... 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, ...

... 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 ...

... IF the character of Napoleon crosses the stage during the performance of a play, or appears for a minute or two on the screen during a film, then, even if the play or the film are about totally different people, they will lose most of their life and vitality. It will leave with Napoleon s exit, and the audience will be, even if it is subconsciously, waiting for him to appear again and paying ...

... THE revisiting of old films, particularly in company with a generation to whom any thing that was made the day before yester day seems practically prehistoric, is generally a mug's game, leading to disappointment, despon dency and discountenance. (Whatever did the old dear see in those ghastly pictures?) But I think you can safely make an exception in favour of The Cabinet of Dr. ...

... ctk tfcu Royal Circle (Wyndham 's J AUDIENCES so dumb that they will not venture to say Boo! to the veriest goose of a play offend sticklers for the rigour of the theatrical game. Hisses are hideous sounds, but they betoken a healthy spirit of discrimination. So runs the virilist argument, plausibly enough; yet in my experience the mere goose stands in less danger of noisy disapprobation ...

... Elizabeth Bewehs GREAT MORNING (Macmillan; 15s.) is the third volume of Sir Osbert Sitwell's autobiography. Following upon Left Hand, Right Hand! and The Scarlet Tree, the announcement of its appearance has been awaited as might be the sounding of a gong before yet another superb meal. This is a book to be opened with a salivary eagerness it will not disappoint. In autobiography our age has ...

... (Mr t$uL Happy with Either St. James's J Anthony Cook man with Tom Titt CHARLES LAMB cheerfully damned posterity and declared that he would write for antiquity. Evidently the same whimsical spirit has touched Miss Margaret Kennedy. Her new comedy would seem to have been written expressly for Gerald du Maurier. He, alas, is no longer here to play in it, and without him it is an empty vehicle. ...

... The Goebbels Diaries 44 Answer io Question 33 44 The Harp in the South9* Elizabeth Bcwetis THE GOEBBELS DIARIES (Hamish Hamil ton; 21s.) have been translated and edited by Louis P. Lochner-- for many years Berlin correspondent of the Associated Press of America. Mr. Lochner's task was, he tells us, as exacting, and needed as close a use of the judgment, as any which had con fronted him ...

... 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 ...

... By C. A. Lejeune THE MURDERERS ARE AMONGST US.-- This first post-war German film to be shown publicly in England has come in for a good deal of criticism on political grounds-- most of it, in my opinion, quite unwarranted. On artistic grounds it is extremely hard to fault. The film is a fine piece of work in the characteristic German school of craftsmanship rather darker in tone and heavier ...

... Ircgic Ground. By Erskine Caldwell. (Falcon Press 8s. 6d.) 1 >llows exactly this author's well- inown prescription a slump, a slum, dee and violence. ?ri ice Leopold and Anna. By Laurian Jones. (Michael Joseph 8s. 6d.) A pleasant, unflustered love-story leatly written. English girl, German lusrand, war, separation, reunion. I'he English Landscape Garden. By H. F. Clark. (Pleiades Books 12s. 6d ...

... BOND STREET.-- Hung in every shop-window in Bond Street, an nounces an off-screen female voice at the beginning of this film, is a story; and the producers proceed to give us four of them. The quartet of episodes that make up the picture are all connected with a bride's paraphernalia: the story of a wedding-dress, the story of a string of pearls, the story of a bridal veil, the story of the ...