... STORIES OF PEOPLE AND PLACES --By Vernon Fane A Dramatic and Inspiring Play; An American Woman's Study of Japan; A Causerie on the Modern University A Smalltown Swashbuckler and the Thriller of the Week MR. MAXWELL ANDER SON is one of America's most distinguished playwrights, and I understand that his most recent play, THE EVE OF ST. MARK' (Bodley Head. 5s.), is now being performed in this ...

... MYSELF AT THE PICTURES Bosh and Tosh By James Agate LADY ELEANOR SMITH is an excellent novelist, who can tell a good tale whether it be about ballerinas or circus-riders. She moves easily from country to country and period to period, and has all those graces of style which, when the yarn she happens to be pitching is not particularly new, conceal the fact. In the cinema the graces are bound to ...

... By Horace Horsnell It's Time to Dance (Winter Garden MR. JACK BUCHANAN is a first-rate light comedian, and his return to the London footlights is most welcome. He is, moreover, a star who does not abuse his ascendancy by shining alone, but shares it with worthy colleagues. This new show, which he has produced, is a musical one; and though its devisers-- librettists, lyricists, composers, and ...

... * 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 ...

... A STORY of the SEAMEN of BRITAIN And other Books of the Week-- in Fiction and Thrillers --By Vernon Fane IT is surprising that so com paratively few naval his torians have concerned them selves about the British seaman. Of the Navy and its battles there have been books without end; but of the men who sailed its ships, and fought them, there have been few outside the realms of (usually bad) ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. SOMETHING a little different from the usual war-film has turned up in FLEMISH FARM (Leicester Square). It belongs to the semi-docu mentary school; that is to say, it tells a fictitious story. based on a real-life episode. The film begins in the summer of 1940, just before the Belgian capitulation. The last remnants of the last squadron of the Belgian Air Force are ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. IT is pleasant to find in a modern novel emotions of what might be called the middle register, emotions unconnected with the main tenance of a stiff upper lip. In novels specifically about the war one hardly looks for them, and, indeed, they might be thought to be out of place. But even before the war they were rather rare in ordinary fiction. Of love we hear plenty but it ...

... By Horace Horsnell Lottie Dundass Vaudeville WAS Lottie Dundass mad? This question, which, as applied to Hamlet, has teased generations of amateur alienists, might have been answered in the confident affirma tive within five minutes of her first appearance. For while Hamlet was mad only nor'-nor'-west, Lottie boxed the compass good and hard. She was young and pretty, self-centred and a ...

... TU By Horace Horsnell Mr. Bolfry (Westminster) Is there anything more truly entertaining in the theatre than good talk? Mr. Shaw has often persuaded us there is not, and Mr. James Bridie refreshes that opinion. His plays have not always been unreservedly enjoyed, but they have always been distinguished by first-rate dialogue. Mr. Bolfry, his latest comedy, is full of it. The talk is excellent, ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE WAR AND PEACE (Phoenix)-- Some years ago a play was written about Oliver Crom- well which was as long as the Cromwell Road and just as dull. War and Peace (I am speaking of the play founded on Tolstoy's novel) is mostly about Napoleon, and is longer and even duller. The programme is the most formidable I have ever seen; the names of fifty-eight players are printed on it ...

... WHEN GREECE DEFIED MUSSOLINI Compton Mackenzie's Historical Account of Greece's Struggle International Post-war Co-operation Cecil Beaton in the Near East. --By Vernon Fane NO one better than Mr. Compton Mackenzie understands the dramatic values of such a story as the Axis invasion of Greece in 1940, and few foreigners are better quali fied to write about the land of Greece. WIND OF FREEDOM ...

... By Horace Horsnell ITar and Peace (Phainix) TOLSTOY'S War and Peace is a long story, epic in scope and quality. It has lately suffered a popular English boom. This was provoked by our general interest in Russia and by the fateful parallel between Napoleon's 1812, and the present Nazi campaigns. A radio adaptation of the book was recently broadcast; a film is projected, and a stage play was ...