... ALFRED HITCH COCK'S produc tion of Dial M for Murder breaks every canon of the motion picture. It rarely moves outside the one set-- the living room of a flat --which contained the stage play. There are long sessions of dialogue which be long rather to the stage or TV screen, and the action is practically motion less. Yet it makes an excellent, entertaining film. The only use Hitchcock makes ...

... Dim OF A LADY OF LIMITED LEISURE STILL struggling with husband's new diet. It shouldn't be a struggle, really, seeing that chief ingredients of diet are simple, ordinary food. Snag is that due to highbrow education about cookery, dislike simple, ordin ary food and tend to make household's favourites consist of things stuffed with rice, fried in butter or olive oil, heavily garnished with ...

... D!ARV OFA LADY OF LIMITED LEISURE AWAKE this morning to dagger of sunlight piercing through gap between curtains, and forgotten pandemonium of birds screaming enthusiasm for spring, the while wolfing up new buds on the wallflowers. Having dispatched the family to its destinations, I decide that this is no day to remain even metaphorically hunched over a sink, and plan expedition in search of ...

... Sabretachu SINCE Cheltenham will not have any effect upon what is going to happen in this year's Grand National I should skip this in the ordinary course of events, but as there was so little time and space to say very much last week, and as I did have a telephone mess age from the course immediately after the big race, it seems rather a pity to miss it. The gist of my friend's message was ...

... D. B. Wyndham Lewis RIGHTLY or wrongly, it seems to this department that the th attempt, now in progress under the auspices of the nth Duke of Argyll, to raise the treasure- galleon Duque de Florencia from the bottom of Tobermory Bay may be complicated by the possibility that this same ship returned to Spain in 1588, as some authorities (vide Pres) now assert. Nobody told the fourth Duke about ...

... HAVE just returned from annual visit to childhood home, this being traditionally arranged to cover Easter Monday Point-to-Point. In the past we have taken the day off from the family, and this is the first occasion when we have approached B. Races as a gang. Resplendent in newly knitted sweaters and freshly pressed tweeds, we excavate the shooting stick from the cupboard under the stairs, ...

... Mother -In-Late Of Pearls THE Sadler's Wells Trust deserves commenda tion for resuscitating obscure creations, the latest of these being Bizet's early work The Pearl Fishers. This regrettably turns out to belong in the comic opera category, to modern eyes, for the spectacle of two plump persons singing of their eternal love on a none too secure platform is inevitably risible. But there are ...

... Tt >i r/1 1 D. B. Wyiidham Lewis DIMPLING adorably and glancing sideways through shyly-fluttering lashes, the shortly-to-be-crowned Cotton Queen of Egypt will accept the official prize of a water-buffalo (vide Press) with, doubtless, a song in her heart. But what of the future? In Mayfair they quote the ominous precedent of Babs Fauncethorpe, to whom the Maharajah of Dhirtipore gave a ...

... Another Oscar For Wilde NOËL COWARD'S musical version, of Lady Windermere's Fan, entitled After the Ball, will go to the Globe early in June, since the production has grown too large for the limited stage of the Lyric, Hammersmith. It will be directed by Robert Helpmann, fresh from his triumphs at Covent Garden, and decorated by Doris Zinkeisen. The latter, though she is superbly equipped for ...

... At The Pictures IF you feel out of sorts, give your doctor a break and, instead, go and see Doctor in the House (Odeon, Leicester Square). It will be a tonic. Take your doctor, too, for he may recover his form-free youth in this Technicolored medical frolic. The astonishing thing is that such an episodic compendium of hospi tal and medical stu dents' jokes makes a film at all. But it does, ...

... Sabretache IT has been fashionable to add the word glorious to uncertainty, if you happen to be talking about the Turf, but I have always had my private doubts whether this is, or ever has been, justified. I do not think that many people see much glory about a good horse's active career being prematurely cut short by some initially trivial accident. I am thinking particularly of Sir ...

... -V h rt'iti fit A VERY famous figure in sporting fiction was made to say Racin' is only meant for rogues. This is somewhat unfair, because there are several honest persons con nected with the Turf. There was, for instance, that immortal Snotty in Gib. who wrote to me and asked whether he would get warned off if his mount in the Junior Officers' Derby won running away. It was quite easy to ...