... . By L. P. HARTLEY. MRS. THIRKELL is one of the few writers who are able to make a satisfactory novel out of the material of wartime conditions as they affect the daily lives of ordinary English people. She does not specialise in air raids or evacuees, or Ministries or factories; still less does she venture on to the parade ground. or into the air or under the sea. She realises that such ...

... THE WAR HAS NO PLACE IN THIS WEEK'S SELECTION Regency Odds and Ends The Parson's Wife through the Ages H. E. Bates' Multum in Parvo Miss Eiluned Lewis's Romantic Story of the Sea --By Vernon Fane WITH the possible exception of the everlasting Victorians, there is no period in English history so well documented as the Regency. The artificial elegances of the eight eenth century had already ...

... --By Vernon Fane How to Enjoy the Victorians Charles Graves's Seven Pilots A Who' dunit with Humour Vicki Baum Can W rite Bye, Bye, Blackshirt Eric Knight's Sam Small Flies Again Bucolics and Evacuees MR. HENRY WILLIAM POLDEROY, whose diary is featured in POLDEROY'S PAPERS (Michael Joseph. 10s. 6d.), is described in the blurb as an eccentric gentleman, but by no means a fool. Mr. C. E. ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE MINISTRY OF FEAR is a superior spy-story, written in the grand manner and re calling, in the author's treat ment of his subject, the murky intensity of Conrad's Secret Agent. Mr. Graham Greene's scene is London in the blitz, and among the minor characters the German bombs must be reckoned as not the least amiable. The human beings who decorate the stage are, for the ...

... The FRENCH MOTIF in FACT and FICTION Combined Training and the Dieppe Raid Simenon Without Maigret Gangsters, Murders and Black Marketeers Fifth Column in Fiction -By Vernon Fane IN this unassuming account of adventure, sparingly described by one who was both spectator and participant, we cannot help feeling that achieve ment has surpassed intention. WE LANDED AT DAWN (Gollancz. 7s. 6d.) was ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE KING LEAR (St. James's).-- To say, with truth, that there is now a boom in Shake speare does not lessen the courage of Mr. Donald Wolfit in deciding to bring to a close his season at the St. James's Theatre with some perform ances of King Lear. Of all Shakespeare's plays, this is in every respect the most formidable. I have seen a fair number of famous players in the ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE author of Escape has written another novel, with a somewhat similar theme. But this time Miss Vance's scene is laid in a Breton village in France-- Occupied France. There is more than one flash-back; we have a glimpse of Paris on the eve of the German occupa tion, another of the roads to the south, crowded with refugees and made hideous by German bombers. But as the ...

... BOOKS FOR ALL TASTES -By Vernon Fane Harold AJicolson Runs the Ancestral Gamut Mining and Farming in South America The Tactics of Bomber Command Lady Eleanor Smith's Romantic Gipsies Aunt Julie's Will AN Irish rebel, vintage 179S, ;s as good a subject as another for the kind of biography, en pantoufle, at which Mr. Harold Nicolson is demonstrably skilled. That Hamilton Rowan was his great- ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE OLD CHELSEA.--So strongly do I dislike on the stage almost any form of pseudo- historical romance, the flavour of which is poison to me, that I would feel like dubbing this pro duction at the Princes Theatre Arsenic and Old Chelsea, were it not for its music and the admir ably picturesque stage-setting. Mr. Richard Tauber, who has composed most of it and plays the ...

... . Starred by The 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 44 (Apollo). R.A.F. 44 ops.4* Adrianne Allen. 44 BLITHE SPIRIT 44 (Duchess). Noel Coward's play. Kay Ham mond, Cecil Parker, Irene Browne. 44 PINK STRING AND SEALING WAX 44 (Duke of York's). 1880 Brighton comedy. Iris Hoey, ...

... THE PSYCHOLOGY OF VISION By Vernon Fane Aldous Huxley and the Art of Seeing An Articulate Farmer Love in the Blitz Polish Adventure and Irish Romance Revolution without Tears AT the age of sixteen Mr. Aldous Huxley had a violent attack of an eye illness which left him, after eighteen months of near-blind ness, with one eye just capable of light perception, and the other with enough vision to ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. MOST of Miss Delafield's novels can be divided into two categories: the comic and the sad. The comic are funnier than life usually is, and the sad are sadder. She sees the human lot through spectacles that are either rose-coloured or dark-tinted. Some times the colours get mixed, and sometimes we observe that traits in human nature which only serve to cause the first Miss ...