... By Alan Melville IF ever you have the good fortune to be invited for a week-end at the Emlyn Williams country seat (and you should stop at nothing, short of blackmail, to secure such an invitation) you will find only two minor items on the debit side of the Week-end balance-sheet. (1) You will be forced to play a great many sets of tennis against Mr. Williams, who-- though by no stretch of the ...

... BONNIE PRINCE CHARLIE 7HEN a producer of Sir Alexander Korda's standing and accomplishments takes as his subject one of the most romantic adventures in British history, and manages to make out of it a picture that hardly for a moment stirs the blood nor quickens the imagination, it seems to me that he can be congratulated on quite a remarkable achievement. The real story id the legend of the ...

... MR. PRIESTLEY, at the Cambridge, is on what the poet called a far-off isle in the tropic seas. He is also in dead earnest. His leading figure is the administrator of Corabana under Unuto, and Unuto is the United Nations Undeveloped Territories Organisation and behaves like it. When Mr. Priestley gets such a theme as this-- is Unuto good for Corabana or isn't it?-- he will talk through the ...

... Irving Stones SAILOR ON HORSEBACK, that truly brilliant life of Jack London, now appears in a second, most welcome edition (The Bodley Head. 10s. 6d.). This is a biography that deserves to live, and surely will do so, because the author and his hero are so completely in tune. It is obvious that Irving Stone has known something of the same kind of life as Jack London did at the turn of the ...

... At The Theatre Anthony t'ookmaii The Kil From Stratford*' (Prin ccs) WRITERS of musical comedy have hitherto turned a blind eye to the mute solicitings of the Shakespeare cult at Stratford-upon-Avon. The Bard's birthplace growing bigger and better with the years-- the procession of silk-hatted dignitaries carrying daffodils and cowslips on the Birthday-- the breaking by ambassadors of the ...

... Elizabeth Hewetis Miss Josephine and the Colonel The Washbournes of Oiterley A .Second Ilook of Russian Verse Green Shiver ORIEL MALET is a young writer who, while still in her teens, made a happy start, and who remains worth watching upon her way. Two novels-- Trust in the Springtime and My Bird Sings-- were followed by Marjory Fleming, biography of Pet Marjory, that Scottish genius ...

... Rupert Croft-Cooke OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS.-- All three of the novels which I am reviewing this week are American, and they represent an answer to the confused argu ment that British publishers are neglecting the home product for imported mediocrities. None of them is a masterpiece, but one feels with each of them that its author might achieve something really important. Too many of our ...

... WHEN a man has a brilliant legal reputation, great wit and an inexplicable modesty, it is likely that the story of his life will be worth telling, and if by himself, then well told. THE AUTO BIOGRAPHY OF SIR PATRICK HASTINGS (Heinemann. 15s.) therefore is a very successful undertaking and a book that is thoroughly satisfying to read. Sir Patrick's device is that On est comme on est, a ...

... THE COMPLEAT ANGLER, OR THE CONTEMPLATIVE MAN'S RECREA TION, by Izaak Walton. Messrs. Vane have published a most attrac tive reprint of this classic for the reasonable price of 8s. 6d. The charm and elegance of the seven teenth century which Izaak Walton recalls for us are fittingly introduced by the designs from the first edition reproduced on the dust-sheet and title-page. The Countryman ...

... Reviewed by Trevor Allen AS a boy comedian touring with a juvenile pantomime company Georgie Wood overheard people say: Oh yes, he's all right now, but wait until he grows up! What if he suddenly sprouted like Jack's Beanstalk, became tall and thin like Carlton the Human Hairpin? Every night he prayed: Please, God, don't let me grow up. But he need not have worried, for his fate was in the ...

... an act of murder. Extremely painful but unusually adult Hollywood picture, concerned with the problem of mercy killing. the small voice. An out-of-the-ordinary film about a nice young couple idly contem plating divorce, who are brought to their senses by three escaped convicts at the business end of a gun. Something a little special. larceny. Slick, hard, bright Hollywood piece about an ...

... INCONTESTABLY the most important book of the week, and possibly of the month, is Mr. Robert Sher wood's THE WHITE HOUSE PAPERS OF HARRY L. HOPKINS (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 25s.). This first volume (another is promised for next spring) takes the reader from September 1939 to January 1942, and its great value is the intimate picture it gives of the relation ships of the great men of the period. ...