... .- r --Good remake of one of Hollywood's best early psychological thrillers, Blind Alley, with excellent performances from Ree Cobb and William Holden as psychiatrist and killer. ...

... .- --An attempt at a British western, set in the South African diamond fields in the days before they were conceded to the British. With David Farrar, Honor Blackman, and a new girl of some promise, Diana Dors,] it fails to add up to more than a rough-and-tumble. ...

... . Bv Richard Winnington. (Saturn Press izs. 6d.) Day-to-day film criticism from a newspaper over a number of years. BOOKS IN BRIEF ...

... . tT By A. E. Wilson. (Hammond Publishing Co. 8s. 6d.) Much the same thing from another newspaper, but illustrated with stills and photographs instead of drawings. ...

... . By Jean Bailhache. (Quality Press 6s.) And a Frenchman knows all about us and explains us more concisely. ...

... : I Reviewed by Trevor lle?t HAVE all the stately homes of England skeletons in their cupboards? Mrs. Violet Stuart Wortley chronicles five generations of her husband's Highcliffe Castle, Hampshire, family in Magic in the Distance (Hutchin son, 21s.) and none of her forebears achieved lasting happiness, least of all the illustrious Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who found little love and was ...

... WHEN Lytton Strachey squared up to Victoria we wondered if she might not need saving from her biographers, but she proved to be one Eminent Victorian who conquered even him. With Hector Bolitho we have no such misgiving; he is too scrupulously absorbed in The Reign of Queen Victoria (Collins, 16s.) to use it as a dart- board for quips. The scope of the book is so wide and generous that it ...

... . By Nancy Mitford. (Hamish Hamilton 8s. 6 d.) THIS novel also is meant to be funny, but suc- ceeds only in patches, leaving large and desolate areas for the reader to tramp across. It is a chronicle of the doings above stairs in the country seats of the mighty, and the last third of the book has some pleasantly laughable in- cident, though I doubt whether many readers will fall into the ...

... THE LOST PEOPLE. Sympathetic, well-mean ing, but not quite convincing version of the play Cockpit, about a night's drama amongst displaced persons in a dispersal camp contrived in a disused German theatre. Pay attention to Siobhan McKenna. William Hartnell, as usual, is good too. ...

... . By Robin Maugham. (Chapman and Hall 7s. 6 d.) ONCE again Mr. Maugham writes a long short story and though he is certainly right in fitting his theme to this form, one cannot help wishing to see what he will do when he tackles a full-length novel. He has many of the qualities of a good story-teller and this, like The Servant, moves swiftly and holds one's interest. But it remains to be seen ...

... . By E. R. Punshon. Gollancz 9s.) THERE is something noticeably modern about this detective-story which would make one suppose that it had been written by an imagina tive young writer with a strong sense of the contemporary instead of by a distinguished veteran with more than forty novels to his credit. The slang, the setting, the characters, the plot are all up-to-the-minute, and if the ...

... . By John Pudney. (The Bodley Head 8s. 6 d.) IT is a pity, also, about Mr. John Pudney, for it is scarcely necessary to say that he, too, can write exceedingly well, and in this politico- bucolic farce does himself less than justice. It is little more than a year since Mr. Evelyn Waugh sent a classics master off to a totalitarian country for a holiday, and here we have a village football team ...