... Reviewed by Noel Thompson THE dramatic and overshadowing events of the war have swamped the memories of the Spanish Civil War with all its tragedy and its rehearsals for the present conflict. Ann Bridge provides a skilful reminder in Frontier Passage (Chatto and Windus. 9s.). Interwoven with the love story of a journalist and a Spanish countess of opposing political sympathies are vivid ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. HOUSE BOUND is a war novel, as all fic tion that sets out to describe the contemporary scene must be, in some degree. Rose Fairlaw's role has hitherto been the passive one of anxiety for her children, who are just of an age to be closely in volved-- Mickie, her husband's son by his first marriage; Flora, the only child of her first marriage; and Tom, who belongs to her ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE The most important novelty is The Petrified Forest, at the Globe Theatre, which comes from America, where it had a long run. Mr. Robert Emmett Sherwood has never written a bad play yet, and this is almost (but, to my mind, not quite) his best. It deals with gangsters yet they are only incidental (though they shoot the hero dead), and it is not gangster drama, but a ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES Adult and Juvenile By James Agate OUT of the blue or the cellars of Studio One, which amounts to very much the same thing, comes Derrière la Facade, a small French film so good that it takes all Hollywood's monster productions between finger and thumb and puts them into a sack, which it then deposits in the Atlantic half-way between Hollywood and the port of entry into ...

... By Horace Horsnell Cinderella (Stoll) PANTOMIME, like beer, is a wonderful leveller. It removes inhibitions from both sides of the footlights, and absolves actors and audience alike from taking themselves too seriously. It has rhyme, but little reason, and is no respecter of persons. Kings are of less account than commoners; licence is the order of the state. The fabric of the story it tells ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE categories into which novelists can be divided are manifold, and if they are seldom very water tight or precise, at any rate they clear the ground and make a basis for discussion. The oldest, the best-known and, on the whole, the most useful of these categories, the romantic and the realistic, for many years divided fiction into two camps. Romance and realism are ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES Gay and Grim By James Agate NOT always do we feel disposed to visit the cinema: there are days and days. So, after cutting our finger, upsetting the ink-pot on to our priceless Axminster, put ting two important business letters into the wrong envelopes, using a new mouth-wash instead of the accustomed Nufix for what we humorously call our hair, and ending up with ...

... By Horace Horsnell Arsenic and Old Lace (Strand) THOUGH poised to begin with somewhat perilously between the comic and the macabre, this ruthless comedy comes down so deftly on the side of the wicked burlesque that laughter, which might have been self-conscious or constrained, becomes both spontaneous and full-throated. Its theme is homicidal mania; its two most charming characters are active ...

... ARTISTRY-BIOGRAPHICAL and FICTIONAL --By Vernon Fane Arnold Palmer's Candid Biography Houses Old and j\[civ One of Alice Duer Miller's Earlier Novels Tough Characters and a Thriller That Really Thrills I HAVE no idea whether there is a critics' convention that opposes any favourable refer ence to a contemporary's dis position. If there is I intend to ignore it and to state that Mr. Arnold ...

... ■By Vernon Fane Captain Evelyn Waugh's Hew Hovel A Best-Seller from America Rachel Field's Last Work The English Romantic Movement I SHOULD like to thank Cap tain Evelyn Waugh for publishing WORK SUSPENDED (Chapman and Hall. 8s. 6d.). In a dedication to that wise old owl, Alexander Woollcott, the author says: This is the book on which I was at work in September 1939. It is now clear to me that ...