... The golden age of Burgundy was certainly luring the rule of four dukes of the Valois line luring the century following 1364. Its struggle or survival and aggrandisement began in \.d.1002 and ended in the disaster at Nancy in he 1470's. In that golden century, at times Jurgundy's share of France and the Nether- ands rivalled that of the French Kings, and lie glories of her civilisation that of ...

... An expatriate in Italy contracting out in East Anglia a portrait of Catherine the Great; new fiction In the first half of my life, writes Mr. Aubrey Menen, Traveller Exceptional, I learned to know three peoples well: the English, the Indians and the Americans. They were diverse in their ways, but they had one thing in com mon: all three felt deep within them that they had fewer moral ...

... )7lurJer in Q C. A. LEJEUNE DIAL M FOR MURDER Warner Theatre) PERHAPS because his work is almost entirely devoid of self-conscious tricks this time, perhaps because he has kept so close to the ingenious argument of the original, Alfred Hitchcock has made one of his most satisfactory films for years in Dial M for Murder. Frederick Knott's thriller was first written as a play for B.B.C. ...

... Some information has trickled across the Atlantic about the film version of the highly successful American musical (now nearing the end of its long run at Her Majesty's). What news there has been is highly intriguing. Co-director and choreographer is Jerome Robbins, whose stage contri bution to West Side Story made it possibly the most visu ally gripping of all musicals. The openingsequence ...

... Modern Rural Rides by George Winder: Hutchinson. 25s, is an account of a ride through the counties of Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Wiltshire on a friendly mare called Sally and of the effects-- or some of them-- which the author found as a result of the Agricultural Act of 1947. It is almost 130 years since William Cobbett published his famous Rural Rides and the author is following a great ...

... BOOK REVIEW The Commonwealth a vital factor in civil aviation By its nature, the Commonwealth has proved a forcing ground for civil aviation not only because of the distances involved from country to country and the needs and desires of inhabitants to travel between those countries, but also because the rapid and comparatively recent economic expansion of Commonwealth countries has meant that ...

... CRICKETING ARENA The story of Melbourne Cricket Ground On November 15, 1838, five men met and drew up a document agreeing to form a cricket club to be called the Melbourne Cricket Club, sub scription one guinea. In the years that followed the club's ground grew to become one of the most famous sporting arenas in the world, and the initials M.C.C. to have as much meaning for Australians as the ...

... Mr. Walter Kolarz has a very high reputation among experts for his expertise about the Soviet Union and Communism. His new book, RELI GION IN THE U.S.S.R. (Macmillan. 50s.), will certainly enhance that reputation, for there is no other source which contains so compre hensive a picture of the subject, or so much clear and fully-documented material. Mr. Kolarz has weignea up tne evidence latter ...

... Adventure at Eighty -By VERNON FANE Mrs. Patterson's Life in the Mountains Novels by Miss Rose Macaulay ancl Mr. Wyndham Lewis and a Selection of Other Fiction WHEN a lone woman decides to leave her cosy little home in San Francisco and make for the mountains and a remote and rickety log cabin, that is courageous enough, but it is even more so when one finds that she has recently come out of ...

... THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE At the Aldwych Theatre Brecht's little-performed epic allegory, finished in 1945, eleven years before his death, joined the repertory of The Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company last week. It has more than ninety parts, and even with doubling, more than thirty players are needed. This political allegory is receiving its first profes sional London production in English. ...

... The autobiography of the Dam ...

... Real or Fake? us Controversial Story of Madame Blavatsky JS Ape Balsamo, Count Cagliostro, that adept in Ifficine, chemistry and the necromantic arts, Aced fashionable society with his love philtres \irs of youth, was perhaps the most remarkable itl'jlhe world of occultism in the eighteenth century. rivalled in the nineteenth century by that equally 'iisial pillar of occultism, Helena Petrovna ...