... 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 ...

... E. V. Knox RETURNING from an alcoholic progress round the greater part of the un civilised globe, Mr. S. J. Perelman narrates his Odyssey in The Swiss Family Perelman (Reinhardt and Evans; 12s. 6d.) and we note with sorrow that America finds him in as much trouble as the barbarous lands beyond. He makes you laugh. It is rather like reading a mixture of P. G. Wodehouse and Mark Twain and Mr. ...

... An evening at the Festival Gardens in Battersea Park is a charming aesthetic experience. All around there is enchant ment in decorative shapes high spiritedly cocking a snook at reality and issuing a mute, but eloquent, invitation to fantastic gaiety. Every present pleases, and only you and I spoil the effect for which the designers have worked with daring and inspired ingenuity. ...

... THE MARTINS' NEST Westminster AFTER swans on the duck-pond, we have the Martins at East Putney. Their nest is a semi basement, but Dad is a temporary Civil Servant and Mum has the most genteel hopes for her three children. They are going to be among the Putney glories. Alas, they are not simply because Mum, relentlessly aspiring snob, pushes them too hard and woe treads upon woe. Joan Morgan ...

... J* IN the case of Captain Horatio Hornblower, R.N., to say that the film doesn't live up to expectations is a tribute. There was such a hullabaloo raised in certain quarters of this country when it was announced that an American actor, Gregory Peck, was to play C. S. Forester's beloved British sea-dog, and an American actress, Virginia Mayo, had been cast as the wild rose of an English ...

... by Cyril Butcher I J CONFORMING to the current passion for exhibitions, the B.B.C.'s Research Station at Kingswood Warren has also recently put itself on show. So once again we found ourselves in this astonishing world of electrons, pieces of wire and radio valves. It is housed mainly in a pseudo-baronial mansion of considerable ugliness, set in beautiful grounds, with well-kept flower-beds, ...

... By James Dowdall The nearest thing to death-in-life Is David Patrick Maxwell Fyfe But underneath his heavy shell He does himself extremely well. THE victim of this penetrating little jingle sat back in his chair and assumed the large but non-committal smile used by platform speakers when the chairman is reminded of an ancient jest about Mick, Jock and Cohen. The same age as the twentieth ...

... FORTUNE'S FINGER. by Rupert Croft- Cooke By Phyllis Bottome. (Faber 9s. 6 d.) TEN DAYS OF CHRISTMAS. By G. B. Stern. Collins 10s. 6 d.) A MAN'S LIFE. By J. H. B. Peel. Arthur Barker 12s. 6d.) THE ANATOMY OF VILLAINY. By Nigel Balchin. Collins 12s. 6 d.) THE POACHER'S HANDBOOK. By Ian Niall. Heinemann 8s. 6d.) THE short stories which go to make up Miss Phyllis Bottome's new book are ultra ...

... REVIEWS by C. A. LEJEUNE THAT brilliant film. All About Eve, will make its most direct appeal, I suppose, to the people who know and love everything about the back-stage of a theatre. Its characters, atmosphere, behaviour, preoccupations and allusions all belong to the theatre world, which is much the same in every country. The story is a flashback affair or rather, to be precise, a flash-bull ...

... (Fortune) IF this play had arrived twenty- five years ago, when every second piece seemed to be a cross word of crime, it might not have been so agreeable. But whodun nits are far less frequent in the theatre nowadays, and this one is by Agatha Christie, who knows her job to a hair. True, the first act worried me. It was clear enough that the too-amorous doctor would be murdered, and I waited ...

... TO what extent should a critic ignore the technical deficiencies of a performance? He is expected to pounce upon bad acting, writing or producing. What about the technical hitches that periodically interrupt proceedings and are so blandly passed off as being beyond our control? We hold that if they seriously interfere with the effectiveness of a programme, then the engineers are just as ...

... MUCH ADO WITHOUT JANISSARIES A Story of Seventeenth-Century Turkish Life A book with a most intriguing, but rather misleading, title is Alexander Pallis's IN THE DAYS OF THE JANISSARIES (Hutchinson and Co. 18s.). This is an account of Turkish life in the reign of Sultan Murat IV, when the Stuarts sat upon the English throne, and, as such, it is full of atmosphere; for it is based upon the ...