... 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 ...

... Elizabeth ftewehs MOUNT IDA, by Monk Gibbon (Cape; 18s.), is a book far from easy to classify-- it is not quite autobiography, not quite novel. Mr. Gibbon has, indeed, forged a form of his own: and why should he not? He is an outstanding Anglo-Irish poet; he is the author of The Seals. Moreover, in Mount Ida he is making a new approach to an ancient subject-- the primary subject, possibly, ...

... Elizabeth Betven s Who Has Seen the Wind Wonderful Mrs. Harriot! British Chess Moscow Murder WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND (Macraillan ; ios. 6d.) is literature, out of Canada. It has the merit of being a non-literary book-- a book vital from the first to the last page, un-selfconscious, at no point weighted down by roundabout, wordy passages, Clean through its pages blows a sheer sense of ...

... (Mr tfcu Anthony Cookmttti ivith Tom Titt Musical Chairs (Playhouse) SEVENTEEN years ago this tragic farce won instant recognition. It was a first play, and nobody doubted its right to rank with the small number of remarkable first plays written within living memory-- Widowers' Houses, The Shadow of a Gunman, The Silver Box, Journey's End, David Ballard, Hindle Wakes, Berkeley Square. Perhaps ...

... (bfr People Like Us (Wyndham 's) Anthony Cooknian PLAYWRIGHTS who take their facts from a cause célèbre are in danger, unless they happen to be Shakespeares, of getting ab sorbed in a rather sedative job of work. Intent on arranging the facts into a plausible stage story they are likely at critical moments to let their imaginations doze; and however skilfully they manage the facts the lack in ...

... OA tfcu Anthony Cook man with IT was perhaps a little naughty of the Hon. Douglas- Home to let the Panslavonian dogs (as Johnson would have called them) have better morals than the British Foreign Secretary. He asked for trouble, duly got it from the gallery first nighters and appeared to enjoy it. I must confess that my own political withers were unwrung. The diplomatic intrigue in the back ...