... AMBASSADOR EXTRAORDINARY (Aldwych). A messenger from Mars in Downing Street. This is not William Douglas Home's best play, but it is at least satirical comedy with a certain sting, and Raymond Lovell, Jane Baxter and Jacques Berthier act it well. The only poor first-night performance was the gallery's a dreary exhibition of bad manners. wonders never cease (Comedy). But this critic's interest ...

... A LA CARTE IT is a handsome menu-- and, thank heaven, we are not fussed about by too many cooks. Indeed, there are only four names at the head of the Savoy programme: Book and lyrics, Alan Melville; Music, Charles Zwar; Production, Norman Marshall; Décor, dresses, dances, William Chappell. Here is a change from the monstrous regiment of authors, lyrists, composers, choreographers, designers, ...

... BOOKS IN BRIEF Lucy Walter, Wife or Mistress. By Lord George Scott. (Harrap 12s. 6d.) After the thundering rhetoric of the Preface (which opens Having for many years felt rightful indignation at the cruel calumnies which have continually been heaped upon the moral character of my ancestress it is surprising to find that this is a scholarly and persuasive book. Bridge to Brooklyn. ft By Albert ...

... DEAN INGE may now be a gentleman of advanced years, but in his new collection of essays, THE END OF AN AGE (Putnam, 10s. 6d.), he writes with all the lucidity and force of a man and a thinker in the prime of his life. Of these seven essays, the Dean writes that the titles of the chapters mav sound more despondent than the text, a phrase which recalls the days when he was known as the gloomy ...

... OUR BOOKSHELF Rupert Croft-Cooke OUR REVIEWER'S CHOICE MEN AT HIGH TABLE and THE HOUSE OF STRANGERS. By Gerald Bullett. (Dent 9s.) JOY AND JOSEPHINE. By Monica Dickens. Michael Joseph 10s. 6 d.) KNOCK ON ANY DOOR. By Willard Motley. Collins 10s. 6d.) GOING MY WAY. By Godfrey Winn. I Hutchinson 12s. 6d.) MEN AT HIGH TABLE and THE HOUSE OF STRANGERS. Mr. Gerald Bullett has the faculty of in ...

... CINEGUILD'S Oliver Twist is such an excellent piece of technical work, so responsibly and affectionately made, and so certain to add lustre to the British film industry, that it seems ungrateful to suggest that it may not be wholly successful as an entertainment. And yet a critic can only speak as he finds, and whereas I came away from Cineguild's first Dickens film, Great Expectations, ...

... . By Bernard Newman. (Hale 16s.) A mass of tittle-tattle about the various countries on the Baltic, peppered with inter jection marks and the first person singular. BOOKS IN BRIEF ...

... . Bv Olive Hawks. (Jarrolds 9s. 6d.) The author's deeper purpose, the pub lishers say, is to examine the relationship of men and women in the modern world. I seem to have heard that before somewhere. M ...

... SITTING PRETTY.-- What might have been a negligible Hollywood comedy about a young couple who advertise for a baby-sitter and jet one in the person of a dryly efficient male novelist, is saved by its cynical sketches of small-town life and Clifton Webb's tour de force is an Admirable Crichton of the nursery. Rather Surprisingly funny. kreutzer sonata. A notable Argentine ilm in Spanish, ...

... 44 Whispering: Ilill 44 Blood Money 44 British Hospitals 44 The Bedside Shakespeare Elizabeth Betvens WHETHER in drama or fiction, one theme never seems to exhaust itself-- the pos sessive mother! One must, I fear, take it that this lady is no less operative in real life-- why else should her wiles be followed, by suc cessions of audiences, by thousands of readers, with such fascinated, almost ...

... cut tii ytujcu A la Carte (Savoy) Anthony Cookman with Tom Titt APPARENTLY it is in the nature of things that the final editing of a little revue gets left to the first-night audience. None of the many cooks authors, composers, designers, choreographers can be sure what will be the effect of certain items in the menu. They can cook, but they cannot taste. They require the services of an ...

... Elizabeth Bewehs The Ides of Summer Attic and Area Acres and Pains The Englishman's Home The Governess at Ashburton Hall Aights at the Opera ARE there-- can there really be-- characters who are precipitators of other people's doom, carriers, in the illness sense, of misfortune? Plane and railway accidents, large-scale fatalities such as earthquakes and fires would, if so, follow in such a ...