... .- --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 ...

... Mainly for Boys Between io and 15 Years of Age. All Published by Hutchinson. Cowdog, by Ned Andrews, with illustrations by V. Anderson. (Cowboy Series. 4s. 6d.) Venture to the Main, by Leslie Morley, illustrated by F. A. Philpotts. (4s. 6d.) Ship Boy With Columbus, by Enid la Monte Meadowcroft, with illustrations by C. G. Rowlands. (5s.) Cowboy Boots, by Shannon Garst, illustrated by R. Mills. ...

... Elizabeth Bowcn TELEVISION, by Maurice Gorham (Percival Marshall; 12s. 6d.), is sub-titled Medium of the Future-- a claim Mr. Gorham does much to substantiate in the course of this short but engrossing volume. The book, he says, is not a technical work; it is for those who want to know more about television's present position in the world and its prospects of growing out of the pioneering ...

... Cbfr B0 i li oiit Codkman Folies Bcrgi'rc Kevue (Hippodrome) TWICE nightly revue in this country is apt to produce in us the uncomfortable sensation of having dined at a wartime snack bar. A second snack might possibly add up into a decent meal, but the first has already desolated the appetite. They order this matter better in France. The Folies Bergère show, with its glitter, its elegance, ...

... Elizabeth Mtowen VASCO PRATOLINI is one of Italy's foremost novelists: A Tale of Poor Lovers (Hamish Hamilton; 12s. 6 d.) is the first of his books to be translated into English. The scene is a street in Florence; time, 1925-26 --between the two wars, with Fascism in the ascendant. Pre-eminently, this novel is not a study of political conditions, nor is it a diatribe against political evil. ...

... 8 y Collie Knox I FIRST met Cecil Beaton in the Adriatic. Venturing too far on a swim from my base in Yugoslavia, I was failing visibly. Was there no Weissmuller in the sea that morning? There was A clear, incisive voice cried Hold on I'm with you. Swimming with the ease and grace of a champion, up popped Mr. Beaton, the darling of the photographic gods. Resolute, calm and with, of course, ...

... .' A minor Treasure of sierra Maare, well done, with a good many novel twists, about nine men and a woman who dig for buried gold in the shifting sand-dunes of the Mexican border. With Ella Raines, Randolph Scott, John Ireland. ...

... YOU can't sleep here.- A stag-party joke, originany entitled 1 was a Male war uriae, which involves Cary Grant in a female impersona tion, and gets what fun it can out of the old situation of the delayed wedding-night. ...

... REVIEWS and PREVIEWS By C. A. Lejeune SO DEAR TO MY HEART Let us make no mistake about the new Disney, So Dear to My Heart. It is a special film aimed straight and true at a special audience-- at the gentle-hearted, the sentimentalists, the simple, the affectionate, the people with quiet lives and long memories, the people who love children and animals, and enjoy a good cry so long as ...

... . By Frances Gaither. (Michael Joseph 10s. 6rf.) Fictional reconstruction of the trial for murder of a half-caste slave girl in Mississippi during the early years of the last century. ...

... . By Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. (Heinemann 8s. 6 d.) Yet one more story of the upbringing of an American family.. It is embarrassingly sentimental and full of Transatlantic whimsy. ...