... Elizabeth Betven TO-MORROW IS ALREADY HERE, by Robert Jungle (Hart-Davis; 16s.), is sub-titled Scenes from a Man made World, and is, in my view, as grim a book as we are likely to have for many a season. For here is a picture, not of swift mass-extinction under atomic warfare, but of the slow subjugation of humanity by inhuman forces now taking place in atomic peacetime. Man, stated Shelley ...

... EVEN to-day, the animal is still present in man, but never man in animal the assertion that animals are better than man is sheer blasphemy: against this statement, combined with a grand loathing of anthropomorphization, Conrad Lorenz has written Man Meets Dog (Methuen; 15s.). It is a most interesting book, and although the author is entirely free from sentimentality, this is not to ...

... All X-lliiy Is Turned On Dean Swift Elizabeth Bewen A NOVEL by a great poet is something more than fiction-- it not only tells a story, it illuminates life. We must be glad that Edith Sitwell's I LIVE UNDER A BLACK SUN, which first appeared in 1937, is once again available; published by Peter Owen, Ltd., at 6s. Moreover, the theme of the story is one which has fascinated so many imaginations-- ...

... PROGRAMMES in honour of Remem brance Sunday can be awaited in the assur ance of TV's proven capacity for rising to historic and ceremonial occasions. After the Cenotaph Service S on Sunday, the evening play, The S Silent People, is devoted (cryptically) s to the war record of a little-known S branch of the armed services. S Author Duncan Ross, once one of the B.B.C.'s most authoritative ...

... (bb TfcL-^tZUJL Z I Capture The Castle (Aldnyeh) Anthony Cookman MISS DODIE SMITH seems curiously averse from giving herself a fair chance to recapture her old strongly fortified position on the West End stage. A Letter From Paris, her first venture after a long absence in America, was a foredoomed attempt to breathe the wrong kind of vivacity into one of the more faded of Henry James's ...

... SOME of those who trace the outlines of former cities cry: All is vanity! They reflect upon the short life of man, and from that argue the futility of his creations-- the august scene, the rule of order and art, the strength and the singing. Freya Stark, however, is fortified by quite another belief to her the pavement sunken into the marsh, the column rising out of the brambles are symbols ...

... Elizabeth Bowen LAURENS VAN DER POST'S A BAR OF SHADOW (Hogarth Press; 5s.) is a slim volume-- in fact, a long short story. Magnitude in writing is not, however, an affair of so many thousands of words, and, in this case, we have a theme of which many another author might fight shy-- that of cruelty and forgiveness. How does a man feel towards his torturer Two friends, formerly prisoners-of ...

... Cbt t&C-'jtiuJLZ Troilus And Cressida (Sli ad'ord FcKiival) Anthony Cookmaii IT is only a comparatively short time ago-- since the late twenties, let us say-- that Shakespearian producers began to work on the principle that the national poet knew what he was about in the theatre. The gratifying result is that such plays as Love's Labour's Lost, Measure For Measure, Cymbeline and The Winter's ...

... (tt The Cherry Orchard (Lyric, Hammersmith) AUTHENTIC renderings of The Cherry Orchard in this country are not after all so rare as we are apt forgetfully to suppose. I remember four; and four can be accounted a lot. Here is yet another, brought off this time by a hand-picked company directed with imaginative expertness by Sir John Gielgud. We can be as grateful for it as though it were ...

... Miss Macau lav Rifles A Treasure Chest Elizabeth Boweti ROSE MACAULAY'S new book. PLEASURE of RUINS (Weidenfeld and Nicolson; 25s.), is fascinating. Has not the title, even, a beckoning and disturbing ring? How few of us fail to delight in ruins, how many of us really know why we do, or how far we may be alone in doing so! Is this taste morbid, freakish or unorthodox-- should one regard a rum ...

... FROM Sunday's preview through the next three evenings, nobody who has seen the International Horse Show televised in previous years, or is prevented from attending in person, will need inviting twice to view one of the spectacles most becoming to TV and best illuminated by it. Indoors the studios pursue their own silly season of panel games. Tuesday's Crime Quiz introducing Helen Bailey, a new ...

... dJj Anil Cookmaii Kfep In A Cool Place (Saville) MR. WILLIAM TEMPLETON'S comedy of a Highland laird dealing with a deluge of daughters-in-law is nothing if not mild. It could scarcely be milder without falling into insipidity, but some quality just saves the evening from flatness-- a touch of comic veracity in the characterization of the laird, perhaps, or, more likely, the pleasingness of ...