... 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 ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES Two Good Films By James Agate Watch on the Rhine (Warner and Regal, Marble Arch) is in one way poorer than the play but in many ways better. Herman Shumlin, who directs, seems to have had an inspiration amounting to a brain wave. This is to leave the horrors of Nazi misrule where Lillian Hellman left them-- to the imagination. Throughout the entire picture we do not ...

... By Horace Horsnell Flying Colours (Lyric) IF the bright particular stars that adorn our stage were ruled by a benevolent autocrat, and I were he, an old but not impertinent problem would not have been raised once more by this revue. It concerns Miss Binnie Hale, who adorns some of the programme's more memorable features. That problem, which is purely speculative, may be briefly re-stated: is ...

... By Horace Horsnell Vintage Wine (Comedy) OUR stage has long excelled in good comedians, and our drama in good parts for them to play. Even the great days of tragedy deferred to them. The Elizabethans, like ourselves, enjoyed a good laugh; and it is not without significance that Falstaff, that prime comedian, should have dominated three of Shakespeare's plays. Those two good judges, Hazlitt and ...

... -By Vernon Fane Norwegian Autobiography, and Life in Norfolk Conflict in France Death in Wyoming /Esop Refold The Latest Peter Cheyney IN the past few months many good and moving books have come out of Norway, and the latest of these is called RETURN TO HAPPINESS (Mac millan. 18s.), the autobio graphy of another kind of Norwegian. Mr. j onas Liea lias, m common witn Ms leiiow- Norwegian ...

... Walter de la Mare's Anthology of Love The Life of A. A. Milne Life on a Corvette Secret Service in Lforth Africa The Lady of the Manor The Beauties of the Home Counties --By Vernon Fane WHEN I picked up Mr. Walter de la Mare's LOVE (Faber, 25s.), I remem bered something Q once said: British poetry contains a very great deal of information about love, some of it really illuminating; but the ...

... A BATCH OF NEW NOVELS From Britain, America and Occupied Europe An Account of Lord B eaverbrook in Whitehall and Other Books of the Week By Vernon Fane IN her sensitive introduction to SOUTHERN HARVEST (Gollancz. ios. 6d.) Miss Clare Leighton writes that this book was written out of my own need. Missing the earth of England and the people of that earth, I wandered around here in the ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. I AM too late to recommend Channel Packet, which has already gone into three impressions; but not too late, I hope, to praise it, rapid as is nowadays the dis appearance of any book which endears itself to the public. One's reasons for liking a book do not always really explain why one likes it one may like it as one likes a person, for some temperamental affinity or a ...

... WAR BOOKS AND NEW NOVELS By Vernon Fane An Instructive, Cermany-froni'ivithin Account British Children Abroad The Life of a Roman Tribune A CatAovers' Classic A GOOD newspaperman on modern Germany is always worth reading, and Mr. Louis Lochner, chief of the Associated Press in Ber lin up to December 1941, is no exception to this rule. Mr. Lochner had fourteen years' experience of that country ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE THE MERRY WIDOW.-- Whether London's return, theatrically speaking, to the reign of Edward VII is because that age was more peaceful and more civilised, or because its plays were better, I have not the space here to discuss. Possibly both reasons hold good. But it is pleasant to find Lehar's luscious tunes, with their memories of Daly's Theatre, at His Majesty's, with ...

... ADVERTISEMENTS as PROPAGANDA A New Idea sponsored by Imperial Chemical Industries Mr. Sidney Rogerson is, to-day, a power in advertising: he is in charge of all publicity for that vast organisation. Imperial Chemical Industries. But until the year 1937 he had been chiefly concerned with editorial and film propaganda. When war came two years later, it put a stop to the bulk of ad vertising as ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THERE is a bitter pleas ure in turning from Julien Duvi vier's new, shining Hollywood epic, Tales of Man hattan, to his old, unostentatious LA FIN DU JOUR. which you can seen at Studio One with French dialogue and English sub-titles. Ea Fin du Jour was the last film Duvivier made before he left the Old World and the life and cinema ne unoerstooo. The present copy has ...