... Reviewed by Trevor oydllen THERE is a story in Mr. Charles Graves's Great Days (Hutchinson, 12s. 6d.) that when Mr. Churchill once twitted Montgomery on his. silence, the General said he was very sorry, but he was a teetotaller, a non- smoker, and had little conversation. The P.M. is supposed to have replied: I smoke cigars, drink all the good wine I can find, and am a hell of a good Prime ...

... MYSELF AT TOE PICTURES Nothing Like It By James Agate I ATTENDED The Bridge of San Luis Rey (London Pavilion) without having read Thornton Wilder's book, hailed as a masterpiece when it came out. Looking to my old friend Synopsis, I learned that this is the story of a priest, one Brother Juniper, who was concerned to discover why, when sometime in 1714, the finest bridge in Peru broke, five ...

... 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 ...

... MISS PAMELA HINKSON is a romantic, and her novel of English and French people living in India during the last decade or two has all the pearly tints and soft out lines of real romanticism. GOLDEN ROSE (Collins. 9s. 6d.) is primarily the story of two women and their loves; the Indian background, although indicated with the precision of someone who knows and loves the country, is only incidental ...

... A Night In Venice at the Cambridge By Horace Horsnell WE needs must love the highest when we see it; and sometimes, when we don't, its absence seems to make the heart grow fonder. It is so here. For while Johann Strauss is not Mozart, there were moments in the performance of this Venetian operetta when one almost wished that he were. The wish would have been not only unreasonable, but unfair ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE CRISIS IN HEAVEN (Lyric). --So much do I enjoy Major Eric Linklater's books that this play of his caused me no little disappointment. It is full of intelligent ideas (perhaps rather too full of them), but since it lacks any sense of the theatre or evidence of theatrical technique, it is, except for far too few amusing moments, extremely dull. Most of his people talk too ...

... LONG, elaborate, rich and highly-flavoured-- in fact, rather like a Victorian dinner-- is Miss Taylor Caldwell's new novel, THE TURNBULLS (Collins, 10s. 6d.), a saga of well-to-do trading families in New York, in the '6o's and '80's of the last century. To change similes in mid stream, I might also say that it is like a popular Victorian painting, overloaded with detail and with senti mental ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE WAY AHEAD (at the Odeon, Leicester Square), directed by Carol Reed, starring David Niven, and very ably written by Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov -- all Army men--is a superb and authoritative account of the training of a bunch of civilians into invasion soldiers. It recounts the experiences of an infantry platoon from their call-up to the day they go into action. It ...

... The Last of Summer (Phoenix) By Horace Horsnell THE last of summer. We had reason, it only in the title, and the names of Miss Kate O'Brien as author, and Miss Fay Compton as actress, to look forward with pleasure to this play. Moreover, is there not something about Ireland and its dramatists that gets past our guard and disarms our alleged reserve? Is it their flair for sparkling eloquence ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. CRICKET COUNTRY is ostensibly a book about cricket, written by Mr. Blunden at the sug gestion of a friend; but it is much more than that. I have regarded myself, he says, as given a roving commission but I ven ture to hope that I have fol lowed a continuous, even if a winding and sometimes tangled path. The path starts in the writer's infancy, for he was bred to ...

... The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (Savoy) By Horace Horsnell FEW dramatists, I imagine, are tempted to fall into the sin of self-complacency when Mr. Tyrone Guthrie is producing them. His reverence even for the classics, when he has them on the tapis, can stop well short of idolatry. His respect for tradition is never slavish. He is nothing if not inventive, and ideas swarm in his fertile brain as ...

... MR. BERT THOMAS once published a charming little book of drawings, osten sibly made by a child, of famous contemporary figures, whom he divided into the nice and the nasty people. Pro minent in the first category was M. Maisky, who was described, as best I can remember, as a man who twinkled and smiled, and liked to see everyone enjoying themselves. There is little in the first volume of M. ...