... QJT IAJU Comments Upon\ \Some Comedians J Anthony Cookman and Tom Titl Even today the music-hall could not afford to drop a certain tradition derived from the old fairs. Comic singers must willy-nilly appear in the company of freaks, celebrities and performing animals. The music hall audience is as freely moved by curiosity as crowds milling about the booths of a country fairground. Naturally ...

... By Collie Knox KIPLING would have approved of Bonnie Prince David. Not only has he filled the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distance run, but has done it at sixty miles an hour. The minute has proved very forgiving. Anyone would forgive David Niven anything; even his success. He is as unexpected as the warrior who-- no one yet knows why-- slew a lion in a pit on a snowy day ...

... THIS has been a Christmas of Many Happy Returns. I shall think of it as the year of the Uncle and Aunt. The Uncle is at the Princes, where Babes in the Wood, the more roystering of Central London's panto mimes, is crackling like a bonfire. There is everything here except a harlequinade, but other joys dim before the Wicked Uncle of Eddie Gray, a Baron with a trick of juggling away the hours ...

... By C. A. Lejeune MONSIEUR ALIBI.-- A deft, suave, deceptively wide-eyed little comedy about a master swindler who hires a double to provide him with an alibi, and then finds that the double, although a bumpkin, is more successful as a lover than he is. Or is he? The film ends on an intriguing question mark, and is superbly carried by Louis Jouvet in five distinct characterisations. ■k* la ...

... By Collie Knox WHO is Celia? What is she? That all her fans adore her? Seventeen years ago a slender and ethereal-looking young woman, tip-tilted of nose and with big, questioning eyes, strolled on to the stage of the Playhouse Theatre, in London, spoke her opening lines as Doris Lea in 'Cynara,' and awakened every dramatic critic in the stalls. More, she made them cry, She made me cry. She ...

... GJt Anthony Cookman antl Tom Titt Macbeth (A Id wye h) A REVIVAL in the very spirit of the times! All around are Planners, hard at work on society, often with disconcerting results; it was only to be expected that sooner or later they would turn their attention to the production of Shakespearian tragedy. The results are decidedly odd. The attraction of this particular tragedy for planners is ...

... I Fight to Five Roman Britain A House in the I'plandiii M Daisy Miller Elizabeth Havens I FIGHT TO LIVE, by Robert Boothby, M.P. (Gollancz; 2Is.), bears out its author's choice of a title: it is a fine fighting book. On the wrapper it is called autobiography, but actually throughout the greater part the per sonal narrative is submerged-- I Fight to Live has, rather, the build of an ...

... Rupert Croft-Cooke OUR REVIEWER'S CHOICE THREE JOLLY GENTLEMEN. By Louis Golding. Hutchinson 9s. 6 d.) THE WAYWARD BUS. By John Stein beck. Heinemanr 9s. 6 d.) THE QUARREL. By Claude Houghton. Collins 8s. 6 d.) SHUTTLE. By Hermon Ould. Dakers 15s.) THREE JOLLY GENTLEMEN.-- Mr. Louis Golding's crisp and intriguing title might well be applied to the authors of my first three books, for all of ...

... NOT since the days of Pal grave's Golden Treasury, or the Oxford Book of English Verse, has there been an antho logy in any way comparable with POETRY OF THE ENGLISH- SPEAKING WORLD (Heinemann. 15s.). Its selection is the result of a lifetime of reading and many years of work by Mr. I Richard Aldington, whose own reputation as a poet and distinguished scholar pre pares one in some measure for ...

... WHEN RAFFLES MET BONAPARTE A New Biography of the Founder of Singapore In 1816 Thomas Stamford Raffles, homeward bound from Java, paused for a few brief hours at the island of St. Helena, and there, in meeting Napoleon, he satisfied a deep and long-felt desire. What Raffles, the brilliant but not always appreciated servant of the East India Company, for ever in danger of being caught in the ...