against those of our smart playwrights who have thought to write war plays by trotting out the old familiar characters, the old stale plot and the old dreary wise-cracking, and putting them into a war setting. The result in every case has been a shallow catch-penny success-- with the unthinking. |V[OEL ...

... By Horace Horsnell Flare Path (Apollo) FROM Shakespeare to Sherriff, our native dramatists have been strongly attracted by the humours of soldiering. Even Mr. Shaw, in Arms and the Man, succumbed to their charm. And when a war play is written by a service playwright, the humours and heroics are likely to share equal honours. Shake speare's Henry V and Mr. Sherriff's Journey's End-- to cite two ...

... By Horace Horsnell Night of the Garter (Strand) One's first reaction to these headstrong revels, whether delight or dismay, depends rather on one's attitude to farce in general and what one expects of a ten-year-old with that pun in its title. Later reflection may lead one to feel that farce is the true surrealism. And indeed the attempts of modern painters to explore the terra incognita of ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. IT would be difficult to imagine a more ambitious scheme than the one Miss Vicki Baum has proposed for herself in her latest novel: it is a tour-de-force such as even she has never before attempted. Into a single per formance of Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York she crowds the critical events of many life times. The scene never changes. The entire action ...

... -By Vernon Fane A Lady in the Wildest Wild West Spy Hunting on Everest Love in the Tanks Those Long Week-ends The Man from Betelgeuse King Haakon's Great Record NO LIFE FOR A LADY (Michael Joseph. 15s.) is a grand book for a reader. Mrs. Agnes Morley Cleaveland's life may have been unconventional, cer tainly was adventurous, and indubitably makes splendid material for an autobiography. Mrs. ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IT isn't often, as you may have noticed, that I feel the urge to beat the big drum in this column and shout: Walk up; walk up; to the Greatest Show on Earth! Too many of the films on which I comment have a tendency to monotonous effici ency. Too many of the people who make them satisfy when they do satisfy without arousing any sort of exuberance in the spectator. But it ...

... By Horace Horsnell Men in Shadow (Vaudeville) HERE is yet another highly topical play, fraught with excitement and redolent of war. Though its heroes are English airmen on active service, it is not another Flare Path, but more severely romantic. It might not inaptly have been entitled Scare Path, for its excitement is of that devil-in-the-dark order of which children are such connoisseurs. ...

... it win fame in a night both for her- he play? have been stressed with t that sentiment and publicity may i accommodating story. Re-savouring jus first night at the Shaftesbury in liniscent eulogists have vied with one n whetting the appetite of those who, oliseum revival, were to see the play rst time. J, however, has a horrid way of over- itself, and there were bound to be ntments. Time ...