... . 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 ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. SINCE human nature is always in trigued by a bio graphy, and never more intrigued than by the very private biography of a very public man, the screen obituary was not exhausted when Orson Welles made Citizen Kane. Much the same cinematic pattern has been followed by the producers of the new film at the Empire, KEEPER OF THE FLAME. If the niece isn't auite the towering ...

... By Horace Horsnell Junior Miss (Saville) SPARE the rod and spoil-- I had almost said the child; but that would hardly cover the callow fauna that dominate this American play. Judy and her fellow co-eds look enough like children to deceive us at first into accepting them as such, and then being irritated by the mistake. They are young-- heavens, how young!-- and they speak a language we may ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE JT 'S Foolish But It 's Fun. So frequently one hears it said of some new revue in which deficiencies are obvious that it will be all right when it has been pulled together. In most. cases this is vain optimism, since there is nothing to pull together. But this show at the Coliseum, which at the first performance struck me (and a good many other people, it seems) as a ...

... -By Vernon Fane The Letters of Lady Cowper and the Princess Lieven A Fantasia by C. S. Lewis The Adventures of an ISth'Century Marine A Scholarly Account of the Black Prince Mars versus Music Border Politics and German Occupation TWO of the greatest of political hostesses in the golden age of Whiggery were Lady Cowper and the Princess Lieven. That they were also close friends and conducted an ...

... RUSSIA -THE MAIN THEME OF THREE BOOKS -By Vernon Fane A. T. Lloyd's Biography of a Writer A Collection of Russian Short Stories The Last Phase of the Romanov's Life Personal Reminiscences of the Countess of Listowel A Newfoundland Tragedy A French General's Military Survey BY a coincidence which, as far as I know, owes nothing to premeditation, three of the most interesting books I have read ...

... By Horace Horsnell Strike a New Note (Prince of Wales) IN this type of popular revue, a new note is certainly to be welcomed; and if Mr. George Black's latest rouser does not con sistently strike it, the players do. They are young, eager, and professional. The programme informs us that they are boys and girls who have been gathered from every part of the country, needing but the opportunity to ...

... By Horace Horsnell Love for Love (Phoenix) THIS famous comedy was first performed over two hundred and fifty years ago, when Congreve was twenty-six. It has always been his most popular play, and has often been revived. Handsome is, they say, as handsome does, and the present revival by Mr. John Gielgud does not lack splendour. The reception at the Phœnix Theatre could hardly have been more ...

... . 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 ...

... : ^*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 ...

... SOBER READING, in TRUTH and FICTION --By Vernon. Fane A Royal Engineer and the Phoney War Miss Carson M cCullers' Second T^ovel Mr: Bailey's Mr. Fortune Once Again Mr. Stephen Lister Among the Persuaders; Maniacs and Murder A WAR book in the exact sense of the word is SWORD OF BONE (Faber. 8s. 6d.); a story of the British Expeditionary Force in France from December 1939 until the evacuation ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IT is not every film director whose name be comes part of the currency of our language. We do not, for example, speak of a typical George B. Seitz situation, or de scribe an atmosphere as being genuine Sam Wood. Yet Mr. Seitz has been directing pictures for twenty-nine years, and Mr. Wood, whose record can be little, if any, shorter, has handled some of the biggest ...