... -- FROM the time when Reuter's first issued the briel announcement that several British Generals had escaped from their prison camp in Italy, it has been obvious that a big story must lie behind the report. Considerations of security made it impossible to publish the story any earlier, but Now It May Be Told. Farewell Campo 12 (Michael Joseph, 10s. 6d.) tells it modestly, as one would expect, ...

... : Reviewed by Alan Seymour MARY LAVIN'S new book, The House in Clewe Street (Michael Joseph, 12s. 6d.), provides her debut as a novelist. Already she has given us two volumes of dis tinguished short stories-- Tales from Bective Bridge, her first, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best work of fiction published in the fruitful year 1943, and The Long Ago, published the ...

... fit For Heroes Worm's Eye View (Whitehall) THE two light comedies which may be seen on the same evening at the Whitehall (5.45 p.m. and 8.15 p.m.) are alike unpretentious and funny. Fit For Heroes puts a grumpy peer into a Portal house at the edge of his estate and gets its fun in part from the spectacle of lordliness bounded in a nut shell, in fact from the peer's vivid reactions to a ...

... reviewing BOOKS ELIZABETH HOWES Under One Roof NORMAN COLLINS has, as a novelist, a most engaging way with his characters. His attitude to them is at once friendly and crisp. He takes a liking to them; and this liking he communicates, in a most happy way, to the reader. He is never a bore about them. This may sound odd praise; but to me it means a good deal-- just as many excellent people in ...

... I ALWAYS feel that there are some authors who really enjoyed themselves in the writing of their books, and of these Mr. George A. Birming ham is one of the happiest. His new novel, GOOD INTEN TIONS (Methuen. 7s. 6d.), is a genuinely amusing satire on the Civil Service. It starts with a little girl, on a wartime voyage to New York, having the idea of putting a message into a bottle and throwing ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE ALADDIN (Cambridge).-- In spite of record prosperity, and theatre shortage in consequence, room has been found for some seasonable Christmassy touches in the West End. This, the first of the pantomimes, is a good one, and so splendidly dressed that the appearance of the ladies of the chorus at the close of Part I drew the loudest ap plause of the evening, except that ...

... The Glass Slipper (St. James's) Peter Pan (Scala) To the vast pantomime public in the West End, a brace of pantomimes is scarcely the equivalent of half a turkey to a swarming Victorian family. Children, fortunately, fare better. Those too ripe in experience for the simple nursery frolics of The Land of the Christmas Stocking can make do handsomely with what the Farieons and Barrie give ...

... reviewing BOOKS ELIZABETH BOWES Into the Dark On March 24, 1866, David Livingstone disembarked from H.M.S. Penguin, in which he sailed from Zanzibar, and landed on the shore of East Africa, near the mouth of the River Rovuma. A few days later he disappeared into the bush with his little caravan of coloured folk and baggage animals. From that time till he died in 1873 at a village in the heart ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. THE Song of the Cold contains all the poetry that Miss Edith Sit- well has written since the war, besides three poems that have not hitherto been printed in a book. To these she has added some earlier work, Gold Coast Customs, and poems from Facade and The Sleeping Beauty, thus enab ling us to guess at the develop ment of her mind and art. To say that once her chief ...

... THE war books, quite natur ally, continue to roll in. They cover all fronts from Burma to the English Channel and from Dunkirk to Rome. FIRST TIDE (Skeffington. 12S. 6d.) gives an account by Mr. Alan Melville, a B.B.C. War Correspondent, of D-Day, June 6, 1044; the preparations for it, the actual landings, the battle for Caen, the Falaise Gap and the advance up the flying- bomb coast. Mr. ...

... Cinderella (Adelphi) REGULAR patrons of pantomime were able once upon a time to turn up at their usual house more or less unthinkingly, as regulars of another kind turn in to their favourite local. Some were certain that the last distillation of the authentic spirit of panto mime was to be caught only at Drury Lane; others discovered superior charm in the characteristic grandeur of Covent ...

... reviewing BOOKS ELIZABETH BOWES Anthology ANTHOLOGIES vary, Some aim merely at short-circuiting literature for the lazy reader-- we are given Treasuries of many different kinds. Some are ingenious: one subject-- dogs, children, gardens, cookery, ser vants, war, inns, the sea-- is pursued by the compiler across the international country of poetry and prose. Some, a trifle self-consciously. ...