... Hollywood Stars on at least two counts: it is self-evidently written by the lady herself, with a degree of literacy and emotional maturity that make it a work of art to be cherished, and it is refreshingly free of any trace of bitterness or complaint over a life that has had more than its share of heartbreak and lost opportu nities careerwise. Although in over 75 films her direc tors have ...

... Morley (Hodder and Stoughton, £10.95) I cannot think of anybody in the modem theatre world who gets about quite as much as Sheridan Morley, cropping up as he does on radio and television, in the national and magazine press, in theatre programmes, even on occasion in the theatre itself, usually as a narrator, and on one occa sion, as narrator ot his on compilation Noel and Gertie. When he is ...

... the difference between a companion, a guide and an encyclopaedia? Not a lot, if present-day publishers are anything to go by. Encyclopaedia is obviously considered too daunting, but whatever you call it, the encyclopaedic form is followed here, with 2,000 alphabetical entries. This volume will inevitably be com pared with last year's Penguin tome on the same subject, and on the whole I think I ...

... Saddled with a tyrant Maria Mali bran, by April FitzLyon (Souvenir Press, £18.95) The most celebrated opera singer of all time, Maria Malibran was regarded as a goddess in the Romantic Age which she personified, and when she died in 1836 at the age of 28 she entered the realm of myth. There have been many biographies, and she is featured in the memoirs of leading literary and musical ...

... them made in 1986, which are available for non-theatrical screening in the UK. The main eye- opener is that there are over 3000 of them, on all kinds of subjects, an illustration of the enormous expansion of this side of the industry. Indexes include names and addresses of nearly 900 British distributors and production companies, subject and title indexes and a production index cover ing ...

... British Musical, Sheridan Morley's rich feats of a book cannot help but mention the American musical, because the British variety so often struggled to hold its head above water in the face of the Transatlantic opposition. This might be thought to have started with Oklahoma, but of course it began earlier than that, certainly from the days of The Belle of New York. And not only America, ...

... is singularly lack ing in checkable information might be regarded as something of a mystery. Until, that is, one realises that books like these must be part and parcel of the radio presenter's stock in trade. Where else but in a book like this, now in its fourth edition and going up to the end of 1987, can one find out what was at the top of the charts on August 18, 1973? And in case you are ...

... Coward is one of the most interesting in the ever-expanding Macmillan Modern Dramatists series, mainly because the author has understood what it is that makes Coward so special. Unlike nearly all the other play wrights in the series, Coward invented his own style, based on the fact that he was a performer himself. What is more, that style subtly changed over the years, because in the beginning ...

... young dramatist was only 29 when he was murdered at Deptford-has been prepared for the press by Andrew Butcher from papers left by the Archivist of Canterbury. Urry, early in his impressive career without wealth he subsidised his degree through three years work as a librarian, studying at night noted the import ance of what he termed the trivial details which are really the important things ...

... A new sense of purpose Dana: An Autobiography, with Lucy Elphinstone (Hoddcr and Stoughton, £8.95 hardback, £3.95 paperback) Seldom can a young girl, fresh from a convent school, have been precipitated as rapidly into worldwide fame as was Rosemary Brown, better known to all of us as Dana, when she won the Eurovi- sion Song Contest in 1970 with an innocuous little song called All Kinds of ...

... Self-confessed ham and a survivor Stage-Struck, by Lionel Blair fWeidenfeld and Nicolson. £8.95) Anybody who has ever met Lionel Blair, or just seen him perform, will know that he has picked on the perfect title for his autobiography. He is a survivor, an incredibly hard worker and a self-confessed ham who might well do anything if there is an audience. Though there may be some, even a lot, ...

... forebears in the cello world, for example Pablo Casals, Julian Lloyd Webber is nevertheless a very different kind of person, a child of the sixties, knowledgeable in the pop field as well as the classics, conscious of the media and willing to use it. A performer first and foremost, he is more flamboyant than his brother Andrew, an instantly recognisable per sonality who is as much at home ...