... OUR BOOKSHELF Rupert Croft-Cooke OUR REVIEWER'S CHOICE ALL I COULD NEVER BE. By Beverley Nichols. Jonathan Cape ISs.) ATTILA. By Louis de Wohl. Gollancz 10s. 6d.) BRAVE AND CRUEL. By Denton Welch. (Hamish Hamilton 8s. 6d.) TWENTY SHILLINGS IN THE POUND. By W. Macqueen-Pope. (Hutchinson 21s.) ALL I COULD NEVER BE.-- It would be difficult to find four books more sharply contrasted than the ...

... ANY work of Alfred Hitchcock's, whether successful or unsuccessful, requires more than a cursory glance from a critic, and my choice this week falls on The Paradine Case not because it is a particularly good film, but because the man behind it is one of the very few directors who is allowed to make his own mistakes, and knows exactly what he is doing. This version of the Robert Hichens novel ...

... THE LUCK OF THE IRISH. One of the few Hollywood whimsies that have nearly come ofi, thanks to the beguiling performance of Cecil Kellaway as a leprechaun in attendance cm journalist Tyrone Power. my own true love. Phyllis Calvert and Melvyn Douglas in one of Hollywood's cost fire side chats about post-war marriage and neurosis Don't worry if you have to miss it. There 'li be lots of others. ...

... . Bv Robert Dane THERE must, I imagine, be few more disconcerting experiences than to be left goggling into a television camera at the end of one's act, uncertain whether one's face has been faded out or is still, smirking on the viewer's screen. I know nothing of the technicalities involved, but it does seem to me that it ought to be possible to devise some simple plan to put both performers ...

... j MICHAEL POWELL and Emeric Pressburger, the people who whang arrows into a target for their trade-mark, have had a pretty big tussle with the critics over their pictures, and sharp things have been said on both sides from time to time. But I don't think there should be anything except mutual cordiality over The Small Back Room, the Archers' latest. I It is intelligent, exciting, ...

... WAGHORN'S WAY The Pioneer of the Overland Mail As late as the third decade of the nineteenth century the conveyance of mail between London and Bombay was a business of fantastic difficulty. Between Bombay and Suez the steamers were hopelessly inadequate, and had to be crammed even to the Saloon with coal to ensure that they would get the 1,710 miles into Aden, the longest leg of the journey. ...

... At The Theatre Anthony Cookinan 4*Tlio Way Back (Westminster) THE central episode of this disconcerting play is plain war drama-- four of us against fourteen thousand of them, three G.I. engineers and a major mapping out for invasion a Pacific island occupied by fourteen thousand Japanese, a scene to take away the breath of schoolboys. Something happens while the engineers are making their ...

... At The Theatre The Srliool For .Seamlal (IVrw} Anlhonr ookmnn IN his preface to a new edition of The School for Scandal Sir Laurence Olivier calls the most brilliant comedy that has been given the world. Extravagant? Perhaps. Bu let the toast pass! The Old Vic is beginning a new seasop Hopes run high. The Oliviers are back fron their triumphant tour in the Antipodes. Thi caller of the ...

... IT would be fairly safe to say that the most popular American alive to-day is, by English standards, General Eisenhower. His own superb war history explains a few of the reasons for that popularity, which also depends on his humanity and the sincerity of his feeling for our own country. hew who heard his Guildhall speech in the summer of 194s, for instance, will forget its warmth or its ...

... No Ordinary Cheyney. By Peter Cheney. (Faber and Faber 9s. 6d.) No. It has verses and a photograph in it ft Saturday -Slow. By Emett. (Faber and Faber 12s. 6d.) I have to make the philistine and unfashion able confession that I don't find Emett awfully funny. I Rest My Claims. By W. V. Y. Dale. (Staples 9s. 6d.) It had to come, I suppose a novel based on the life of Charles Dickens. ft The ...

... Elizabeth B oven's Isabel and the Sea Men and Wives Wore Women than Hen The Hunting Wasp False llounly ISABEL AND THE SEA (Heinemann; 12s. 6d.) would claim attention at once by the very fact of being by George Millar, author of Maquis and Homed Pigeon. In its own right, this is an absorbing book-- which, first and foremost, answers one question: what sort of thing does a man do when ...

... Book Reviews The Jacnranda Tree'* Cry, the Beloved Country M There's I>To IVeed to Shout Elizabeth Hewehs THE JACARANDA TREE (Michael Joseph; 9 s. 6 d.) is H. E. Bates's new novel, and this month's Book Society choice. Like its predecessor, Mr. Bates's The Purple Plain, it is set in Burma-- time: during the Japanese invasion. The story concerns itself with the flight towards the Indian ...