... : Reviewed by Trevor ^Alleu WHATEVER the limitations on actual travel to-day, there are none on armchair substitutes. about places tumble from the press, and personally I love them, for in prodding the wanderlust they also assuage it-- by proxy. Ann Bridge and Susan Lowndes, jaunt ing off the beaten track in a small car, serve well The Selective Traveller in Portugal (Evans, 21s.), that sunny ...

... IF DELIGHT (Heinemann. 1os. 6d.) had been by Logan Pearsall Smith or George Saints bury, or even by one of those leaders of literary fashion who achieve fame by producing a book once in twenty years, it assuredly would be being acclaimed on those esoteric planes encompassed by the middle pages of the literary weeklies, the largest slab of the one page devoted to books in the Sunday newspapers, ...

... THE POE CENTENARY The Anthology of a Tragic Genius A writer whose successors include Dorothy Sayers (creator of Lord Peter Wimsey), Jules Verne (exponent of the scientific romance) and Stephane Mallarmé (the French poet and leader of the Symbolists), was nothing if not versatile. Edgar Allan Poe, the centenary of whose death is recalled this month, was in his own day supreme as an inventor of ...

... ctt tfc- Aiii hour CJoukman Trcasdirc lltanf** (Apollo) AN excellent specimen of the farce made for export; indeed, it is quite a while since a better entertainment based on the wild exaggeration of national characteristics crossed the Irish Sea. In Spring Meeting the same authors, M. J. Farrell and John Perry, were much more ambitious. They drew its fun and pathos from direct observation ...

... 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 ...

... THE THEATRE J. C. Trewin KING'S RHAPSODY Much of the action of this new Novello piece, at the Palace Theatre, passes in the kingdom of Murania. It can stand as a symbol of all musical romance; in that realm Novello, for many years, has been King Ivor. No one on our stage can contrive, more frankly, a best-selling musical play that does not pretend to be other than it is: an expert, popular- ...

... .- r --Good remake of one of Hollywood's best early psychological thrillers, Blind Alley, with excellent performances from Ree Cobb and William Holden as psychiatrist and killer. ...

... .- --An attempt at a British western, set in the South African diamond fields in the days before they were conceded to the British. With David Farrar, Honor Blackman, and a new girl of some promise, Diana Dors,] it fails to add up to more than a rough-and-tumble. ...

... .- --A not-quite-successful attempt to carry Margaret u Brien over tne awkward age between childhood and adolescence, with slightly self-conscious charm and etiolated Technicolor. J4. ...

... . By Neaio Marsh. (The Crime Club 9s. 6 d.) IT is from just such ornate and outré fal-lals as Mr. Brooke's that I expect to find an escape in crime fiction, but in this case I find myself bewildered by another kind of firework. Why, I cannot help asking, does Miss Marsh rob her story of all probability by a cast of characters so eccentric and puppet-like that no one could seriously pretend to ...

... . By John and Emery Bonnett. Michael Joseph ;8s. 6 d.) This is a reviewer's paradise-- a convincing novel about a murdered writer. ...

... .-- -A very moving film indeed, about men of the Burma Army in a hospital shack in the jungle, with a startlingly accurate performance from Richard Todd, British screen newcomer. FILMS IN BRIEF ...