... THE THEATRE RING ROUND THE MOON. Next morning, ends Margaret Rutherford reminiscently, he crossed the frontier, and a bull killed him in Madrid. Who was killed, arid why? Heaven knows. It is the sort of speech we learn to expect in Ring Round the Moon, which is beguiling moonstruck nonsense, adapted by the inevitable Christopher Fry from the French of Jean Anouilh. You either hugely ...

... By Joanna Cannan. (Gollancz 8s. 6 d.) WHEN a novelist as truthful and skilled as Miss Joanna Cannan tackles a detective story, she is faced, I think, with certain special problems. It goes against the grain for her to employ trick characterisation, to show some one behaving in a way wholly inconsistent with his part in the plot, or to make him such a consummate actor that he can fool the ...

... GOLDEN SLIPPERS. By Horace Annesley Vachell I. (Hutchinson 9s. 6 d.) A man of many possessions, an octo genarian resident of Bath, is certified to have died of heart disease. But it is not as simple as that, and Mr. Vachell, himself in his eighties, has not lost his gusto or skill. MARY WAKEFIELD. By Mazo de la Roche. Macmillan 10s. 6 d.) No more need be said than that this is a new Jalna ...

... . By L. P. Hartley. Putnam 12s. 6d.) MR. HARTLEY is an intensely in dividual writer, and to me a slightly bewilder ing one. There is some thing esoteric in all his work, as though he were chuckling to him self and to a few initiated readers, and I have the uncomfortable feeling that some of the chuckles are at the expense of people like myself who do not quite know what it is all about. Not, ...

... . By Richard Llewellyn. by Rupert Croft- Cooke (Michael Joseph 10s. 6 d.) READING Mr. Llewellyn's new book gives one the sensation of being taken in a fast car over difficult roads and through undisciplined traffic by a supremely good driver. One has the same confidence, the same restful assurance that he cannot make a mistake. Every line of dialogue-- and a high proportion of the book is in ...

... THE CINEMA REVIEWS By C. A. Lejeune THE MIRACLE It is not the place of a film critic to enter into discussions of dogma, and the religious implications and repercussions of Roberto Rossellini's extra ordinary new picture are things that can safely be left to others. The British Board of Film Censors, as you know, have refused to grant the film a certificate, and it is being shown in London ...

... . By Claude Houghton. (Collins 9s. 6d.) MR. HOUGHTON, too, creates a world of his own, and to each reader I think it will seem to be the world he knows viewed with a certain astigmatism. As usual, there are characters larger than life whose motives are beyond our understanding. As usual, things have happened before the opening of the story which are as enigmatic as Marston himself. And, as ...

... Elizabeth Bowen JAMES POPE-HENNESSY'S Monckton Milnes: The Years of Promise (Constable; 25s.) might be called a character-study of a character. Strictly, this fascinating book is to be classified as a biography-- or rather, the earlier half of one. The Years of Promise (1809-1851) follows Milnes's career-- social, political, literary-- up to his engagement to Miss Annabel Crewe. That event ...

... . by CYRIL BUTCHER IS it good television? That 's what we have to ask ourselves, all the time, in our approach to this still new medium. It is not a bit of good to consider it in terms of theatre, radio or cinema. For if television is going to fulfil all those glowing promises that are being made on its behalf, it will have to develop a mind of its own and realise that it lives or dies ...

... IF ever a title fitted a book it is COURAGE AND FEAR (Arthur Barker. 15s.), which continues the story Rémy began in that remarkable history of the Free French underground net work which he called The Silent Company. It will be remem bered that that volume ended in 1942 with the author's escape to England with his wife and children after havins been be trayed to the Gestapo. Courage and ...

... at rfe. '■Larger Than Life (Duke of York's) Anthony (ockinau IF Mr. Guy Bolton had given his characters other names and presented them in this romantic comedy as his own he would perhaps have been unfair to Mr. Somerset Maugham. It is from Theatre that the story of the play first recognizably comes. Yet it would be no less unfair to those who enjoyed the book to let them suppose that they ...

... Freda Brace Lochhart IF films must be foolish, by all means let them be funny. In the post-war preoccupation with civilian brutality, combat fatigue and affairs of the social conscience rather than the heart, films have forgotten to be frivolous. Three purposely funny films in one week have gone to my head so that I came home from Francis (London Pavilion) almost expecting my bull-terrier ...