... Reviewed by Trevor Allen STRANGE are the winds of circum stance that blow into men's lives, launch ing them on unusual journ eys-- Captain Roy Farran went east in 1940 at nineteen, fought in tanks in the Western Desert and in Crete, operated as a Special Service commando behind the enemy lines in Italy and France, and finally served in the Palestine Police-- a job that involved him in a charge ...

... Books Reviewed by Trevor Allen YOU have to hand it to the Fat Girl. She was Sophie Abuza, waitress and washer-up in her parents' restaurant at Hartford. She carolled to the customers, then at local concerts, stormed New York's Tin Pan Alley, and in due time became the famous Sophie Tucker, to whom a rich sheik who beheld the most beautiful lady I have ever seen in the film Honky Tonk wrote: ...

... VV/,vAA/WWr^/,^'AA/^AAA/W/' /'A : Reviewed b y Trevor Alle?i HAVE something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style, wrote Matthew Arnold. It also seems to be the idea underlying The English Language: Its Beauty and Use (Odhams, 7s. 6d.), a handy guide to the correct use of words and the best in our literature. Perhaps one may be permitted to lift an ...

... VWAAAAA' THE Haymarket Theatre has seen 226 years of chequered history, yet to our leading stage S chronicler, Mr. W. Macqueen-Pope, it remains the 2 place it was when Fielding fought for freedom there, Cibber used it to defy Drury Lane, Foote X flouted the law, Liston raised laughs, Romeo Coates made an ass of himself, Buckstone and s Sothern popularized Dundreary whiskers, and Tree did ...

... No one enjoys a well-arranged accom paniment better than I do, but there is a time and place for everything, and I feel that the accompaniment to Monsieur Ernest a Riussi, good though it may be as an exhibition of orchestral pyrotechnics, is inartistic and incorrect as a setting for the singing of Edith Piaf. The accompaniment to her second song, Le Geste, is in slightly better taste, but I am ...

... Margery Allinghanrs The Black Laurel Beggar's Fiddle Tahiti Landfall The Lost Ant Dclius PERHAPS, when once one becomes aware that one is living in history, it is safe to assume that events have become so gigantic and so close that one's view is a little out of focus. The effect of the object being out of focus is, of course, blur. Miss Storm Jameson is a writer of great per ception, precise ...

... Elizabeth llmvens Paris Herself Again Something? Sweet, Something: Terrible The Military Orchid A Puzzle for Pilgrims GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA'S Paris Herself Again comes back again, itself, most happily. We owe the reappearance of this period piece-- which a repetition of history makes, all the same, contemporary-- to the Golden Galley Press. It is given a dashing format, the 1878-79 Sala ...

... Cbtr e- Anthony Cookman with Tom Titt The Gioconda Smile (New) THE playhouse, once the Devil's favourite haunt, is really a very moral place. Without any prompting from the censor, it imposes all sorts of restraints on authors who, within the covers of their books, are free to be wholly uninhibited. See how even Mr. Aldous Huxley must answer to the bridle. When he wrote the story of a rich ...

... Elizabeth Hewetis Miss Josephine and the Colonel The Washbournes of Oiterley A .Second Ilook of Russian Verse Green Shiver ORIEL MALET is a young writer who, while still in her teens, made a happy start, and who remains worth watching upon her way. Two novels-- Trust in the Springtime and My Bird Sings-- were followed by Marjory Fleming, biography of Pet Marjory, that Scottish genius ...

... Elizabeth Beivens The Blood of Other* The Secret Thread Malice Bite* Back The Ola** Room The Blood of Others, by Simone de Beauvoir (Seeker and Warburg; ios. 6d.), has been described by its publishers as the greatest novel to come out of the French Resistance. It is, at the outset, to be distin guished from the by now typical, though admirable, Resistance novel, in that the Resistance ...

... OF tfe- ^t&uJFZ Anthony Cookman with Tom Titt A Fine Othello at Stratford MR. GODFREY TEARLE'S Othello-- the great event of the most distinguished of recent festivals at Stratford-upon- Avon-- is a strange performance. It flies in the face of all received notions of how Othello should be played, yet compels belief. Is not the Moor Shakespeare's supreme orator With the speeches given him have ...

... Elizabeth Betvehs Four Favourites !Vo Highway A Aineteenth-Ceniury Childhood The Devil's Stronghold THE making of favourites, clearly, is an abuse of power-- this failing, however, is most human. Happy the private individual who can allow his preferences full play; for, indeed, to be absolutely impartial makes life dull. In the case of anyone in the limelight, no susceptibility can hope to ...