... Elizabeth Bowen s Throw Mo a Bone The Long Walk The Beast in Me, and Other Animals ELEANOR LOTHROP'S surprise at finding her self married to an archaeologist is infectious; it does not wear off in the course of Throw Me a Bone (John Lehmann; 15s.). As her chronicle shows, she made out wonderfully well; and readers will find her the more engaging in that she differs widely from most notions ...

... w THE THREE GODFATHERS.-- -John Wayne in a re-make of the old sentimental Western, about three bank robbers who trek back across the desert to the scene of their crime, to bring an abandoned child to safety. Corn and thick treacle, but there is a touch here and there to remind you that John Ford directed it. -V. ...

... WHEN Lytton Strachey squared up to Victoria we wondered if she might not need saving from her biographers, but she proved to be one Eminent Victorian who conquered even him. With Hector Bolitho we have no such misgiving; he is too scrupulously absorbed in The Reign of Queen Victoria (Collins, 16s.) to use it as a dart- board for quips. The scope of the book is so wide and generous that it ...

... IU:i;il!UI OF THE WEEK^ The aftermath of war has brought home three important axioms; the necessity of having a sense of humour, an appreci ation of values, and the ability to pull together if one wishes to survive and live any kind of civilized life. It may be odd that each of these axioms jias been given expression by a comedian, an artist who long before the vogue for amplifica tion of the ...

... At The Theatre llelimla Fair** (ftaville) Aiillionv Cookman IN recommending Mr. Eric Maschwitz's new show, I am conscious of a certain difficulty which not infrequently besets the critic who takes a night off from the serious drama and turns into a light musical romance. The difficulty is to confess to a mild beguile- ment by tuppence-coloured nonsense without implying that it is not nonsense ...

... . By Dudley Harbron, (Latimer House 12s. 6 d.) I should have been flatly incredulous, I am afraid, if I had been told that a man had existed in the last century who had been an architect, stage designer and producer, had eloped with Ellen Terry, had designed Whistler's famous White House in Chelsea, had been a witness in several of the more interesting law-suits of his period, had been 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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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, ...

... THE CAPTAIN FROM CASTILE. Cloak-and- dagger melodrama, with Tyrone Power and a fetching new girl, Jean Peters, about the Spaniards who signed on with Cortez for his expedition to the New World. Rampagious nonsense, but the bold movement and beautiful Mexican backgrounds may keep you interested, -s Films in Brief ...

... THAT WONDERFUL URGE.-- -Mr. Power aeain. with Gene Tierney, in the lightest of comedies about a reporter who pursues a society girl to discover if she is frigid, or just careful, and finds her to be neither. Excellent small parts, and some genuine laughs. ...

... MELODY TIME.-- -Another of Walt Disney's real-life and cartoon medleys, distressingly weak in invention and haphazardly flung together, but not without its lively moments. ...