... Letter from Paris Aldwych IN comparison, events at the Aldwych are creamily mild. But then comparison would be wildly unfair. The letter from Paris appears in an American sensational newspaper, The Reverberator, during the late 1880's. It contains many details of the private affairs of the wealthy Probert family, expatriates long settled in Paris and now more French than American. The ...

... Full House (Odeon. Marble Arch It would be presumptuous to assert that the Somerset Maugham films, Quartet, Trio and Encore, made in this country, prompted Holly wood to follow our example, and produce an omnibus film from the works of another prince of short story-tellers, O. Henry. But whether it is a case of post hoc or propter hoc, the thing has been done. Full House contains five of mp w. ...

... SHORTER NOTICES Criticus A PATTERN OF ISLANDS, by Sir. Arthur Grimble (John Murray; 18j.), has to itself a great deal of praise-- every item which is wholly deserved. This incurably romantic Empire-builder went to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands as a cadet-apprentice, learner-third-class bottlewasher, or what you. In sickness and in health he remained with his wile and their ...

... : Reviewed by Trevor iT[lle?i IT is good to be able to salute a teenager for something more than a taste in films, square dancing, boy-meets-girl fiction, and cosmetics. Juana de Leon was a Spanish girl of fourteen when a sister, anxious for her safety after the fall of Badajoz in the Peninsular War, took her to the tent of Captain Harry Smith. And what did that gallant, hand some young ...

... A. E. W. MASON'S ADVENTUROUS LIFE Mr. Roger Lance lyn Green's Biography of the Novelist; And Other New Books of Varied Interest -By VERNON FANE A. E. W. MASON was eighty- three when he died just a few years ago, and it is still difficult to realise that we shall not see that elegant form again, or hear that laugh that E. V. Lucas once said was famous in two hemispheres. He should have written ...

... Lord Arthur Savile's Crime {Royal Court IT was, you will remember, a murder that Lord Arthur did not commit, though it was not the dear man's fault: he had tried hard enough. A meddling palmist told him that he would have to commit it one day; there was evidence in his palm. Lord Arthur, being a creature of his word and anxious to do everything according to protocol, knew that he would have to ...

... Anna Marble Arch Pavilion Anna is a dubbed version of an Italian film, chiefly remarkable for presenting the eye catching Silvana Mangano in two styles, wrapped and unwrapped. Wrapped, she appears as a nursing sister in a Catholic hospital splendid at her job, the surgeon's right hand, and about to take her final vows, but dreadfully afflicted by flashbacks, which make her come all over funny ...

... A Pair Of Hypocrites Km/ E. V. Km! MR. JOYCE GARY begins his new book, Prisoner Of Grace (Michael Joseph, 12s. 6d.) by pitching us right into the middle of the politics of the Boer War. It is the autobiography of a woman, but, one need hardly say, an autobiography that no woman would ever have set down; and (so far as this character is concerned) may be con sidered a kind of variation on the ...

... Booh Keviews E. V. Knox NOT many men have the chance, at the age of fifty, of doing in fact the deeds they have described in fiction. But some thing of this sort happened to the late A. E. W. Mason, He belonged to a Period when the heroes and heroines of romance had to bustle about a bit, instead of spending their whole time on the Psychiatrist's sofa. But he had one psychological notion which ...

... Cbt t&L.'fijuJfZ Anthony Cookman Romeo And Juliet (Old Vie) NOBODY need tell Mr. Hugh Hunt that Romeo And Juliet is something less than the great tragedy it is often made out to be, that the lovers' deaths are forced by the playwright's rigging the chances against them, and that however it is played we never feel the catastrophe to be inevitable. He knows all this rather better than the next ...

... E. V. Knox WILLIAM CODY, destined, I suppose, to be the hero of a thousand films unborn, or only struggling into birth, was, in fact, a peerless pony rider, scout and slayer, one might almost say, exterminator, of Indians and buffaloes, before he became one of the great showmen of the world. In fiction he was anything you please; for the details of many of his most daring exploits are known ...

... By VERNON FANE In David Magarshack's Brilliant New Biography the Russian Author Emerges as a Great and Humorous Personality, At Once Kind and Reticent TO start off this week's admir ably rich selection of books there is a biography of Chekhov (Faber. 30s.), by Mr. David Magarshack, that I would like to recommend to you with enthu siasm. Whether as a record of Chekhov's life, from his unhappy, ...