... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE SMALL GENERAL tells of three genera tions of the Sung family, silk-growers and peas ant proprietors of an island in a large lake between Soochow and Hangchow. The father is an adept in the arts of graft and squeeze, and his son, the Small General-- so called because he had charge of a flotilla of three thousand ducks --takes after him. (The grandson has but a small ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. CRIME --praise be to Autolycus, the Prince of Thieves, and to Lucifuge, the Prince of Darkness-- crime, I say, is back again in the London cinemas. There is, for instance, a new Thin Man at the Empire called THE THIN MAN GOES HOME. I cannot tell you why it is called The Thin Man Goes Home, because, as everybody knows, or ought to know by now, the Thin Man is not the ...

... 'THE freshest and most spontaneous book of the week is, paradoxically enough, a murder mystery in which the action takes place against a background reminiscent of Cold Comfort Farm, Arsenic and Old Lace, and other spirited ren derings of crime or the rural life. Not that there is anything consciously derivative about iMiss Margot Bennett's style. There isn t. But her joyously flippant approach ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. LITTLE Margaret O'Brien, that grave little girl whom anyone in his senses would have spotted as a juvenile world-beater more than a year ago in that enchanting film Lost Angel, has just been given the Hollywood accolade for her work in Meet Me In St. Louis. That is to say, she has been awarded one of those hideous, heavy statuettes known as Oscars, which the more ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IF there is one school of American writers that I ad mire more than another, it is the bunch of boys and girls who make such entrancing stories out of their recollec tions of a perfectly normal childhood in the early 1000'S. We have the late Clarence Day, who wrote so beguilingly about Life With Father that, when he had used up his allotted space, he was forced to write ...

... THOSE who think of Ger many in terms of Vansit- tartism or anti-Vansittartism, or who are led away by such cheap jingles as Don't let 's be beastly to the Germans, should be compelled to read THE COURSE OF GERMAN HISTORY, by A. J. P. Taylor (Hamish Hamilton. 12s. 6d.). For those who would under stand the issues being settled at Potsdam and the problems that are bound to arise therefrom, this ...

... . By K. JOHN. IT is sad when the first thing one has to say about a novel is that it does not come up to its predecessor-- sad, but not uncommon, in the nature of things. Dasha is a case in point. Everyone will remember Frossia, Miss Almedingen's tale of Russia in the dreadful years of famine, in the new guise of revolution --but still the old, warm, garrulous, untidy, philosophis ing, ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. IT gives me the greatest possible pleasure to recom mend THE WAY TO THE STARS (London Pavilion), which is not only a good British film, but an outstanding one. For some time we have been waiting for a picture that will do for the Air Force what In Which We Serve did for the Navy, and The Way Ahead for the Army; and here it is, written by Terence Rattigan. and directed ...

... MR. GEORGE ORWELL calls his ANIMAL FARM (Seeker and Warburg. 6s.) a fairy story. His publishers call it a good-natured satire upon dictatorship. You can pay your money and take your choice. I find it not much of a story there isn't a fairy in its ninety-one pages, and there is positively not a breath of good nature in it. The weapons of satire are surely the rapier and, at its most deadly, the ...

... moving quality, and that i recital of the practical, even day details of farming j north-western England acts lip a spell even on a townsma rpq ri pr THE EARTH REMAIN (Joseph. ios. 6d.) is simply-told story of a free-lam writer who began life as a fan worker, and only left that li in order to write about it YOU open your books and you take your choice of countries. Here is the one form of ...

... IT is now nearly ten years since Rudyard Kipling died. If Mr. Hilton Brown's new appreciation-- RUD YARD KIPLING (Hamish Hamil ton. 10s. 6d.)-- had been pub lished then it might have created a literary sensation. It might even have been splashed in the popular Press under such a headline as The Riddle of Rudyard Kipling. Most people are aware that in his early twenties Kipling enjoyed an ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. BRITISH ARCHITECTS AND CRAFTSMEN is an account of British building, and of the crafts that beautified it, from the Perpendicular of the Tudors down to the last flickering inspiration of the Regency. As late as 1830, says Mr. Sacheverell Sitwell, it was still possible to build a charming house. The immense panorama, packed with detail, embraces not only our own ...