... At The Pictures Accoi'tling to tlic Book Yoiuigiiinii Carter TAKE twenty- four British actors of dis tinction. add one Continental star, a well-known pro ducer, two directors, two writers, the bones of one play, and assorted tech nicians, place in a comfortable English setting and allow to simmer gently. When ready, cut and assemble, adding symphony orchestra to taste. Is this the ideal recipe ...

... (tt 1&L- You Never Co Tc (Wyndham'a) IF we can make no very notable gaiety for ourselves (and that is how things are in the theatre today), we must of course look for it where it can be found, and there is always the early Shaw. You Never Can Tell, written at the close of the century with a quizzical eye cocked at the box office, is just the thing. It has not been too often revived, and it is, ...

... Elizabeth Bmven s WHATEVER else we may lack, now the days draw in, this autumn's publishing season is bringing us an unusual number of good novels. The last few years have obviously not been easy for the inventive writer: fact has outbidden fancy all along the line. Also, for the novelist two things are necessary-- a sense of values, however personal, and perspective. Everything has been ...

... OJ- tfe Outrageous Fortune (Winter Garden) Anthony Cookman and Tom Titt THERE is a character in one of Miss Vera Caspary's novels whose neatness in rounding an awkward corner I recall with envy. Aunt Susan, she reported, once sang in musical comedy. Then she became a widow. The hyphen of marriage is best for gotten. This farce, although a triumphantly successful affair, is just as much as ...

... HECORD OF THE WEEK THE charming simplicity with which Princess Elizabeth carries out her many duties is given permanent expression on the recording (H.M.V. RB.9560) of the speech she made in Capetown on her twenty-first birthday. Hers is not an easy task. The eyes and ears of the whole world are focused on everything she does and says. And what she said in that historic speech of hers came ...

... Elizabeth Bcwens DANDY HART, by Hamilton Ellis (Gol lancz; 12s. 6d.), is a massive romance about thirty years of transport. It opens, that Is to say, in 1832, with coaches still merrily spanking along the high roads, covers the period of strife for public favour between the old and the new, the coach and the train, and ends with railways triumphant in 1863. It studies, also, internal ...

... (bfr tfe- 'The White Devil (Duchess) WEBSTER, the Elizabethan master of stage horror, apparently is now quite to the taste of the general public. Not so long ago one or two performances by the Phoenix Society seemed to exhaust his appeal. His emergence from obscurity might be explained in large general terms. Recent events, it might be said. have made us more fully aware of our nearer kinship ...

... ELIZABETH BOWEN'S P.Q. 17 An Astrologer's Day The Inn Closes for Christmas Cultural Forces in British Life To-day P.Q. 17, by Godfrey Winn (Hutchinson; 12s. 6d.), is sub-titled A Story of a Ship. The ship is the Pozarica-- known to friends as The Pozy-- an anti-aircraft cruiser which sailed as part of the escort of convoy P.Q. 17 on the Russian Run in the summer of 1942. So long, the ...

... At The Pictures Laugh, Clown, Laugli Freda Ilrur' Lorklinrt IT would be silly not to acknowledge that if the cinema has produced even one or two great figures-- avoiding argument over terms like genius or creative artist --one is Charlie Chaplin. We may regret that the coming of sound set the bees buzzing in his bowler. We may suspect delusions of grandeur in a pantomime clown who takes ...

... Elizabeth Beweris WALTER SCOTT'S The Bluestocking Ladies (John Green; IOS. 6d.) pictures for us the original group, and should do much to rescue the term bluestocking from subse quent foggy associations. By Victorians, the word was seldom applied to a lady for whom one could have any regard-- the assumption was that any one of the tenderer sex so dubbed could but be pedant, prig and very ...

... Elizabeth fiewehs The Prevalence of Witches The Common Chord Paintings of the Ballet Stranger than Truth THE PREVALENCE OF WITCHES (Chatto and Windus; 9s. 6d.) is one of the most striking first novels we seem to have had for some time. It is by Aubrey Menen. One is always inclined to give a new writer the benefit of the doubt: in the case of Mr. Menen I cannot feel that there is very much ...

... OA Toss of the D'Urberville 'Pic ad illy) ANY theorist can prove, at least to his own satisfaction, that it is a foolish mistake o dramatize a novel. Life would be very dull if we all stuck to our theories. Mr. Sha, conveniently forgetting the hard things he has said of those who dared lay impious hands on the sacred text of Shakespeare, has found himself re-writing the last act of ...