... l^^'-w HISTORY will have a place for the home front as well as battle-front chronicler. I can see posterity turning to Mr. James Wedgwood Draw- bell's All Change Here (Hutchinson, 10s. 6d.) to know what we did, thought, and talked about through these anxious days of war, for he is a lively, alert Pepys of journalism, netting the pass ing moment with the whoop of a boy after a butter fly. ...

... * R^ieWedJ,Un Trevor 1 ONCE I went on autumn exer cises in H. M.S. Renown. They sent me to the foretop in dark ened ship so that I should be smoked like a kipper and get the full crack of 15-inchers firing broadsides. In a gunroom versus wardroom rag a pack of snotties bore me down and debagged me. 1 tnerelore leel much more pious about our gallant Navy than Mr. C. S. Forester, who knows it ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor Allen WHEN I read a novel in these home-bound days I not only want a good story, I want to go places by proxy. Miss Katharine Brush's You Go Your Way (Cassell, 7s. 6d.) whisks me to the New York of cocktails, highballs, wisecracks, snappy dialogue, and divorce. Connie, you see, who wore a sleek black satin dress that loved her figure, had wilful ideas about marriage. ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor' zTfllen NO one in Cairo, Mr. Cecil Beaton implies, will ever need the Kipling epitaph: Here lies the fool who tried to hustle the East. He found the atmosphere of G.H.Q. not at all bracing-- rather like a reunion dinner of old schoolboys --and decided that no war leader should be encouraged to remain there for long, for Blimpism, plus the Cairene climate, were two of ...

... TO most people the name of Lourdes conveys something to do with miracu lous cures. A few may be able to go further and debate the miracles. Franz Werfel, a refugee from Germany, had managed to reach Lourdes in 1941 when new moves by Vichy and the Nazis seemed to seal his fate. Re vowed that if ever he reached America he would tell the world about Lourdes, and now he has magnificently fulfilled ...

... : Reviewed by ^*U Noel Thompson LET us start with something cheer ful. For this, and especially for those who know Yorkshire, I recommend Eric Knight's Sam Small Flies Again (Cassell, 8s. 6d.). The author explains that he wrote these short stories when he felt homesick in distant parts of the world and thought of Sam Small, the typical Yorkshireman in his own county's estimation with his ...

... Reviewed by Trevor Allen WHY do we, who live in an age of electric switches, bathrooms, and bombs, experience a nos talgic glow when we. read of houses illuminated throughout by oil lamps, where hip baths were laid out every evening in the bedrooms? Seventy lamps nad to be trimmed and filled everv morning at Denbies, the Dorking home of Sir Stephen Tallents's grandfather, built by his great ...

... Back Room Drama it Wr as a Question o/ i re mi tl Cake-- What a dan Oires to His Country antl What His Country Owes to Him By Barry Perowne WE get every imaginable war device submitted to us, the minister began, when his visitor was seated. Thou sands! Thousands! It's amazing, really, the number of people who think they've hit on the idea that will win the war! He paused for a moment, ...

... : ^*30 Reviewed by Noel Thompson LET me start to clear the deck of this month's books by getting off my chest the war books, and those which have a wartime background, though by so doing I am relegating to a humbler position than they deserve, some of the escapist or peacetime books. But at any rate it will halve the reading for those of you who have already firmly made up your minds as to ...

... 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 ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor -yd lien LAST year Lord Beaverbrook presided at a dinner to his former Parliamentary Secretary, Colonel Llewellin, who was then Minister of Aircraft Production. All the M.A.P. heads were there. Beaverbrook was handed a typed programme of speeches. What, he cried. Another programme from the Air Ministry? Nonsense, M.A.P. never lives up to its programmes, let's change ...

... Books: Ty? vie wed by ...