... Elizabeth Havens IT'S exciting to welcome back C. H. B. Kitchin --from whom we have not had a book for too long. His name has never been out of mind with those who care for writing and watch to see what the modern novel can do-- for Mr. Kitchin was for ever tapping around the edge of new possibilities. He searches life like someone searching a room-- sounding the walls for hollows, looking ...

... Elizabeth Bewehs DO you think of proposing, of becoming engaged? If so, seek out The Happy Yes (Benn; 9s. 6 d.), an anthology of Mar riage Proposals Grave and Gay. The compilers, Margaret Crosland and Patricia Ledward, have drawn from biography and fiction, poetry and the drama, collections of letters, anthropology. folklore. The result is a medley, but an amusing one, with here and there ...

... (tt Failing Mansion A ii (hour Cookman WHEN a dramatist sets out to pour intellectual scorn on the gods for their seeming hatred of romantic lovers it is important that the audience should like the lovers. Unless we feel that something fine has perished with them we may well end up on the side of the gods. It is extremely difficult for us to sympathize with Desmond and Maura as we sympathize ...

... ctt r Toii^li at ...

... THERE 'S GLORY FOR YOU Rupert Croft-Cooke By Michael Harrison. (Werner Laurie;* 10s. 6d.) I COUNT myself among those who have long been waiting for a really fine novel from Mr. Michael Harrison. He has certain qualities as a writer which have been promising great things for him ever since he began to publish. Now here is a novel which, although it does not entirely fulfil one's hope, is ...

... . By Olivia Manning. Heinemann 9s. 6 d.) Miss Manning's theme is more slender, but she holds fast to it, and her novel is without digressions or irrelevances. The scene is Cairo during the last war, and the city and its people, the squalor, heat and colour are suggested rather than described. The guns are heard off as the Germans approach and recede, and there are plenty of alf raids and ...

... trottie true. A gay little Technicolor number from the British studios, based on Brahms' and Simon's witty novel about Gaiety Girls and mashers. Chief honours go to James Donald as a titled young-man-about-town, but Jean Kent makes a pleasant Trottie. M. obsession. Smartly revised screen version of Alec Coppcl's horrid thriller, A Man About a Dog. A distasteful subject handled with as much ...

... . By John Brophy. (Collins 10s. 6 d.) THIS is a carefully-planned and interesting novel set in Palestine during the last years of the British Mandate. Its central theme is the love-story of Julian Barr, a major in Intelligence, and Margit Tolmay, a refugee from Hungary. There is plenty of incident, but it has been contrived to show off a number of people and sometimes therefore lacks ...

... . By Alberto Moravia. (Seeker and Warburg 12s. 6 d.) Clever study of a prostitute in Mussolini's Italy. M. ...

... . By James Kinross. (Hamisl i Hamilton 9s. 6 d.) An ex-officer who has been a prisoner in Germany spends two years in hospital suffer ing irom tuberculosis. This day-to-day account of it is frank and heartening. ...

... top o' the morning. One fine Irish morning somebody steals the Blarney Stone and Bing Crosby as an insurance investigator from America, and Barry Fitzgerald as a local police j sergeant, unite to find it. The script is gracefully written, and the whole thing has a little touch of green magic. j dear mr. prohack. Arnold Bennett's cautionary tale about the awful things that happen to a Civil ...

... . By Roger Fulford. (Macmillan 18s.) A new and shrewd appraisal. Mr. Fulford is particularly interested in the Prince's con tribution to the increase of the political power of the Crown, and in his relations with his wife and children. ...