... By CYRIL BUTCHER ANENT our remarks on the subject of documentary programmes in the last issue, when we said that they should be written with as much dramatic impact as a play, it is an interesting coincidence that two recent television plays should in effect have been documentaries. The first, Beverley Nichols' Shadow of the Vine, was quite the most shattering thing we have seen for a long, ...

... Never Let Me Go (Empire) THERE is a serious and poignant picture to be made on the theme of the Russian war-wives refused a permit to accompany their husbands outside the Iron Curtain. Never Let Me Go is not that picture. It deals, to be sure, with the plight of such a girl, but neither the story nor the treatment-- flippant, novelettish, glib and a bit untimely-- seems exactly in accord with ...

... AT THE CINEMA with C. A. LEJEUNE The Story of Gilbert and Sullivan (Plaza) IT is very right and proper that visitors to London in Coronation summer should have the chance of seeing a film about one of England's traditional institutions-- Gilbert and Sullivan opera. True, they may be a little mystified by what they see, wondering how our grandfathers and grandmothers could have been so late ...

... with J. C. TREWIN (Lyric, Hammersmith) HERE is a play preserv'd. John Gielgud (whose knighthood is an honour to the theatre he adorns, as well as to a noble classical actor) has now rescued from the shelf a once- famous Restoration tragedy. He and Peter Brook have been penetrating enough to realise that, however Otway's play may read now-- and its text is not meant for hard labour in the study ...

... with C. A. LEJEUNE Rialto SO it has been filmed at last!-- that astute showman, Herbert Wilcox, has taken up the subject that timider producers have con sidered and discarded. There is nothing timid about Mr. Wilcox's approach to . Faced with the task of making a modern cinematic version of a ballad opera 228 years old-- a work that was written with deliberate simplicity as a satire on the ...

... The Brontes-- Yet Another Biography Giving the Reader Fresh Knowledge and a Complete Picture of the Family of Genius TO write a new biography of the Brontës must take, as well as talent and diligence, a certain courage, for there have been so many and, in Mrs. Gaskell's, one so surpassingly good. Miss Margaret Lane has been inspired to take exactly the right line in THE BRONTË STORY (Heinemann ...

... Vandenbercs Volte-face for Victory The Son of One of America's Leading Republican Politicians Collates and Edits His Father's Private Papers By VERNON FANE SENATOR VANDENBERG, who died two years ago, was one of America's leading Republi can politicians, known in his youth for the purple patches and boom-boom technique of his oratory, in middle career for his spirited opposition to President ...

... BOSWELL: THE BEST REPORTER -By VERNON FANE The Latest Volume of His Private Papers is Probably the Most Important in the Series So Far; Other Books About People and Travel; and the Continued Spate of No vels A POINT about Boswell that must be made emphatically, and, if necessary, made again and again, is that he was just about the best reporter who has ever lived. He reported people, places, ...

... EVEREST Sir John Hunt's Story of the Great Assault Not since Scott's march to the South Pole and the tragedy and heroism of the return has there been a peacetime adventure that has moved men's minds and touched their hearts like the assault upon Mount Everest, the world's loftiest peak. Since 1921 successive expeditions have pitted their wits and their hardihood against the great mountain. Two ...

... This Week, a Strong Oriental Flavour -By VERNON FANE THERE is a strong Oriental influence in this week's selec tion of books, beginning with Mr. Frank Gibney's FIVE GENTLE MEN OF JAPAN (Gollancz. 16s.), which he has called The Portrait of a Nation's Character, and which includes studies of men he takes to be widely representative of Japan as it is to-day. these men are the Emperor, whom he ...

... PORTRAITS OF TWO MUSICIANS The Autobiography of Fritz Busch and the Biography of Paganini Make Their Appearance at an Opportune Moment in the History of Music -By VERNON FANE COVENT GARDEN, Glynde bourne, and the very fact that we are living through a summer of celebrations makes one aware of the music that enhances and transforms the occasions, and it should make one aware, too, of the ...

... THE HAIR-RAISING ADVENTURES OF EL CAMPESINO Listen Comrades, the Story of a Spanish Communist in Russia Who Endured Greatly and Escaped Miraculously -By VERNON FANE A SPANISH boy brought up in Estramadura, one of the most backward provinces of Spain, a hard school, as he says him self, was nicknamed El Campesino --The Peasant-- at the age of fifteen, and while still young became a general ...