... affected his music, but not his out put. which was that of a born com poser. willing to work over the wid est field. Public Speaking, by Dennis Castle and John Wade (Hodder and Stoughton, paperback, £1.25) Two very well-known members of the entertainment ...

... novelist and playwright. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Priestley kept one foot firmly on the ground and proved he could speak to the common man through his wartime broadcasts. As a dramatist, it seems now as though he will endure far more than many ...

... scale of the monument is most pressive. The epigraph wittily quotes from Othello, one of Robeson's most famous roles: Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate. Nor set down aught in malice. From the beginning, Robeson was recognised as a leader, not ...

... The Ultimate TV Guide would have details of every television programme ever made, and even if it stuck to only the English- speaking programmes would probably require sufficient vol umes to fill a bookshelf. So Jon E Lewis and Penny Stempels Ultimate TV ...

... d£but as the Mar- shallin. Her autobiography, published last year in her native Sweden, is in translation a gentle affair, speaking ill of hardly anyone and yet revealing the difficulties ?which beset the path of any singer on the international circuit ...

... Jon Bliss as Blackheart proves a powerful nasty. Nicole Rtzpatrick makes the perfect Good Fairy, with her crystal- clear speaking voice, a smiling face and artistic movements. Mark Hastings as Jack and Deborah Pugh as Jill play the romantic leads with ...

... and analysis in a remarkable way. The book, published to accompany Harwood's current TV theatre series, is at once a record speaking for itself and an adjunct to the series. The selection of celebrated theatre pioneers examined, touched upon, quoted, is ...

... should have played as Juliet, Viola and Roilind. and in plays by Ibsen and Chekhov. The author ,s more convincing when he speaks of that exceptional phenomenon in the modern world, a man who loves his work, and when he says Managers are always saying ...

... one film and one leading man above all others: King Kong. Yet she dedicates her book to him in an affectionate prologue, speaking of her respect and admiration and the poetic metaphor of Beautiful mo ments in the film. She writes compassionately of ...

... Text by Cicely Berry (Harrap £6.95) THIS IS Berry's third book about the appliance of methods of voice production to the speaking of text. As the voice director of the RSC, she has worked with some of the more famous actors around, including Jacobi, Sher ...

... effect post-1960 proliferation of alternative theatre. In many ways, of course, it parallels our own fringe, but generally speaking the American variety started earlier. The Living Theatre, for instance, be gan in 1951, not perhaps in the form with which ...

... grows up at last A Qown Too Many, by Les Dawson (Elm Tree Books, £7.95) You have doubtless nouced that when Les Dawson speaks in his act his words are often lush in metaphor, extravagant in hyperbole, though the punchline is usually one of severe deflation ...