... A ROMANCE coming to a man and woman mature in years may sometimes be endowed with the deepest poignancy; it can touch the heights of which the young can only dream, that is, if it escapes being ridiculous; it may possess a spiritual quality that has little affinity with the high passion of young love. Such was the experience of Ramer Maria Rilke, the German lyric poet and mystic, and of Magda ...

... MR. J AMES THURBER once observed when challenged in a New York bar that he was the only living writer who had not called on George Bernard Shaw, and who did not want to call on George Bernard Shaw. His statement led him to reflect on the niceties of literary pil grimages in general, and to write one of the funniest pieces in a book that is, from beginning to end, hilariously funny. In fact, ...

... LIKE all the admirers of Miss I. Compton-Burnett's novels, I like to think that I have a special appreciation of them, and so I opened TWO WORLDS AND THEIR WAYS (Gollancz. IOS. 6d.) with the keenest anticipation. At its end, I was not entirely dis appointed, because there is an inimitable art here; but, frankly, I had not enjoyed myself as much as 1 had hoped. Her books, of which 1 have a ...

... Honey produces a white wine in rivalry to that of the grape. It is the mead of our ancestors, possessing both body and bouquet, and such rich-sounding names as Pyment, Melomel, Sack Metheglin and Hippocras. In WASSAIL! IN MAZERS OF MEAD (Phillimore and Co. 15s.), G. R. Gayre tells us a great deal about these ancient beverages which, now, after a lapse of centuries, are again being made in ...

... THERE can be no doubt but that the publication of Mr. Somerset Maugham's A WRITER'S NOTEBOOK (Heine mann. 12s. 6d.) is a literary event of the first importance. Whatever contemporary criticism may say of the content of his novels, short stories, plays and belles-lettres, it is unanimously agreed that, in his profession, Mr. Somerset Maugham is the greatest craftsman of his day. Readers of The ...

... QUITE apart from his writing, Charles Dickens was one of the most interesting characters of his age. He was possessed of well-nigh demonic energy; in the exuberance of his comic genius he was a master of exaggeration; his quarrels, his love-afiairs, and his inexhaustible curiosity went to the making of a man who will never fade completely from the world's grateful memory. Hesketh Pearson sums ...

... A NEW novel by Mr. H. E. Bates would be a matter for interest and speculation even if it were not the best thing the author has written up to date, as I think upon reflection, that THE JACARANDA TREE (Michael Joseph, 9s. 6d.) is, and when I write that, I am remembering both Spella Ho and The Poacher, which quite rightly made his early reputation. The new book is a story of Burma, or rather of ...

... WHAT sort of a man was the great John Pierpont Morgan, that grandee of Ameri can finance, in his day the most influential banker in the world, whose enormous transactions in the last years of the nineteenth century and before the First World War were the talk of the Western World? John K. Winkler's lively Morgan the Magnificent, published in 1931, was entertaining enough, but it was hardly a ...

... LIFE WITH FATHER Hilda Brighten Tells the Story of Edgar Cohen primitive life on a Georgia small-holding and in a neighbouring mill town. In May 1933 the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice sought to ban God's Little Acre on an obscenity charge. The American publishers, Viking Press, fought the charge on the ground that the book was an honest work of literature. As a result of the ...

... KEEPERS OF YOUTH Mass Observation's Alarming Document Avoiding sensationalism at all costs, sticking closely to unadorned facts, checking and rechecking the reports of others, Mass Observation, described as an independent sociological research unit, now comes out with its important REPORT ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY (The Falcon Press. 7s. 6d.) It is a thoroughly alarming document and, as Tom ...

... MISS ANNE CRONE'S name is one to remember. She is a new writer and an important one, whose first novel, BRIDIE STEEN (Heinemann. 1os. 6d.) shows a strong and original talent such as one does not meet every day or even every year. Miss Crone's work will inevitably be compared with Hardy's, for her writing has something of his uncompro mising force and passion, though her style is her own and ...

... THERE are at least two current views of Matthew Arnold. One is the poet of such power and sensibility, as is revealed in the sonnet Dover Beach, and the other is of a slightly stuffy Victorian who was an Inspector of Schools. Miss Isobel Macdonald has chosen a third and original view in her biography, THE BURIED SELF (Peter Davies. 12s. 6d.), which she describes as a background to his poems, ...