... THE study of crime has always been fascinating, and so, by the same token, has the study of criminal lawyers, particularly when they might be called criminal in both senses of the word. THE TRUE AND SCANDALOUS HISTORY OF HOWE AND HUMMEL (Michael Joseph. 8s. 6d.) is as entertaining a book as I have read for months, wittily written, factually complete and terrific as an exposé of what legal ...

... NO title could be simpler or more appropriate than that chosen by Mrs. Esther Meynell for her enchanting new biography, for PORTRAIT OF WILLIAM MORRIS (Chapman and Hall. 15s.) exactly de scribes both the content and the pictorial style of this week's most outstanding book. This ic nn acrp whir.h ha.rHlv rftr.npr- Cs j o nises Morris, except in so far as it sees him striding across the ...

... THE first two volumes of Sir Osbert Sitwell's auto biography have not only re ceived almost unanimous praise from the critics, but have earned him an award for the most distinguished work of the year. Die third volume, Great Morning (Macmillan, 15s.), has, therefore, to be measured bv a very high standard, and one may as well say at once that it is as good as, if not better than, its ...

... THE event of the week, as far as the world of novels is concerned, is publication of Mr. Graham Greene's THE HEART OF THE MATTER (Heine mann. 9s. 6d.). It is news, too, because this is, at least partly, a love story, and love stories as such have not been the basis for Mr. Greene's reputation as a writer. It is also the story of a different kind of saint, though the author might dispute that ...

... 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 ...

... IT was Cardinal Newman's wish that anyone writing a biography of him should begin with his forty-fifth year, the year in which he was admitted into the Catholic Church, and so far the biographers have fol lowed that desire and written mainly of his life as a Catholic, beginning with the great controversy caused by his leaving the Church of England. In i8as. this steD of Newman's was ...

... ONE of the most revealing aspects of THE GOEBBELS DIARIES (Hamish Hamilton. 218) is the proof that it gives, proof substantiated by Mr. Trevor-Roper's now classic Last Days of Hitler, that, from the moment of his rise to power to the day when he died in the Berlin bunker, Hitler was the Number One man of his party and of the country, and that not even the most jealous and ambitious of the men ...

... 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 ...

... DESPITE the ruthless omni potence of the Gestapo, it is obvious that some potent anti-Nazi forces existed and were active in Germany even at the height of Hitler's power. The plot which culminated in the abortive attempt on Hitler's life in 1944 was born of no sudden resurgence, but of a long-term understanding be tween certain elements in the political and military circles in Germany. ...

... THROUGHOUT the years of the war a distinguished woman writer in South Africa was keeping a diary, and it was in every essential a war diary, for it recorded, with the detachment of distance but with the clarity of a good observer, the most significant details of the war news as it was published, and as it was interpreted to her by her friend, Field Marshal Smuts. The writer was Mrs. Sarah ...

... THIRTY YEARS TO WRITE THE HISTORY OF WORLD WAR I Sir James Edmonds Completes His Record Brigadier-General Sir James E Edmonds has been in charge of the Military Branch, Historical Section, Committee of Imperial Defence, since 1919, and his task has been the writing of the history of World War I. In 1922 came Volume I, the story of the momentous battles of 1914, when Paris so nearly fell, and ...

... DR. A. J. CRONIN'S new novel is welcome as flowers in October, because it is in his very best vein of narrative, and because it is about a doctor of science, one to whom research is as exciting as exploration, or as new records in flying. This is a world, or a state ot mmd, on which this writer can express himself with a certain amount of authority, and it is that grasp which makes this novel ...