... TWO good reprints figure in this week's list of books: the first, RAFFLES OF SINGA PORE (Collins. 7s, 6d.), which was written and published some years ago, but is well worth acquiring in its revised edition. Sir Reginald Coupland, who is Beit Professor of Colonial His tory at Oxford, is a superb biographer, as witness his Wilberforce, and this life of the founder of Singapore is not only an ...

... IF most of us were asked about the poems of Fran çois Villon we would assume, and quite properly, some know ledge of them, would place him as a French poet of the fifteenth century, and might even mur mur something about Oû sont les neiges d'antan? We might also refer to the lines written on a wish II 1 were tvmg and remember a good musical play on that theme which has been popular for the ...

... WHAT, in the space of a brief review, can one do with a study of one of the greatest of historians by so distinguished a contemporary historian as Bishop Mathew? That ACTON: THE FORMATIVE YEARS (Eyre and Spottiswoode. ios. 6d.) has all the qualities of a first-rate biography can be noted and appreciated on purely literary grounds. The esoterics of the historian are another thing, and, ...

... I DON'T see why the publishers should feel it necessary to apologise for the slight Ameri can bias of Captain Harry Butcher's THREE YEARS WITH EISENHOWER (Heinemann. 21s.). Captain Butcher was General Eisenhower's naval aide during the time he was in supreme command of the greatest military operation in the world's history. Being the great man he is, General Eisenhower quickly realised that ...

... MR. FRANCIS WILLIAMS' PRESS, PARLIAMENT AND PEOPLE (Heinemann. 8s. 6d.) is a book on a subject which is under active discus sion in Government circles at the present moment. In his position as Controller of News and Censorship at the Ministry of Information, and sub sequently as Chief Press Officer to the British Delegation at San Francisco, Mr. Williams is in a unique position to take his ...

... The Stage: Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE THE KINGMAKER (St. James's).-- Nearly four hours is a bit long for a history lesson, for that is what this beautifully-produced play really amounts to. But the fifteenth century was an inter esting period, and even war seems to have been picturesque in those days, though the politics were as sordid as we ourselves know them. The Earl of Warwick did his king- ...

... THE current fashion for Trollope continues and is ably reinforced and represented by an American biography, THE TROLLOPES (Secker and Warburg. 30s.). This volume is the combined work of a scholarly mother and son, Mrs. Lucy Poate Stebbins and Richard Poate Stebbins, who together have written this chronicle of a writing family, drawing on the results of immense research. The book is presented ...

... SHORT REVIEWS A Selection from the Newest Publishers' Lists TEN THOUSAND men and women, working in more than seventy countries and upon the high seas, maintained the life-lines of British and Allied communications during the war years, and a record of their devoted service, the official war history of Cable and Wireless Ltd., has been compiled by Charles Graves and published under the title of ...

... A FRIENDLY American, having been one of a crowd of more than 100,000 watching a soccer match, might be excused the superficial query as to whether cricket was really the English national game. Being a Student of English literature he would have some excuse, but it would take him a little longer than the course of a brief visit to this island to discover the balance between large-scale devotees ...

... THE highly individual way in which Miss Caryl Brahms and Mr. S. J. Simon construct their novels has had the true accolade of success in the past six months, by being copied by no fewer than two different authors. the original thing, however, is still the best, and their new novel quite de lightful in its own way. TROTTIE TRUE (Michael Joseph. 9s. 6d.) is, with one ex ception, the gayest story ...

... MR. JOHN MOORE proved last year in an enchant ing book that the story of a country town can be at least as sympathetically told, and prove as moving and exciting as the biography of a person, and now he has done the same thing for a country village. with no less warmth and with the same remarkable lack of sentimentality. BRENSHAM VILLAGE (Collins. 1 2s. 6d.) is the story of the life of a ...

... WE are told that Mr. Trevor Evans, the author of BEVIN (George Allen and Unwin. 10s. 6d.), has secured the wholehearted co-operation of some of Bevin's close asso ciates in the compilation of this book. the amount of co-operation Mr. Trevor Evans received from Mr. Ernest Bevin himself is revealed in the chap ter in which the author describes in detail his visit to the Foreign Secretary on ...