... A Taste of Poison Richard Ullmann Heads This Week's Selection of Novels and Short Stories Whose Backgrounds Range from Hungary, Across Britain, to New York -By VERNON R\NE MR. RICHARD ULLMANN writes of pressing human problems in his novel A TASTE OF POISON (Werner Laurie, 10s. 6d.), which treats of a Hungarian woman, young, educated, ex tremely good-looking and used to her creature comforts, ...

... A KISS BEFORE DYING. TREASURE DIVING HOLIDAYS. By Ira Levin. (Michael Joseph 10s. 6 d.) By Jane and Barney Crile. (Collins 16s.) Reviewed by G. B. Stern WE are, as the Psalmist tells us, fear fully and wonderfully made! For when quite good people are having quite a good time they nearly always choose to read a book just like A Kiss Before Dying, and then lay it down with a sigh of gentle ...

... C^Jtco ^Yflen in C^fylacL with C. A. LEJEUNE THE RETURN OF DON CAMILLO (Rialto) IF the Italian author Giovanni Guareschi had not been obliging enough to write a sequel to his Little World of Don Camillo, it 's a sure thing that someone in the film industry would have done it for him. The wonderful cross-partnership between France's' Fernandel as the priest militant, and Italy's Gino Cervi as ...

... Elizabeth Betven THE SURPRISE OF CREMONA, by Edith Templeton (Eyre and Spottis- woode; 18s.), enjoys three distinctions ---it is the Book Society's non-fiction choice for this month, it is by a novelist of repute, and it is what Americans might, I think, describe as a personalised travel-book. The verb to personalise has not yet taken its place in British vocabulary, although the process may ...

... \lmosi as as d^cean C. A. LEJEUNE THE CAINE MUTINY Odeott Leicester Square) SOME people may feel that Columbia Pictures are rather going out on a limb in describing The Caine Mutiny as big as the Ocean, with the added assertion Great as a book! As a picture --the greatest! I mean, they don't seem to be leaving themselves much in hand for when their next epic comes along. As Hollywood naval ...

... General Release) In spite of its foolish, inept and conven tional title. Indiscretion is a film quite out of the ordinary. So unorthodox is it, indeed, that it has been denied the seal of a so-called West End run in London. It goes straight out on release after a week at the Dominion and New Victoria cinemas. On the Continent, where it was first shown, the critical reception was grudging. ...

... EDITH EVANS. By J. C. Trewin. (Rockliff 12s. 6 d.) A FEW LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS. By John Betjeman. (John Murray 9s. 6 d.) Reviewed by G. B. Stern A BEAUTIFUL boy and more than common tall, in Watteau-blue doublet and hose, coming into Arden Forest that was when I first fell in love with Edith Evans, how many fathoms deep. Not quite at first sight, for already I remembered her as the Welsh maid ...

... dddaUers of oGfe and (dJdeaili with J. C. TREWIN DEAFNESS is not funny. Stammering is not funny. Old age is certainly not funny. I make these dogmatic statements because some writers seem to toss in any thing for an easy laugh (Old boy, let him enter on crutches-- it '11 put 'em all in the alley!). At the Phoenix, Edmund Morris's The Wooden Dish is a most welcome left-and-right to the jaw ...

... A Fighting Innings Lewie Constantine Reviews the Colour Bar; also, the Normandy Landings Provide the Background to a Tactical Discussion and a Novel THE name of Learie Constan tine is associated in our minds with the narrow confines of the cricket field, where in his heyday he was a great fighter. Learie Constantine is a fighter still, as his book COLOUR BAR (Stanley Paul. 12s. 6d.) so clearly ...

... Cth t&T'ifxAjfff Salad Days (Vaudeville) BAD acting often enchants by virtue of its very artlessness. Only it must be true artlessness. One unfortunate touch of precociously acquired technique, and the quality that delights us in the spon taneous acting of children or undergraduates is likely to be ruined. The extraordinary thing about this musical frolic, half fantasy, half revue, is that ...

... DOES the search for, and finding of, a book's title come first or last in the actual writing of the book? Authors are often asked this-- and most often, I think, when the title arrived at has been felicitous. Sir Osbert Sitwell answers this question on the very first page of THE FOUR CONTINENTS (Macmillan; 25s.): Here I am, he says, before a book is written, searching for a name for it. Yet ...

... By TREVOR ALLEN I WANT a good book for a deckchair by the sea this holiday month. A novel? Of course. (We've a choice of nine, later.) But first, why not a book about far-off places, so that I get two holidays in one-- where I am in fact, and where I am in imagination? Giles Playfair and Constantine Fitz Gibbon cover Europe's four miniature states-- Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino-- ...