... books: Reviewed by Trevor Allen GREAT boys are the Japs in China! They had a master plan drawn up in Tokyo for backward cities like Sungkiang. There should be lovely broad roads! They made them by ripping through bedrooms, kitchens, court yards without compensating the owners. There should also be a new canal! They dug it by grabbing every able-bodied man they saw and giving him a bowl of rice ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor lien NO man, they say, is' a hero to his valet: To his cousin, Mrs. Clare Sheridan-- when she sculpted his head at morning bedside sittings at 10 Downing Street-- Mr. Winston Churchill was the Hogarthian figure with cigar and spectacles, patting a hot-water bottle affec tionately, and, incidentally, twiddling his toes under the bed clothes to amuse a black Persian to ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor Allen HOW that literary wholesaler, Alexandre Dumas, found time to ghost the volu minous travels of a cultivated French woman of a century ago is a matter for wonder; but he did so, evidently from her detailed notes, in The Journal of Madame Giovanni (Hammond, 12s. 6d.), admirably translated from the French edition of 1856 by Mrs. Marguerite E. Wilbur. This vivacious ...

... : Reviewed by T revor o Allen WE shall have to revise our ideas about the coddling of those Girls of Long Ago. I have been reading the autobiography of a lady of Somerset yeoman stock --Elizabeth Ham by Herself, 1783-1820, intro duced and edited by Mr. Eric Gillett (Faber, 10s. 6d.). The cure for eye-inflammation in childhood, she says, was confinement in a dark room for a year. She was ...

... : Reviewed by Rrevor zAllen HANDSOME rake has been a stock term of romancers, yet the most successful rakes have often been plain, even ugly men. John Wilkes, passion ately addicted to the pursuit of women all his life, had a jaw that was crooked and prominent, squinting eyes set close together in an odd malevo lent leer, a high bony forehead and a flat truncated nose, but his charm was ...

... : Reviewed by Ti evor /{llen I HAVE been looking at some superb photographs of Parliament, marvelling that so much architectural har mony should have come out of so much professional discord. Fierce disputes beat about the head of Charles Barry when he was given the job of rebuilding the Palace of Westminster after the disastrous fire of 1834. In 1837 Barry himself quarrelled with his chief ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor zjfllen ADMIRAL SIR BERTRAM HOME RAMSAY has at least two claims to distinction. As C.-in-C. of the Allied Expeditionary Force in vading Hitler's fortress on D-Day he shouldered-- Commander Kenneth Ed wards, R.N., claims-- a greater respon sibility than any officer had ever been called upon to assume in the whole history of warfare. As a midshipman he went to serenade the ...

... Reviewed by Alan Seymour IT is almost exactly six years since, on joining the Army, I wrote my last article for BRITANNIA AND EVE on the month's new books. But it is far longer than six years since I read a more promising first novel than Yardstick and Scissors, by James Gerrard (Rich and Cowan, 9s.). Here is a writer who fuses plot and crafts manship into a nicely balanced blend which ...

... DIARIES covering the French Revolution and Napoleonic periods have a special significance. We want to know what was being said and done in ordinary social circles while all that turmoil swept Europe: and here, in the handsomely produced Wynne Diaries edited by Mrs. Anne Freemantle (Oxford University Press: Vol. I, 15s.; Vol. 11, 10s. 6d.; Vol. Ill, 21s.) are the jottings of three daughters ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor c. Allen IT would be nice to imagine that statesmen at peace conferences were Olympians above pettiness and prejudice. Diarists like Mr. Harold Nicolson and Lord Riddell have induced us to think otherwise; and now comes Unfinished Business (Michael Joseph, 18s.), the diary of Col. Stephen Bonsai, interpreter for President Wilson and Col. House at the League Com mission. ...

... : Reviewed by Alan Seymour EVEN the most loyal admirers of Charles Dickens have to admit that there were moments when he seemed to be writing more for his own amusement than for his reader's, but such a criticism cannot be levelled at his great-granddaughter. Thursday Afternoons (Michael Joseph, 10s. fid.) is Monica Dickens's new I novel and it is written exclusively for you and me. I don't ...

... : ■Reviewed by Trevor zTfllen NORMALLY I rebut connoisseurs of food and wine who show up my abysmal ignorance of anything subtler than Chateauneuf de Pape --never mind the year-- and persuade me that I am a savage to prefer simple fare to high blood pressure. But M. André L. Simon may be excused, for is he not a king among diners, and did he not inspire the Wine and Food Society and its ...