... Our Film Critic Discusses is a piece that, but for the grace of God and the disciplined talents of a very versatile young actress, might have been a monstrosity. Its story is sordid and painful. It is a bleak, realistic account of a savage incident in a fishing village somewhere at the back-end of Nova Scotia. An illiterate, deaf-and-dumb girl, a miller's daughter, who has never been sent to ...

... THE CINEMA REVIEWS By C. A. Lejeune THE FORSYTE SAGA. It is only fair to the author, the customers, and the people who made The Forsyte Saga to explain at once that the film is based on the first story in Galsworthy's family chronicle. The Man of Property, and makes hardly any attempt to stray outside its limits. That is to say, it is about Irene's marriage to Soames, whom she finds she ...

... INTO BATTLE WITH THE GRENADIERS The Story of the Regiment in the War Ever since the late Colonel Henderson wrote his life of Stonewall Jackson, military historians have had before them a prime example of the way in which military history can be rendered wholly palatable-- can, indeed, be as enthralling as a well-constructed historical novel. It is good to see others adopting the lively ...

... LOWLAND LAIRDS The Scottish Scene Through Three Centuries With his lives of William Wallace and Alexander III, James Fergusson, biographer and historian, acquitted himself well in a conventional manner, but infinitely more revealing in its portrayal of Scottish life, more charged with authentic atmosphere, is his series of essays on LOWLAND LAIRDS (Faber and Faber. 16s.). Mr. Fergusson, who ...

... THE Pre-Raphaelites are having a renascence of popularity, at least in so far as literary discussions of their work are concerned, and Professor Oswald Doughty's important new volume on Dante Gabriel Rossetti is yet another step in the re discovery of that remarkable and vital group of poets and painters. A Victorian Romantic I (Frederick Muller. 25s.) is literally a ponderous volume in its ...

... . By Gavin Douglas. (Lehmann 12s. 6 d.) The only book on seamanship that is ever likely to be useful to me, or, I suspect, to a great many other landsmen. It tells you everything you need to know in order to appear madly nautical when at sea signals, manners, house-flags, engines, seamanship, and so on. What a reference book for the modern maritime novelist ...

... . By John Newton. Macdonald 8s. 6 d.) hard-boiled and hilarious thriller. Books in Brief ...

... . By George M. Taylor. (Winchester 1 5s.) Up-to-date, informative, comprehensive. ...

... K . By Michael Innes. Gollancz 10s. 6 d.) If Henry James had written a detective story, 1 with crime, investigation and arrest com- I plete, it would have been rather like a novel j by Mr. Innes, for this writer applies the same n meticulous care in construction and charac- I terisation, and sometimes in phraseology. The I result is always interesting, and in this book is Kj more than that. It ...

... PRODWTTS GUIDE TO WRITING. Edited by C. E. Vulliamy. Michael Joseph 8s. 6 d.) Giles bendigo prodwit was too good to be true. His portrait makes a frontis piece to this book of his remains, and one can only wish that it had been drawn from life. Such a pothouse personality would have enlivened even the 1920's, the period of his imaginary maturity. From behind his stalwart shoulders Mr. ...

... . By Jocelyn Brooke. (The Hodley Head 7s. 6 d.) I MUST confess to a certain disappointment in Mr. Jocelyn Brooke's new book. It is a long short-story about an orphan boy who goes to live with his uncle, a struggling gentle man farmer. The boy is neurotic and tearful, the uncle appárently a good horsey type who wants to make a man of his nephew. Duncan, the boy, is soon aware of something ...

... Good Kitia wenceslaus by Alan Melville MUCH though we regret having to strike an uncharitable note during the festive season, we are forced to put on record at the very start of this article that was, in actual fact, not a Good King at all. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was a thoroughly Bad King-- crotchety, vacillating and downright meddlesome. We have gone into the whole business ...