... The Borgia Testament 14 The Wisdom of Dr. Johnson 44 Portrait of a House 44 Devil's Reckoning: Elizabeth Botven s NIGEL BALCHIN is, as a novelist, admirable-- not least admirable for his way of being for ever upon the move. Reputation came to him early, but he has not been content to take out a patent on, simply, one kind of success: he continues to experiment, to break new ground. He came out ...

... DIM LIGHTS AND SOFT MUSIC The Virtuosity of Friedrich Anton Mesmer To have lived in Paris in 1778, the year that Jean-Jacques Rousseau died and which heralded the rise of Robes pierre, was exciting enough, but to add to the ferment in the capital, the Austrian doctor Friedrich Anton Mesmer arrived upon the scene with a new force to cure the ills of men, and, incidentally, to excite the ...

... THE NAVY THROUGH THE AGES An Erudite Survey of Our Senior Service Britain's sea power laid the foundations of her Empire and it has saved Britain from every tyrant who has threatened the island from the days of Philip of Spain to those of Adolf Hitler; but the vast territorial gains of the acquisitive past, and the great battles which ensured our survival, only engage incidentally the ...

... VV/,vAA/WWr^/,^'AA/^AAA/W/' /'A : Reviewed b y Trevor Alle?i HAVE something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style, wrote Matthew Arnold. It also seems to be the idea underlying The English Language: Its Beauty and Use (Odhams, 7s. 6d.), a handy guide to the correct use of words and the best in our literature. Perhaps one may be permitted to lift an ...

... VWAAAAA' THE Haymarket Theatre has seen 226 years of chequered history, yet to our leading stage S chronicler, Mr. W. Macqueen-Pope, it remains the 2 place it was when Fielding fought for freedom there, Cibber used it to defy Drury Lane, Foote X flouted the law, Liston raised laughs, Romeo Coates made an ass of himself, Buckstone and s Sothern popularized Dundreary whiskers, and Tree did ...

... OUR BOOKSHELF Rupert Croft-Cooke OUR REVIEWER'S CHOICE FROM THE CITY, FROM THE PLOUGH. By Alexander Baron. (Cape 8s. 6 d.) THE FALL OF VALOUR. By Charles Jackson. Hale 10s. 6d.) NO DIFFERENCE TO ME. By Phyllis Hambledon. (Sampson Low 9s. 6d.) THE FIRST HOLY ONE. By Maurice Collis. (Faber and Faber 18s.) FROM THE CITY, FROM THE PLOUGH. There will, I suppose, be a boom in war novels in a few ...

... THE play is memory, says the narrator upon whom the lights first flash at the Haymarket Theatre. Presently, behind him, we see the shadowy outlines of the interior-- and some of the exterior-- of the Wingfield home in an alley of St. Louis during the 'thirties. And in another minute he is him self merged in the play as Tom Wingfield, rebellious son of the fluttering, talkative, silly ...

... By Katharine Susannah Prichard. (Cape 10s. 6d.) A novel about Australia, as vast and arid as the country itself. ...

... TO think that such a thing should happen to people like us! It is the cry of the decent, kindly suburban grocer, miraculously embodied by Miles Malleson-- looking as though he might have come from some latter-day Diary of a Nobody-- as he leaves the consultation cell in a London prison. And what thing has happened? Merely the condemna tion and sentence of his daughter upon a capital ...

... . By Betty de Sherbinin. (bampson Low as. od.) A resolute attempt to depict life in the city of Buenos Aires, where, as the author says Man was conscious of women. Women were uneasy. ...

... Elizabeth Bcwetis MR. R. C. ROBERTSON-GLASGOW'S auto biography, 46 Not Out (Hollis and Carter; 10s. 6d.), is the sort of thing which, he says, should be done in the flower of life, before age has brought either the cynicism which smiles so irritatingly on all human endeavour or the complacency which sits back and awaits the opening of the golden gates. True. May one add, there are two ...

... (bfr Sit Down a Minute, Adrian Comedy Anthony Cookman with THIS is not a bad example of the genteel farce now much in fashion. It is as clean as a whistle, with as few notes. Plautus and Shakespeare, those shameless revellers in the fun of mistaken identity and stage hullaballoo, might have wondered what it was all about. Comic the mistakes, no doubt, but how lightly comic the penalties ...