... Two Bio- novels COME critics say that the lives of celebrated i ^people should not be written in novel form. I cannot see why, provided the dialogue s S is probable and known facts are not falsified. In any case, dialogue has to be projected for S S stage, radio, and film, and romantic -stories like Chopin's and George Sand's are almost S S novels already too tempting to resist; where hundreds ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE TT//S TIME IT'S LOVE (Comedy).-- How that amusing Frenchman, Louis Verneuil, ever came to write a quarter of a centurv ago so dull a plav as this, and whv two clever English people have taken the trouble to translate it, I find a bit of a mystery. The translation is a more than impossible job of work, and that is why, coupled with some excellent acting the evening was ...

... -By Vernon Fane Lion Feuchtwanger 's Story of Nazi Germany Ach-ack and a Kentish Village Murder in Pre-war Austria The Ingredients of a Chinese Puzzle THE new Feuchtwanger novel evokes this author's usual atmosphere of ugly splendour and macabre Gothic intrigue. It is a melodrama of Nazi Germany before this war, and tells the story of two men who are shown as having a dubious influence over ...

... : fi ftr^ Reviewed by fifl Trevor^llen SUPPOSE you know, intimately, just one lovable young man who has been sacrificed in this war. Isn't his loss, while the instigators of that war go on living, a challenge to all your fundamental beliefs in God and the justice of God, and your spiritual faiths in the future? Mr. Rom Landau thinks so. His Letter to Andrew (Faber, 8s. 6d.) is addressed to a ...

... Books Reviewed by Noel Thompson 1 OUR gallant sailors are only ordinary human beings and hate to be looked on as a race apart. That is the message of Gilbert Hackforth- Jones in his book of short stories about the navy, which he has called One-One-One (Hodder and Stoughton, 7s. 6d.). But the more he tries to show they are ordinary, the more, to me, he shows them extraordinary. Readers of ...

... MR. RICHARD LLEWELLYN'S successor to How Green Was My Valley None But The Lonely Heart (Michael Joseph, 10s. 6d.) is not c only about Cockneys; it is written throughout in Cockney idiom. Young S Ernie Mott, a artist very near, wants to achieve Tate Gallery eminence c like his father; but his widowed ma runs a furniture shop Kingsland Road way, with shoplifting and receiving as sidelines, ...

... By Horace Horsnell Present Laughter (Haymarket) WHAT future generations will make of our plays and other theatre proceed ings remains to be seen. Still, I venture to forecast that, with this delightfully ridiculous comedy (possibly the wittiest since The Importance of Being Earnest), Mr. Noel Coward will have made a notable advance in the opinion of posterity. He should figure in that select ...

... By Horace Horsnell There Shall Be No Night (Aldtvych) ALFRED LUNT and Lynn Fontanne are such agreeable and accomplished actors that we should welcome almost any play they chose to bring to us. We like them both for what they do and the way they do it. Their acting is so skilful and studied an art that it might be described as inspired methodism. Their technical equipment includes (but is by no ...

... 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 Pink String and Sealing Wax (Duke of York's) CHOOSING a title for a new play must be as tricky as choosing one for a new peer. What does this one suggest to you-- a theme for a surrealist painter, or a conversation piece by the Walrus and the Carpenter? Actually, it has nothing to do with either of those æsthetic extremes. Mr. Roland Pertwee is not that kind of dramatist. He ...

... By Horace Horsnell Magic Carpet (Princes) MAGIC carpets are tricky aircraft. They fly, as you know, on a mixture of dreams and wishes. Transcending both time and space, their range is limited only by the imagination of the pilot. They take off at the word (or wish) of command. Once started, however, they are apt to get out of control, have a tendency to stall, and prefer a crash to a happy ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES A Great Russian Film By James Agate LET it be laid down clearly and distinctly, without any iff-ing and aff-ing, as we used to say up North, that One Day if War, the Russian film, now showing at the Regal is by streets, miles, and any other unit of measure you can think of, the best documen tary ever made. The day chosen to be shot by the hundred and sixty Russian ...