... : f Reviewed by I 'Trevor Allen I HOW I envy those detached people who can retire with a hefty novel, not only reading every line in a leisurely way, but living in the story and not worrying if it takes a month to finish. Mr. Frank Tilsley's Champion Road (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 12s. 6d.) tells in 700 packed pages of Jonathan Briggs, tough Lanca shire builder, who gets ahead by Jerry and ...

... IN the ten years after 1915 there was a migration in American literature from the villages and the small towns into the big cities, and of this migration there were five chief pioneers: Sherwood Anderson, H. L. Mencken, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather and Scott Fitzgerald. This is the thesis of Mr. Maxwell Geismar, who, in The Last of the Provincials (Seeker and War burg. 16s.), analyses the work ...

... RECORD DF THE WEEK TWO years ago saxophonist Reggie Goff was playing with the B.B.C. Dance Orchestra. At that time he had no idea of becoming a singer. When he left the B.B.C. however, he took lessons and began to concentrate on his singing, on the advice of a friend. Now his first record has been released here. On it he sings I Don't Care What They Say and When You 're in Lore, accom panied ...

... CUr Playbill The Browning Version (Phoenix J A Harlequinade THEATRICAL occasions are usually memorable for an especial reason, a single happy merit which earmarks them for the memory, but here is an evening's entertainment with three claims to distinction. The first is Mr. Terence Rattigan, the author of the plays of which the bill is composed: the second and third are Mr. Eric Portman and ...

... THAT WINTER (John Lehmann; 10s. 6 d.) is, as a novel, unexpectedly good. I ought not to say unexpectedly, given the fact that in its country of origin, America, this was acclaimed as one of the outstanding novels of 1947. It is none the worse, incidentally, for reaching us a year late; books of quality keep; their merits do not evaporate when exposed to time. What is surprising is the ...

... EVER since the inception of the Fabian Society, the Labour movement has not lacked intellectuals, and throughout its growth has been nourished and sustained by many skilled dialecticians who could command a reading public. Even more valuable has been the type of scholar not lacking in the common touch who could put the views of the comrades over to the community. Mr. Francis Williams was for ...

... Elizabeth Bewehs WHAT would you do if, out of the blue one morning, you got a letter inviting your child to become a film star? The flat in the big block overlooking the village in Piccadilly had throughout the whole war survived bombing: it was in this same flat, at breakfast-time, in July of a year ago, that a very different bombshell was to explode. Dear Madam, said this letter (more or ...

... f^4etc/i -ffiocA BEVERLEY BAXTER. A STOCKBROKER friend of mine has decided that he will become a farmer in Ireland. Being a man of action, he is tired of playing dominoes with his partners while they wait for the telephone to get over its sulk and start speaking again. I gather that it is not so much a desire on his part to milk cows or feed pigs as it is to gaze upon dusk as it descends on ...

... Esther waters. Well-meaning but scrappy version of the George Moore novel, about the fall and rise of a Victorian servant-girl, who is seduced by and marries a horsey gentleman. Considered daring a couple of generations ago, the piece now wears an air of gentle tedium. With Kathleen Ryan, Dirk Bogarde, Cyril Cusack, Fay Compton. the weaker sex.-- Film version of Esther McCrackcn's No Medals, ...

... GUS THE GREAT. By Thomas W. Duncan. Sampson Low 12s. 6 d.) THE GOLDEN SLEEP. By Vivian Connell. (Seeker and Warburg 10s. 6 d.) EMILY. By James Hanley. (Nicholson and Watson 8s. 6 d.) COMMENTS ON CAIN. By F. Tennyson Jesse. (Heinemann 10s. 6d.) OUR REVIEWER'S CHOICE Rupert Croft-Cooke GUS THE GREAT.-- This is a huge novel which justifies its own size by sheer hard-working narration. It is ...

... . By Martin Weed 011. (Barker 10s. 6d.) Day-to-day diary kept by the author while he was a prisoner of the Japanese. Detailed and factual, it could have made the basis of an interesting book. BOOKS IN BRIEF ...

... it . it Day, Another Dollar. By John T. Winterich. (Benn 9s. 6d.) Winterich. (Benn 9s. 6d.) And another story of an American boyhood, this time in Providence, Rhode Island, in the first decade of this century. ...