... ALL life is roads, writes Miss Madge Jenison, for all life is movement. Animals began it; then primi tive man, then caravans, armies, ships. With them went fabulous wares; rubies and gold for the eyes' delight, bronze for the helmet, tools for the hand, cedar timbers to build the house-- rainbow silks of Samarkand. Ahead of each went the idea, the true roadmaker. Roads (W. H. Allen. 12s. 6d ...

... MOST readers of fiction in this country are inclined to like a good story-- or rattling good tale-- about a ship, and this week it is a novel of Mr. Andrew Geer's that fills the bill. In fact, THE SEA CHASE (Collins, 10s. 6d.) is so exciting and so well told that I could only regret that the author had chosen to write about a German tramp steamer with a German captain as courageous as he was ...

... A NEW SLANT UPON OUR ISLAND STORY Douglas Jerrold's Introduction to History There are many scholars who feel that we have long laboured in this land under a misconception as to the way in which history should be written. In fact, there appear to have been two great misconceptions. The first lies surely in the exhibitionistic, Whiggish, and not always truthful Macaulay and Green technique. The ...

... THE autobiography of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, TRIAL AND ERROR (Hamish Hamil ton. 2is.), bears upon its jacket the proud words, First Presi dent of Israel. The last page in the book is dated August 1948. Since then, the State of Israel has been recognised by the Great Powers, and been admitted to the United Nations. In all history few men have accomplished as much, in a lifetime, as the First ...

... THE writing oi fiction upon biblical subjects appears to have become a major American industry. It also seems to be a highly profitable one. Mr. Lloyd Douglas, for instance, has broken all records with his sales of The Kobe and The Big Fisherman, while Mr. Fulton Oursler has been leading the American best-selling field for some time with The Greatest Story Ever Told. Now we have a novel based ...

... TO the best of my belief, Hans Yanar's ONE PAGE MISSING (Gollancz. 9s.) is the first novel by a film actor that I have ever read, but that is not its only claim to distinction, since it is a really touching picture of a boyhood spent in Austria about the time of the First World War, though not greatly affected by that. The boy, Matthias, is brought up mainly by his grandparents owing to his ...

... ONE cannot approach THE REIGN OF QUEEN VIC TORIA, by Hector Bolitho (Collins. 16s.), without re ference to Lytton Strachey, who, with his exquisite lucidity, stated the qualifications for such a work: A capacity for absorbing facts, a capacity for stating them, and a point of view. Twenty -two pages of Sources and References are a testimony to Mr. Bolitho's industriousness in search of facts ...

... THERE is no doubt at all about the most important book of this week, for it may easily prove not only the most important book of this month, but of this season and months to come. General Eisenhower's CRUSADE IN EUROPE (Heine mann. 25s.) comes as near to being a must book as any contemporary publication can, this side coercion. There has already been considerable controversy over it, before ...

... BECAUSE it is the current Book Society choice, ALICE (Cassell. Ss. 6d.), by Elizabeth Eliot, should be due for an imme diate success; a remarkable thing to happen to any first novel. The first thing to strike a reviewer about it is its easy assurance and absence of those immature faults of technique which can be so excusable in most first novels. For instance, Miss Eliot does not disdain Mr. ...

... THE first three volumes of Sir Osbert Sitwell's auto biography have earned for him not only a wide popularity, the encomiums of the critics, the accolade of the selection com mittee of the Book Society, but a comfortable literary award as well. A considerable public will, therefore, be awaiting Laughter in the Next Room (Macmillan. 18s.), which is the fourth and latest volume, and in which, ...

... MR. JAMES BRIDIE, who has written many plays for our delight and instruction, as well as being distinguished in the world of medicine, has been writing letters to Mr. Moray McLaren, whose name will be familiar to B.B.C. listeners and to the discriminating among readers of contemporary letters. Mr. McLaren nas neen wntme back to him, and the subject of their correspondence is the English. They ...

... I FOUND Miss Frances War field's autobiography, THERE'S NO NEED TO SHOUT (Gollancz. 8s. 6d.), quite the most enchanting thing I read this week, in its humour, its honesty and the underlying pathos which is never allowed to intrude or to set the mood for the life-story. Miss Warfield, who is still young, writes of the central fact of her existence, which might have turned that life into a ...