... : 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 ...

... 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 CINEMA REVIEWS By C. A. Lejeune UNDER CAPRICORN. Considering the number and nature of the talents engaged for Under Capri corn, the producers of this big Technicolor romance were certainly justified in starting their work with a high degree of confi dence. Take a look at the assets, as they appear in the credit titles: screenplay by James Bridie from the novel by Helen Simpson; direction ...

... 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. ...

... cut tfc A Streetcar Named Desire (Alilnvrh) Anilioiiv ('ookniaii SO this is she, the distressful lady of the deep South whose moral and mental troubles have knocked, and continue to knock, eager American audiences endways. Purgation by pity and terror, according to all accounts, is no longer to these audiences a dead professional quotation, but a living truth. We receive the lady ...

... 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, ...

... IT seems that a number of very talented people have spent the past year in assembling their memories, their notebooks and their journals in order to give us, the readers, the benefit of their experiences and their comments, more or less articulate and subtle, on those events. Professional writers, which sometimes seems to me like a redundant title, political commentators, travellers, and just ...

... 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 ...

... .- --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 ...