... Chicken Every Sunday (Savoy) IT is a sobering reflection for those who make light of national differences that the airiest trifles when put to the test are found to have their roots deep in the soil of a particular country. We all know that while on one side of the English Channel Racine is despised and Shakespeare worshipped, on the other Shake speare is tolerated and Racine adored, but here ...

... : 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 ...

... Duet For Two Hands (Lyric) GOOD acting glosses over a multitude of faults. Most of the faults of this ghost story of medical science can be accounted for by Miss Mary Hayley Bell's stick-at-nothing determination to write a good acting play. And if you are specially susceptible to good acting Mr. John Mills and his company will waft you breathlessly over what to the less susceptible will appear ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... . 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 ...

... . By C. A. LEJEUNE. THE pundits will tell you that the things of which you are most afraid seldom turn out to be as bad as you thought they would be. That has happened to me in the case of NATIONAL VEL VET (Empire). For over ten years I have been dreading the appearance of this film; holding Enid Bagnold's book, as I do, to be one of the most bewitching stories of children and horses ever ...

... The Comedie Francciise (New) THE fortnight's season of the Comédie Française-- the world's most famous theat rical company with a style of acting moulded by nearly three centuries of cherished tradition --was received in London as an event of historic significance. The King and Queen, Princess Elizabeth, Princess Margaret Rose and the Duchess of Kent honoured the occasion by their presence at ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE CHICKEN EVERY SUNDAY (Savoy).-- Complicated squabbles in a boarding-house thirty years ago in Arizona do not sound promising material for a farce at the Savoy in 1945. Be that as it may, I thought this an extraordinarily funny play. As to whether it is an authentic picture of boarding-house existence, I know not; I have never lived in a boarding-house, not even in one ...

... MK. ROBERT PAYNE is a young writer who has already given proof of his ability in such stories as Singapore River, David and Anna and the Chinese Soldier. He has now published CHUNG KING DIARY (Heinemann. 12s. 6d.), which is a very long and full account of his life in China since January 1942, when he went as Times corre spondent to the Changsha front. The book has that kind of formless ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THREE Men in New Suits is both a novel and a tract for the times, and the two aspects are so closely related that it is not easy to consider them apart. The three men are demobilised soldiers, a ser geant, a corporal and a private. They, have been through the war together, are on Christian- name terms, and come from the same district, the country town of Lamsbury. These ...