... Reviewed by Trevor a. Allen IT'S bracing to read of unconventional folk in these docketed days; and circus people, I suppose, are as free and versatile as any. Reco, the Great Blondini wire-walker, for example, has worked as miner, farmhand, tumbled for coppers on market days, wandered the road with performing don keys, served as fill-in clown, been penniless and now owns his own show. There ...

... (bt Maid to Measure f Cambridge Anthony Cookman with Tom Titt IT is not often that any sort of show puts off the desolating look of failure and takes on the pleasing air of modest but assured success in the course of a journey from one theatre to another. Yet this is what seems to have happened to Mr. Leigh Stafford's revue. At Hammersmith almost its only recommenda tion was that it brought ...

... The Heart of the Hatter Southwards from Swiss Cottaere 'A Hard Winter Flight Out of Fancy Elizabeth Bewehs THE HEART OF THE MATTER (Heinemann; 9 s. 6 d.) shows Graham Greene at the full of his stature as a novelist: which is to say, towering above his contemporaries and setting a high mark for younger writers who are to follow. François Mauriac, in an essay, spoke of that one book of which ...

... 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 ...

... BOB is also Leslie Henson, and we are well content to be his nephews. To me he has not changed very much since an August evening in 1919, when he flung himself upon the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre in Kissing Time. That night a ten-year-old was enraptured by the Henson goggle eyes, the Henson croak, and that curious, inquiring thrust of the head, as of a sparrow-cum-goldfish. To-day ...

... A' DOUBLE LIFE THIS was the film that won Ronald Colman an Academy Award for the best actor's performance of the year, and in everything that touches on one-half of his performance-- the private side of the double life of a matinée idol-- he triumphs effortlessly. Anthony John is a fashionable Broadway actor, a darling of the gods, who loses himself in his parts more thoroughly than most. ...

... Spanish serenade. An Argentinian film in Spanish, with irritating American-English titles, bout the life of the composer Albeniz. Fine eading performance from Pedro Lopez Lagar. so evil my love. Another murder tale from the aspidistra period. Not my cup of poison. daybreak.-- -Monckton Hoffe's cheerless little number about the private life of a public hangman decorative in places, but made ...

... Rupert Croft-Cooke STORM AT THE HOOK.-- This is one of those novels, fashionable in the 'thirties, which are written to a precise blue print, the result of much careful ingenuity rather than of imagination or even inventive ness. A storm delays seven people who are anxious to reach England from Holland. And if you remember Grand Hotel and Stam boul Train and all the other novels which ...

... The Story of Hampstead. By J. H. Preston. (Staples Press 8s. 6d.) Topographical and historical details, illus trated by photographs of the Mayor and her husband, the Vicar, Madge the Flower Seller, and Dr. Cyril Joad. A bit much. it The Bright and the Dark. By John Frederic Gibson. (Sampson Low 8s. 6d.) A staccato story of life in a Cornish village. Death in Shallow Water. By Miles Burton. ...

... Elizabeth Heweas OF Two Quiet Lives (Constable; 15s.) the author. Lord David Cecil, says: These studies are not a work of research. All the information in them is already in print. But the two characters, who are their subject, seem to me curious and complex enough to deserve a closer analysis and a more extended interpretation than they have up to now received. My book, then, aspires to be ...

... LTAVE you studied the Family Guide To the National Scheme of Insurance? We have. Or, at least, we have tried, For it 's really a feat of endurance. It explains what per cent, of our wages Will go to this Government caper. It 's a volume of thirty-two pages. (Who says there 's a shortage of paper Its style is compelling and bold. You must read it from cover to cover For when your bronchitis or ...

... All My Sons (Lyric, Hammersmith Anthony Cook man with Tom Titt WITH this play Mr. Arthur Miller won the year's award made by the dramatic critics of New York. The public, naturally suspicious of what has pleased a body of experts, may be assured that the prize piece is good theatre absolutely and not merely good on points. It tells a highly emotional, curiously moving story. Joe Keller is a ...