... DIFFICULTIES THAT BESET THE ART OF SONGWRITING SONG WRITING has a universal appeal. But the songwriter of to-day little realises that from the moment he puts pen to paper the cards are stacked high against him. In a new book entitled So You Want To Be A Songwriter, (published by Colin Venton, Ltd.), Cleethorpcs songwriter Walter Howe, whose The wedding of Jack and Jill continues to be ...

... LORRAINE MERRITT LORRAINE MERRITT, honey- blonde American singer of gay and romantic melodies, will appear for three nights only at the Society Restaurant in Jcrmyn Street, on January 29, 30 and 31. The short ness of Miss Merritt's engagement ts necessitated by Tcresita de Alba's opening at the same place the fol lowing Monday, February 2. Lorraine Merritt is a very close friend of Sarah ...

... CABARET Reg Barlow's I HAD hoped to write about the floor-show at the E*b*s*y Club this week, and tell you all about D*v* K*y* and the other artists there, but when I rolled up for the 1 a.m. show an official told me, very politely, that as I was not a member my request to see the show must be declined. Club regulations and all that. I asked if I might see the manager, to explain that all I ...

... Sean Fielding IN war, and because of it, many men come to the first discovery of their full stature. This is a simple truth which, however morally and intellectually disturbing, is well understood. For equally well-understood reasons, it never fails to cause surprise. The soldier who wins a Victoria Cross is most liable to have his closest friends (in civilian life) declare their astonishment: ...

... THEY WERE MARRIED The TATLER'S Review BAILEY-- LINDSAY The wedding took place at Newcastle County Down, between Cdr. Edward Anthony Savile Bailey, M.B.E., D.S.C., R.N. second son of Mrs. W. A. Bailey, of Kingston Manor, Taunton, and of the late Mr. W. H. Bailey, and Miss Florence Claire (Sukhi) Lindsay, younger daughter of the late Mr. D. C. Lindsay, and of Mrs. F. Lindsay, of Eniskeen, ...

... BY ELSPETH GRANT MISS SHIRLEY MACLAINE, WHOM WE first encountered as an imperturb able widow in that macabre frolic, The Trouble With Harry, and last met as a golden-hearted tart in Some Came Running, is now to be seen as just the average young career- woman-citm-husband-hunt ress in Ask Any Girl-- a smooth comedy directed with a pleasing lightness of touch by Mr. Charles Walters. It doesn't ...

... BY GERALD LASCELLES ONE OF THESE DAYS THE RECORD companies are going to run out of superlatives in describing their artists. When Lionel Hampton, the vibraphone player in jazz, is presented in company with a somewhat stereotyped, albeit com petent, rhythm section, there is really no need to tag the album The high & the mighty! This is too strong a description for the pleasant, imaginative, ...

... BY SIRIOL 1IUGII-JONES ONE OF THE MOST ENCHANTING looks I have read this year is called demoirs Of A Princess, translated compiled by Nora Wydenbruck. The book is made up of reminis ences from the life of Princess Marie on Thurn und Taxis, who was born 1855 and was the good friend and of Rainer Maria Rilke. To me the most fascinatingly juching and lovingly written part f the book ...

... by Anthony Cookman I DID not see Miss Shelagh Delaney's A Taste Of Honey when it was first produced in the East End at Theatre Workshop. I was the better placed, therefore, to enjoy the romantic occasion of its transfer to the West End stage still warm from The Boy Friend at Wyndham's. I only knew that it had been written by a young Salford woman, that it had won the Charles Foyle award for ...

... by Elspeth Grant THE FILMS: Eve wants to sleep Barbara Kwiatowska Stanislaw Mikulski dr. Tadeusz Chmielewski Goha Omar Cherif Zina Bouzaiane dr.Jacques Baratier The word Victor Sjostrbm Rune Lindstrom Gunn Wallgren Vanda Rothgardt dr. Gustaf Molander UNTIL THIS WEEK, the only Polish film I had seen was Kanal, a dark and violent work sounding a high patriotic note and mourning the death of ...

... At the Theatre OPENING somewhat later than usual, the Shakespeare festival at Stratford found that spring had advanced to greet it. Cohorts of daffodils dancing along the river's edge in the bright evening sunshine sent us all into As You Like It in a holiday humour. And as we walked home with the leisurely, gossiping gait suited to a night of high summer we readily agreed with each other that ...

... Uy E. V. Knox I have heard Maynard Keynes des scribed as a financial wizard with an astonishing flair for new monetary devices and economic schemes in the adjustment of our affairs between World Wars One and Two; and again as a man who, in the course of juggling with the world's commercial chaos, managed to make a fortune for himself and (as bursar) for King's College, Cambridge. Something of ...