... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. A VERY young scientist I know, a four teen-year-old boy by the name of Smith, has an odd hobby. In all the hours he can spare from dissecting frogs and combining combustible elements, he goes to see Technicolor pictures. He goes to see no other pictures. He does not like pictures. He rarely likes Technicolor pictures. But he studies them gloomily, morosely, in the interests ...

... . By G. A. LEJEUNE. WALT DISNEY, who started his professional career through a mouse whom he met in an office, has become one of America's leading educators for the duration. Educational and propaganda films for the U.S. Government now represent more than three-fourths of the output from the Disney Studios. He is making, or has made, a string of instructional films for the Navy a series for ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. RUNNING to PARA DISE is a novel of escape, though far from being an escapist novel. The hero, Adrian Dormant, rather than wait for his class to be called up in England, joins the French Foreign Legion, and sees much fierce fighting before France signs the Armistice. Most of his friends are killed, and he himself becomes a prisoner of war in German hands. Escaping from ...

... 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 ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IN the long run, your verdict on MISSION TO MOSCOW (Warners and Regal) will almost certainly be decided by your political views or the extent of your in formation regarding pre-war European affairs, neither of which is the province of these notes. The controversy surrounding the piece as propaganda is not my affair either, and 1 leave others to decide wnetner tne mm is, ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. RIDE ON, STRANGER is a novel about urban life in Aus tralia in the years just before the war. Shannon Hicks was her parents' fourth daughter; she was born on Monday, a washing-day, and the news of her birth gave her father an attack of indigestion. Any child was bad enough, but a boy would have been prefer able, so rather wistfully they gave her a name that would have ...

... . Starred by The Sketch. highest value. FLARE PATH (Apollo). R.A.F. ops. Adrianne Allen. BLITHE SPIRIT (Duchess). Noel Coward's play. Kay Ham mond, Cecil Parker, Irene Browne. PINK STRING AND SEALING WAX (Duke of York's). 1880 Brighton comedy. Iris Hoey, Dorothy Hyson, David Home. 44 THE DANCING YEARS (Adelphi). Ivor Novello in his romantic musical play, with Muriel Barron and Roma ...

... . i By C. A. LEJEUNE. THERE is no thing new about the type of film demonstrated by Loretta Young and Brian Aherne in A NIGHTN TO REMEMBER (Gaumont and Marible Arch Pavilion). but it has been a good selling line with customers ever since D. W. Griffith introduced it in The Lonely Villa, round about 1910, and I expect it will still be evoking squeals and shrieks of delight from the audience ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. IN the controversy between Determinism and Free Will, Thomas Hardy was on the side of Determinism. He believed that the course of a man's life was decided by a Power outside him; and as he grew older, and was more painfully impressed by the spectacle of human suffer ing, the more malignant did that Power appear to him. The sunshine and shadow of Far From the Madding Crowd ...

... . Starred by iCThe Sketch *=highest value * WATCH ON THE RHINE (Aldwych). Diana Wynyard, Anton Walbrook, Athene Seyler, Margar- etta Scott. Anti-Nazis in U.S. 44 FLARE PATH (Apollo). R.A.F. ops. Adrianne Allen. 44 BLITHE SPIRIT (Duchess). Noel Coward's play. Kay Ham mond, Cecil Parker, Irene Browne. PINK STRING AND SEALING WAX (Duke of York's). 1880 Brighton comedy. Iris Hoey, Dorothy ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. NOSTALIGIA for the past is a very prevalent mood, not only among, literary men; and Mr. James Pope-Hennessy yields himself to it with melancholy and grace. His West Indian Summer is an account of the island of Trinidad seen through a temperament-- in fact, through several temperaments --and through the mists, vary ing in density, of several pasts. He himself was there in ...