... SOME PORTRAITS IN PRINT Beina the lucubrations of your most obedient scribe, Mr. Gordon Beckles ONE of the most beautiful of women went to a showing of the new spring fashion collections, which so brighten grim January with visions of a world of mimosa, primroses, silks, blue skies and perfumed breezes. I have always thought that black is the most becoming colour for women, she said. ...

... Paul Holt IN the Roy Speer case at the Old Bailey, the Recorder, Sir Gerald Dodson, said in his summing-up: These people are musicians, and live largely in dreams. It is their business to fabricate nonsense to entertain people, and a very valuable contribution to civilised society it is, and they live in a world of their own. The point is vital. Are actors human beings Yes, certainly. They ...

... JfTk ^cxfcLc* I'ffilii Its-lift' Ltffli/iiiri f ITALIAN films, after their startling post-war success, seemed to relapse into mediocrity and sometimes nearly self-caricature. It is pleasant to welcome again an Italian picture with the very virtues which, charmed us in Bicycle Thieves or To Live in Peace. Sunday in August (Academy) is the first feature film to be made by Luciano Emmer. Emmer ...

... SOME PORTRAITS IN PRINT Beina the lucubrations of your most obedient scribe, Mr. Gordon Beckles NOT for many a year has there been so lively a topic in what the daily editions call clubland as that provided by the recent incident in St. James's Street. How much of a man's club can he treat as his own home? Does a club ever acquire a measure of immunity from social laws akin to that of an ...

... Object Lessons Sabretache OBJECT-LESSONS are usually very fine things, provided always you know how to read them aright. A few years ago a story was published in Blackwood's about one of our now almost forgotten little wars on the North-West Frontier of India, in which, although the topographical details were probably fictitious, the main facts were gospel truth. The guns had finished their ...

... D. B. Windham Lewis THAT charming little 1850 locomotive lately brought from France for the Festival of Britain will most likely be driven round and round (our spies report) by a delicious little West End actress, as England expects. Whether her duties, in addition to graceful driving, will include anything beyond fluttering long ourling eyelashes divinely at our Overseas guests is not yet ...

... Fri'tlti Miriico Lockhart CELESTIAL choirs have found a rival menace as audience irritants in the chorus of commentary so often believed necessary to-day. The commentator's nagging voice is of course nothing new. It can be traced back to the earliest talking travelogues which it did to death. Now it has been reintroduced and multiplied in the wake of two other narrative fashions-- the semi ...

... /Jy m D. O. Wyndham Lewis PROFOUNDLY moved by a thinker crying to an evening paper that somebody should have taught the Russians cricket, one felt a sad conviction that it is probably too late now. Maybe the Race will never thrill to Press-photographs of J. Stalin, né Djugashvili, captain of Kremlin Old Stagers, shyly raising his little cap after a smooth century against Esthonian Ramblers. ...

... Being, the lucubrations of your most obedient scribe, Mr. Gordon Beckles THERE was talk of getting away for some fresh air for the week-end, possibly to a selected spot high on the Chilterns, with the Sussex Downs running a close second. The land of the Chilterns has always seemed to me the wildest stretch of country near London, perhaps because of its lofty remoteness. Although there are ...

... fiW Mirucv M^nchtnuri TO call Yvonne Printemps and Pierre Fresnay in The Paris Waltz (Rialto) older and wiser than any of the other characters in the week's films is a compliment not intended as back-handed. Certainly Madame Printemps no longer looks exactly like the boy Mozart who capti vated London and Paris twenty-three years ago in Sacha Guitry's tender little play with music by Reynaldo ...

... FROM Weston Turville the Old Berkeley Beagles spent a busy day, but were unlucky when a fresh hare caused them to change from their original pilot and took them away at racing pace nearly to Aylesbury. At Bledlow, hounds spent a hard day on the Chilterns, while a good day was enjoyed from Great Westwood, where the Earl of Dudley welcomed the field and the pack killed a well-beaten hare. They ...

... 2^ I). II. Wyndham Lewis THAT strained and mystical concentration seen at Brighton on the faces of citizens in bowler hats slowly turning a crank, squeezing the last drop of juice out of peep- shows labelled Naughty but Nice!, Nights in Gay Pares, and What the Butler Saw-- you also know and love this expression? It will not be viewed at the Festival Garden of Toy. Apparently this type of ...