... 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 ...

... 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 ...

... When John Drinkwater wrote A Man's House he took the climax of the New Testament story and, for two inspired acts, showed the impact of those events upon a middle-class household in Jerusalem. Employing this same method, but without Drinkwater's skill or discernment, C. M. Franzero has written THE MEMOIRS OF PON TIUS PILATE (Allen and Unwin. 10s. 6d.), and here again the climax is, of course, ...

... IN PRAISE OF BATSFORD A Publishing House and Its Recording of the English Scene The English character, we flatter ourselves, is not without complexity, and the English spirit is not to be defined in a few words. We are best understood, perhaps, by the sights and scenes of town and countryside, the everyday life of England past and present, and by our rich architectural heritage. These things ...

... Elizabeth Bewetts Charade Shaplon Affairs Turnstile One The Voice of the Corpse lteprints CHARADE (The Bodley Head; 7s. 6 d.) is John Mortimer's first novel-- or is it? I find no reference on the wrapper or first inside page to any other work of fiction by him yet Charade is written with such assurance that it is hard to see Mr. Mortimer as a new comer. Perhaps, however, this signalises ...

... Qst tfcu ^fUlYijiAJL The Happiest Days of Your Life Apollo Anthony Cook man with Tom Titl TO enjoy this farce, and many others as good, we must pretend to be, or already be, old fogies at least thirty years behind the times. We have to tell ourselves that co education is a crazy and slightly shocking absurdity. Then the arrival of Miss Margaret Rutherford and her mistresses and girl pupils to ...

... 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 ...

... BEVERLEY BAXTER. AMONG my constituents is an old man of great knowledge who is a magnificent and complete pessimist. His considered opinion is that the story of man is ended and that destiny or the fates or the Great Historian will find some way of ending the world and thus write finis to the book of man. His logic is not without force. No one will ever write as well as Shakespeare so that ...

... OUR REVIEWER'S CHOICE SOMETHING TERRIBLE, SOMETHING LOVELY. By William Sansom. (The Hogarth Press 8s. 6 d.) THE NEEDLE'S EYE. By Timothy Pember. (Jonathan Cape 9s. 6 d.) BROTHER DEATH. By John Lodwick. (Heinemann 9s. 6d.) VEILED DESTINIES. By Winifred Peck. (Faber and Faber 8s. 6d.) Rupert Croft-Cooke SOMETHING TERRIBLE, SOMETHING LOVELY.-- In applying the name of his first story to his ...

... . By Tean Stafford. (Faber and Faber 8s. 6d.) Childhood in America of a brother and sister which ends in a sudden piece of shrieking melodrama. Over-written or isn't it over writing to speak of a road being devoured by the car like an endless red noodle ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor Allen U.S. novelists are certainly thorough. Mr. Louis Zara, for example, isn't content merely to portray the first fourteen years or so of his heroine Ruth Middleton (W. H. Allen, 10s. 6d.). He devotes a first chapter to her pre natal growth in biological detail, with running commentary by the parents on progress so far and appropriate Biblical quotation; and I've no ...

... at tfe. 'itujvu Anthony Cookman with Tom Titt Little Lambs Eat Ivy (Ambassadors) THIS frightfully bad play is highly divert ing entertainment. Having so described the piece, one owes it to the author to explain, at the risk of seeming pedan tic,. that no play can be called good which happens to be as sentimental as Caste and as meaningless as The Importance of Being Earnest. No doubt the point ...