... RECORD DF THE WEEK INTRODUCING a new tenor, Giuseppe di Stefano, making his bow on his first His Master's Voice record, singing in Italian Lamento di Federico E la Solita Storia from Cilea's L'Arlesiana and Lucevan le Stelle from Tosca. Here is a young Sicilian singer of whom we are bound to hear a great deal more. It is certain that his' warm personality and gaiety will qualify him for a ...

... Elizabeth Hewehs BEMELMANS' Dirty Eddie-- announced in its native land as the novel about Holly wood to end all novels about Hollywood-- has now come to London. More exactly, it has been published in England by Messrs. Hamish Hamilton, at 8s. 6d. I should like to stress that the operative factor in this announcement is not so much more about Hollywood as more-- and, arguably, even the ...

... At The Theatre Anthony t'ookmaii The Kil From Stratford*' (Prin ccs) WRITERS of musical comedy have hitherto turned a blind eye to the mute solicitings of the Shakespeare cult at Stratford-upon-Avon. The Bard's birthplace growing bigger and better with the years-- the procession of silk-hatted dignitaries carrying daffodils and cowslips on the Birthday-- the breaking by ambassadors of the ...

... Hollywood, Mistletoe and ii is* 11 May Freda Bruce Loekliart A FILM critic at the Christmas table is liable, I fear, to cut a Scrooge-like figure. Our normal weekly fare is so very un-Christmasy. A never-ending succession of juvenile and other delinquents, of types who need no mistletoe to make them kiss mechanically, the stream of murderers, bandits, psychiatrists and their patients who ...

... CUb MR. ARTHUR MACRAE'S new farcical comedy is lightly and continuously funny. It is quite brilliantly acted. The curtain rises at the good old time of eight thirty, and no other entertainment in town is so likely to justify an experiment which has been tried once before without success. It is at the right address. It gives Miss Yvonne Arnaucl the bset part that she has had for some time, and ...

... At The Theatre Miss Mabel (lluclicss) Anllioiir fookmnn IF we did not know better we should be tempted to speak of Mr. R. C. SherrifF's new play as a delightful instance of beginner's luck. Every thing falls in remarkably well with everything else, apparently by a series of happy accidents. This impression has in fact needed a great deal of care and cunning to create, but there it is. Mr. ...

... Elizabeth Bewens ARTHUR BRYANT'S Samuel Pepys: The Man in the Making was first published by the Cambridge University Press in 1933-- the tercentenary of Pepys' birth. It is the first volume of the famous Pepys trilogy, now taken over by Messrs. Collins-- the next two, The Years of Peril and The Saviour of the Navy, are to follow as soon as publishing exigencies permit. Well printed inside ...

... The Red Prussian Stranger at Home The Woman in Rlark The Royal Family in Africa rPHE Red Prussian, by Leopold Schwarzs- child (Hamish Hamilton 16s.), is a biography of Karl Marx. Marx the Man, as distinct from Marx the Legend, is [to quote the wrapper] Mr. Schwarzschild's subject. The subject has been dealt with not too kindly in fact, I can but feel that the author's aim has been more or ...

... At Tlie Pictures Tlie True Glamour Frnla Bruce Lorkliart ONE film's wit this week makes all the rest seem still more crude and silly than perhaps they are; one star's radiance turns all others into pale or painted puppets. The film is the eight- year-old Ninotchka, revived at last-- now that the Russians have made themselves ridiculous enough to become again a legitimate laughing-stock from ...

... (bt Anthony Cookman with Tom Titt Edinburgh Festival Plays EDINBURGH'S leading newspaper used to carry on Saturday mornings three crowded columns of church advertise ments. Flippant Englishmen, comparing this noble sight with the meagre column in which plays and concerts were announced, professed to have hit upon the city's real idea of entertainment. The second Festival, even more lavish than ...

... Elizabeth ftewehs MOUNT IDA, by Monk Gibbon (Cape; 18s.), is a book far from easy to classify-- it is not quite autobiography, not quite novel. Mr. Gibbon has, indeed, forged a form of his own: and why should he not? He is an outstanding Anglo-Irish poet; he is the author of The Seals. Moreover, in Mount Ida he is making a new approach to an ancient subject-- the primary subject, possibly, ...

... Books: Reviewed by Trevor Allen MR. COLLIN BROOKS, editor of Truth, croons no lullaby over the 1930's decade. It came in like a ravening wolf, and went out like a roaring lion. It began in world economic chaos, and ended with the world at war, he writes in Devil's Decade (MacDonald, 15s.), focusing the period mainly through pen-portraits of its monarchs, statesmen, politicians, financiers, ...