... 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 ...

... By John Courtenay MACBETH (Aldwych) will be remembered for production rather than performance. Michael Redgrave, in Shakespeare's most testing part, takes the dark path from Inverness to Forres and Dunsinane with sustained vigour, but without a flash of poetry. Poetry is lacking, too, in Clement McCallin's Macduff. He and Mr. Redgrave make a fierce thing of the last fight to the death, but ...

... r\ER HIRT AUF DEM FELSEN was written in October 1828, the last year of Schubert's life. Anna Milder-Hauptmann,. a famous singer of that period, asked him to compose a song for her so that she could display her voice. A clarinet obbligato was set down as further embellishment to the voice, and it is thought that Schubert had a particular clarinet player in mind when scoring this. Be that as it ...

... Anthony Cook man and Flowers for the Living'''' (New Lindsey) STARK and Zola-esque are words that have been used to describe this drama of an East End slum. Though used in a complimentary sense, they may give an unduly forbidding impression of Miss Toni Block's quite remarkable talent for representing squalor faithfully yet amusingly. Things are pretty bad in the Holmes' kitchen, but the ...

... PALESTINE: A PREJUDICED APPROACH Robin Maugham's New Book on the Problem of Jew and Arab In May 1947 Zionist Ben Hecht wrote in a New York Post advertisement addressed to the terrorists of Palestine: Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British gaol, or send a British railroad train sky-high, or rob a British bank, or let go with your guns and bombs at British betrayers and ...