... . 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 ...

... 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 ...

... LA FERME DU PENDU.-- An earthy and candid story of life on a French farm in the remote district of La Vendée. The film is a tragedy of lust: the lust of an elder brother for his land, of a younger brother for women. Very strongly played by Charles Vanel and Alfred Adam, with immensely powerful individual scenes, but the whole thing just misses greatness by a tendency to over-simplify the ...

... ■SI . By Lord Tedder. (Hodder and Stoughton 9s. 6d.) An edition for the general public of the four Lees Knowles Lectures delivered by Lord Tedder at Cambridge in 1947. They have already been published by the Stationery Office for Service use. ...

... Too Much to Ash. By Fern Rives. (Longmans Green 8s. 6d.) Jane thought it was going to be all right, and then suddenly she knew it was going to be all wrong. I felt just like Jane. ...

... . By Laurence Meynell. (Collins 8s. 6d.) This talkative thriller writer at his best. ...