... Desert Rats (Adelphi) DESERT fighting, it has been said, was so fantastic that when you had got to know its ways, when your knees really were browned, the world that was not yellow and parched and scattered with booby traps and roving advanced columns, became hazy and unreal. Not a few who happened to be writing men as well as fighting men must have felt that somewhere in this strangeness ...

... IN his Foreword to Polter geist Over England, Mr. Harry Price says: It has long been at the back of my mind that I ought to write a history of Poltergeists, be cause they attract me so. A strange attraction indeed; for a Poltergeist is anything but an attractive phenomenon. Mr. Price defines it as ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. A BIT far-fetched is the way I heard one hoary headed picturegoer describe WONDER MAN (Leicester Square). And since Danny Kaye, in the film, walks through stone walls, squirts water from a drinking fountain through the top of his head, and plays identical twins, one of whom melts into the body of the other at will, the descrip tion is probably not exaggerated. ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE best double bill in London just now is un questionably at the Academy, in Oxford Street, where they are showing MARIE- LOUISE and STRANGE INCI DENT in the same programme. I am not sure whether this is really very tactful programme planning, as I imagine that many gentle-hearted people who will be enchanted by Marie-Louise, may find Strange Incident both harsh and ...

... : 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 ...

... Three Waltzes (Princes) FROM clogs to clogs, they say in Lancashire, is only a matter of three generations; and from Debrett to Hollywood apparently takes no longer, once a noble family has formed the habit of falling in love with actresses. Grandpapa, holding the Queen's commission in the Blues, is saved from a misalliance with the stage by the high tact of an aunt, Caroline, Duchess of ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE THE outstanding event of London's theatrical year so far has been the visit to the New Theatre of the Comédie Française company. This was all too short and, since enormous audiences attended every performance, should certainly be repeated. By that I do not mean that, we were here shown a standard of acting to which our own actors and actresses cannot attain. The ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. VICTORY week in the London cinemas was signalised by the appearance of two new films frohi major artists, both of which I shall insist on regarding as failures. The box office will probably contradict me peremp torily. I quite expect to see the crowds pouring into the Odeon to see Tallulah Bankhead in Ernst Lubitsch's CZARINA, and queues waiting outside the New Gallery to ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE THE SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL. --The Festival at Stratford-on-Avon is doing remarkably well this year. The beautiful town is crowded, and the fact that several of the hotels are closed for the duration does not make the search for accommodation any easier. I went down to see the birthday play A nlony and Cleopatra. Mr. Robert Atkins's pro ductions, considering his vast ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. WE have had a great many war novels, and some readers are rather tired of them. At Mrs. Lippincote's is only a war novel in the sense that its action takes place during the war, and in circumstances that would not have come about but for the war. But for the war Julia and her husband would not have been living in a hired house in the rather squalid town where he, an ...

... MR. GERALD BULLETT is a scholar and a poet, with the good sense to leave poetic prose to the experi menters, and to write with the lucidity and the feeling for the right and inevitable world of the real prose stylist. His out put lately has been small, and his new, long novel all the more gratefully received. THE ELDER- BROOK BROTHERS (Dent. ros. 6d.) takes the form of three closely-woven ...

... IN one of those famous phrases of meretricious prescience, Disraeli said: Read no his tory, nothing but a biography, for that is life without theory. Naturally, the sally has more point if it is remembered that at the time history lay under the pall of the tendentious miasma of the Whig historians. But Disraeli was right in the instance under review. What ever brand of historical scholar ...