... AS Christmas approaches, the bookshop is our Mecca. We are looking, of course, for light and neutral stuff that will do just as well for Auntie Maud if we decide to give that tray- cloth to Auntie Dora after all. We hardly think in terms of weighty volumes like Lewis Mumford's THE CONDITION OF MAN (Seeker and Warburg. 25s.), which nowadays only America has the paper to print. But it is the ...

... BETWEEN this war and the last there was a flood of books all following roughly the same pattern of Court memoirs, chroniques mildly scandaleuses and nostalgic echoes of the days when a Grand Duke really was a Grand Duke. I had read so I many of them some of them excellent, some of them repeti tive, few of them altogether negligible since they gave at the worst some kind of picture of a life ...

... -By Vernon Fane An Intimate Biography of Queen Victoria A Pleasing Indian Cameo and an Indian Political Novel Amateur Activities in the Country NOTWITHSTANDING a prefatory statement that previous studies of Queen Victoria's reign have been, generally speaking, too domes tic, Sir George Arthur has written one of the more intimate and entertaining accounts of this lady's private life that I have ...

... YOU could do anything with PASTORAL (Heinemann. 8s. 6d.); film it, dramatise it, set it to music, paint it on china. Mr. Nevil Shute has chosen to write it as a novel, and a darn fine novel it is. For all that, the other manifesta tions may follow later, because it is what in some professions is called a natural. It is the storv of a young ex-insurance clerk, now pilot of the bomber R for ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE LAST OF SUMMER (Phœnix).-- Some of the most successful plays have been based on successful novels, but I doubt whether this will be one of them. It has its charm, as well as a fairly interesting story about a family in Eire dominated by a terrifying mother and disturbed by the arrival of a pretty young French cousin, who falls in love with one of the sons and he with ...

... AS I write this, the evening newspaper are carrying staring headlines of the in vasion of Europe, and in front of me lies an orange-jacketed book proclaiming with equal emphasis that this is D-DAY (Hamish Hamilton. ios. 6d.). In point of fact, the D-Day (military term for the day set in advance for the opening of an onerationl to which Mr. John Gunther refers was the crucial date of the ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE THE REST IS SILENCE (Prince of Wales).-- This gloomy but impressive drama is Mr. George Black's most valuable contribution to the serious theatre so far. I have never been able to understand this penchant for making plays out of the trial of Madeleine Smith, though of the several I have seen this is by far the best. To me the most interesting part of the whole business ...

... WHAT do you really know about hotels beyond what you have discovered for yourself-- from the guests point of view-- or what you have read in the novels of such experts on the subject as Mrs. Vicki Baum or the late Mr. Arnold Bennett? 'he answer to that one is Nothing, or should be, if I 'm allowed to have my fun. (And who writes this page, any way Nothing at all, you will obediently answer, ...

... NOTHING could be more timely than the publica tion now of UNFINISHED BUSINESS (Michael Joseph. 18s.), by Stephen Bonsai. Colonel Bonsai was at the Peace Conference in Paris, in 1919, as a member of what was officially termed The American Com mission to Negotiate Peace. As Mr. Wilson Harris says in his introduction Neither President Wilson nor House was a very competent linguist. Bonsai was, ...

... IN the summer of 1940 a young man sat down one evening to write a long letter to his two sons, the children who had left the day before for America, and whom he knew he might never see again. He wrote all through the night, and in the morning had finished a piece of work which was in. some sense a testament of faith. I ve written straight off, he told his wife, a long letter to the boys, ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE 'T'HE SULKY FIRE (Arts). That two plays by the distinguished French dramatist, Jean- Jacques Bernard, have just been produced in Lon don within a week is, of course, merely a coincidence and cannot be said to constitute a boom. It is unfortunate that there is little in either of them to indicate why he is distinguished. The Sulky Fire is a small play with a tiny cast ...

... I ALWAYS think it rather a cad's trick to start the notice of any book with the opinion that it is disappointing, even though that usually con notes a sincere admiration for the writer's previous work. So I will markedly avoid any such reference in my comments on THE SEED WAS KIND (Peter Davies. 8s. 6d.), which however, is not the best of all Miss Dorothy Macardle's novels. Even so, it is ...