... by Ray Allister (Deputising for Robert Done, on holiday.) OF two October plays, one was right for television; the other was just right. I want to demonstrate the world of difference between their qualifications. It 's a honey of a play. We were talking three weeks before the play was produced. The speaker was Royston Morley, senior television drama producer, and the honey was Frank Tilsley's ...

... WE 'LL HEAR. -A PLAY. By J. C. Trewin. (Carroll and Nicholson 12s. 6 d.) MY colleague, Mr. J. C. Trewin, has an inveterate love of apt quotation-- no the thumbed phrases that are pulled by the hair out of dictionaries of Quotations and dumped down in the text, but those supremely right yet somehow unanticipated sentence which fit his text without strain. I find this gift for quotation an ...

... . by Rupert Croft-Cooke By Marguerite Steen. (Collins 12s. 6 d.) THIS novel is planned and executed in the heroic tradition. Like Miss Steen's earlier book, The Sun is My Undoing, it has a central character who sees and does, knows, feels and dares, while around him is an ever-changing panorama of scene and character. It is thus in the main stream of English fiction, in direct descent from the ...

... . By Marghanita L'aski. Cresset Press 9s. 6d.) THIS is the straightforward stor of Hilary Wainwright's journe to France in 1945 to find his sma son, who had been lost during th Occupation. It is a good idea, and Miss Las! has handled it with some skill, but it lel me thinking, not without exasperation, ho\ much better it could have been. Wainwrigh himself is stuffy and starched and only reall ...

... THIS has been a rich week for novels and a busy one for women writers, who are respon sible for nine of the books under review. In the historical field, the stories range from a frontier town in the 90's to Israel in the ninth century B.C., and in the modern field they cover Italy, Africa, Assam and the west coast of Ireland, as well as the English countryside and our familiar London. To begin ...

... 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 ...

... THE THEATRE J. C. Trewin A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Excitement in the theatre is heartening. Nobody would have grudged Vivien Leigh her almost frantic reception at the end of Tennessee Williams's play at the Aldwych. The part might have been designed as a test for an honours degree in acting technique. Certainly the actress gets her degree. Our stage is the richer for playing of so much ...

... . By Daphne du Maurier. (Gollancz I Is.) IT is scarcely necessary to say that this is a spell-binder, a winner, a pre-ordained best seller which will be avidly read, discussed, dramatised, filmed, serialised, broadcast, translated, and selected by newspapers and book clubs all over the world. It will cause ugly scenes in lending libraries and passionate appeals for priority in bookshops. It ...

... 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 ...

... 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 ...