... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE 'T'HE HASTY HEART (Aldwych).-- It was strange to find laughter and laughter of the right sort predominating in a play whose chief character is a man so seriously ill that he is given by the doctor only a few weeks to live. And the sole scene is a hospital, too (though I have heard plenty of laughter in hospitals). But in this case it is a war hospital somewhere in Burma ...

... JN 1934 Mr- J- B. Priestley published English Journey a book which, in English social history, ranks in import ance with Cobbett's Rural Rides. In 1940 Mr. Priestley made some broadcasts, the effect of which on the population of these islands, and indeed upon the whole world, can only properly be assessed when the complete history of the war comes to be written. THREE HEN IN NEW SUITS ...

... Mr. Eric Gillett has edited Miss Ham's diary, which covers a period from 1783 to 1820, her childhood in Dorset, and her young womanhood there and in Ireland, where she lived for six years and acquired quite an Irish accent and became accustomed to Irish manners. So good were these last, particularly among the ALTHOUGH written in novel form, ISLAND IN THE SKY (Michael Joseph. 8s. 6d.) is ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... '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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...