... RECORD DF THE WEEK THE musical taste of the general public often takes a curious' twist, and those who are sworn anti-jazzites suddenly become conscious that something of this day and age is worth while. In the same way the jazz fiend discovers that the basis of this type of music is often directly traceable to a solid knowledge of the classics. Thus it is interesting to see that Sidney Torch ...

... Elizabeth Bcwen s BROWNS AND CHESTER: A Portrait of a Shop (Lindsay Drummond; 15s.) has an unusual author-- Mass-Observation. Up to now, this form of research has been applied to contemporary affairs; and enlighten ing, if sometimes startling, have its results been --we have been documented, if one may so put it, up to the hilt. We may still be ignorant as to our neighbours' ways of life if ...

... THERE are two recent recordings of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, and though it may seem too much to suggest that both versions of this major work are heard, no one who really enjoys and appreciates music should miss listening to one or other set of records. Apart from the actual performance of the orchestras concerned, both recordings show how much in advance British recording systems are ...

... Elizabeth Betvens Creatures of Circumstance Treadmill Leave to Presume the Death The Novel Since 1939 QUITE an interesting study for the sub- historian could be: errors which gave rise to famous false alarms. These, I imagine, would be found to thicken with the approach to our own fortunate day: the type writer must be responsible for many. I advisedly say the typewriter, not the young lady at ...

... Elizabeth Betvehs PROBABLY no novelist exposed the inside of his working brain as completely as did Gustave Flaubert. The answer to What does it feel like to be a writer? has been furnished by him-- at length, ruthlessly, freely, and with sometimes intimidating results. It was not that Flaubert, a stolid Norman of considerable reserve, went about giving informa tion to all and sundry-- what ...

... (M Deep Are The loots (Wyndham's) THEY are the roots of racial hatred and fear that still bedevil the relations of white people and coloured folk in the Deep South. The problem thus perpetuated is purely American; but to assume therefore that you won't be interested in its treatment will be to deny yourself an evening of exciting theatre. It is exciting theatre because the authors (Arnaud ...

... Elizabeth Bewens THE sad part about many monuments is their stoniness, which may seem to place the person they would commemorate back in the coldness of other time. But John Buchan, by His Wife and Friends (Hodder and Stoughton; 12s. 6d.), is what seems ideal-- a living monu ment to a man who lived life to the full. In part a composite memoir, in part a series of portraits by different hands, ...

... Ctfr tfe- The Anonymous Lover (Duke of York's) MR. VERNON SYLVAINE is my favourite writer of farces that cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called intellectual. His fun is simple and usually it follows the same pattern. Some might say that it is a pattern indistinguishable from that of a dozen other farces by different hands; but I find in Mr. Sylvaine's workmanship an admirable ...

... (bfr I AM in no way 'psychic,' wrote Kipling towards the end of his life. I have seen too much of the evil and sorrow and wreck of good minds on the road to Endor to take one step along that perilous path. Yet some of his ghost stories haunt the memory. Seeing the dubious road from a safe distance, he was in a position to know that the most satisfactory kind of ghost must not satisfy, but ...

... 800K REVIEWS ELIZABETH BOWES S The Life of the Heart Westwood How to be An Alien In the A9ey Mayo Trio THE LIFE OF THE HEART, by Frances Winwar (Hamish Hamilton; 12s. 6d.), is the story of George Sand and her times. And what a story! This astonishing Frenchwoman was born in 1804; died in 1876. As a little girl, she exchanged a glance with Napoleon; she was to live through (and at close ...

... ELIZABETH BOWELS War in Val d'Orcia'' Peace Breaks Out R.A.A.F. Over Europe Memoirs of Mipsie WAR IN VAL D'ORCIA, by Iris Origo (Cape; IOS. 6d.), is, as far as I know, the first record to reach us of the war in Italy from the civilian angle. As such, alone, it would be of considerable human interest, but it is a good deal more. This is a diary; the first entry dated January 30th, 1943, ...

... When L'Oiseau de Feu was first produced in Paris in 1910 it was atriumph for Stravinsky, and I have no hesitation in saying that the present recording on Decca K 1574-1576 is a triumph for Decca recording engineers, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Ernest Ansermet, who came over here originally with the Diaghilev company in 1920. Particularly was I taken by the smooth delight of ...