... TWO NOVELISTS WITH A PENCHANT FOR EXACTITUDE The Big Sky and Ruth Middleton Both Deserve to be Best-Sellers John Steinbeck has set a fashion in the rough-tough type of novel of the contemporary American scene, and now A. B. Guthrie, taking us back 120 years to pioneering days in the Upper Mississippi, before the first covered wagon came to disturb the serenity of its plains, before men cut ...

... By John Courtenay CHRISTMAS still haloes the theatre programmes, and-- except for Mickey Rooney's good-tempered hurtling into Palladium variety-- there have been no West End changes since my last article. A play I have not reviewed previously in The Sketch, The Blind Goddess (Apollo), is Sir Patrick Hastings's most impressive contribution to the stage. It depends largely upon a court scene ...

... I HAVE only one real complaint about Wynyard Browne's emotional play at the St. Martin's: there are too few people in it. He has limited his cast to five: that is, to the blinded sailor who will regain his sight in the third act; the women between whom he must choose; the possessive mother; and, for comic relief, a twittering spinster, a paying guest fit to enter, say, Munro's At Mrs. Beam's, ...

... IT is a curious and melancholy thing that the screen never seems to be more impressive, more fluent, more at ease than when it is presenting films about crime. Violence appears rob the film of its emotional inhibitions: pro ducers who have not the faintest idea how to now ordinary people reacting to everyday cir cumstances seem to attain a masterly control of their medium when they are dealing ...

... By C. A. Lejeune QUAI DES ORFÈVRES.-- A brilliantly- made and fascinating story of a police investigation in the back stage music-hall world of Paris. A jealous husband plans an alibi for the murder of the man he believes to be his wife's lover: but finds the victim already murdered. The Scotland Yard of Paris picks up his trail and, detail by pains taking detail, the real story is uncovered. ...

... . By Ludwig Bemelmans. 1 (Hamish Hamilton 9s. 6d.) A clever artist and writer enjoying himself 1 irresponsibly in Ecuador. A fine frenzy. ...

... . By Angela Ogcen. (Herbert Joseph 7s. 6d.) It will not be taking a liberty, I think, f I omit the Miss in referring to the author nd illustrator of this unusual children's book, for Angela Ogden is eleven years old. Yet ther- is nothing scratchy or amateurish about her wor.i-- the story is exciting and the pictures q> ite brilliant. She must blame her own populaiity for the fact that her book ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor Allen IN common with most thinkers from Biblical times onwards, Mr. John Brophy is perplexed by the dual nature of mankind, body and mind, and the sustained warfare between the two. In Body and Soul (Harrap, 15s.) he manfully, solemnly tackles the problem with wide knowledge, apt quotation. His approach to the bold nudes by artists classic and modern which illustrate ...

... The Trains W Loved Afterglow These I Have Loved Aspects of British Art Elizabeth Betven s Last summer we had, as an exceptional number of readers will remember, a novel called Dandy Hart, which was an alluring mixture of trains and people. It was a fine romance, not without kisses, but I noted at the time a slight flaw which seemed to be due to a side-tracking of the author's most genuine ...

... IF the reader can once con vince himself of the existence, or even the proba bility, of the lovely Mira, her highly-strung husband Ralph, and the stolid lover Martin, then he will be in a fair way to appreciating Mr. Claude Houghton's new novel. THE QUARREL (Collins. 8s. 6d.). For myself, I found them a little stiff and at the same time wraithlike not responding to the ordinary stimuli of life ...

... ALL the discussions, the pros and cons and the endless talk that have surrounded and often further obscured the philosophy of Existentialism, can in a sense be disregarded when one is reading a novel by the chief exponent of that philosophy. Or, if not dis regarded, at least relegated to the background while the less complicated business of reading and enjoying the story itself goes on. M. ...

... NORTHWARD HO! The March of the Pioneers in Canada's Arctic Territories Go West, young man, declared Horace Greeley from his New York editofial offices. There is your hinterland, cried Rhodes as he gazed northwards to Central Africa from the Cape. Both men were realists with a touch of vision; both men were right in giving an impetus to the pioneering trends of the nineteenth century a spur ...