... 'LOTUS HEART' TO FIGURE IN ALL-CHINESE CABARET LIAN-SHIN YANG, Chinese TV artist, will present an all-Chinese revue at the Club de la Cote d'Azur, Frith-street, on Monday next for two weeks. She will be assisted by other Chinese artists, including dancers and jugglers. The title of the revue is Lotus Time, and this is the first time an all- Chinese revue has been presented in London. Lian ...

... DIFFICULTIES THAT BESET THE ART OF SONGWRITING SONG WRITING has a universal appeal. But the songwriter of to-day little realises that from the moment he puts pen to paper the cards are stacked high against him. In a new book entitled So You Want To Be A Songwriter, (published by Colin Venton, Ltd.), Cleethorpcs songwriter Walter Howe, whose The wedding of Jack and Jill continues to be ...

... by Elizabeth Bowen THE WHISPERING GALLERY (Longmans; 21s.) is the first volume of the autobiography of John Lehmann. That it will command atten tion goes without saying. Mr. Lehmann has done as much, probably, as any critic or editor to-day living to promote the expressive literature of our generation. Readers, no less than writers, are m his debt where, for one thing, should we have been ...

... by Elizabeth Bowen THERE'S no such thing, I dare say, as an ordinary friendship. Attraction, affection, amusement and curiosity cause people to strike sparks out of one another-- a friend might possibly be defined as someone with whom one is never dull. True, into long-lasting friendships there may enter something of the element of a habit-- but even so, things may at any moment take a ...

... Anthony Cookman IT is the secret belief of women that their menfolk make heavy weather of problems that a little feminine good sense would quickly smooth out Running a nursery successfully teaches that the world is only a larger nursery. If the grown-up children in it appear to have got rather out of hand, the reason is that they are in the habit of taking such essen tially simple games as ...

... A LITTLE book of great charm is Tree Tops (G. Cumberlege, O.U.P.; 6s.), by Jim Corbett, with an Introduction by Lord Hailey. The introduction explains that this story of the Royal visit to Tree Tops, the hunting lodge near Nyeri which was soon afterwards to be destroyed in the troubles, was finished just before the author died in April last. Lord Hailey gives a splendid portrait of a man who ...

... RECENTLY there was pub lished in England Mammals of the World (G. G. Harrap; 60s.), by Francis Bourliere, a beautifully produced and important book. Numerous writers deal with birds, and often do so excellently, but nothing like so many books on animals have appeared in recent years. It is true to say that much of this gap is now closed by a volume which is most lavishly illus trated by ...

... It makes a change when THE ARTIST RUNS RIOT says J. C. THE WIN BY now, of course, it is the thing for an audience to applaud when the curtain rises. It comes automatically: a salute to the setting, whether this is by Messel at the height of his flourish, or whether three walls glumly enclose a chair or two, some unlikely bookcases, and a telephone. All very well yet it is seldom that a ...

... Odecrn, Marble Arch In this odd film of the war at sea Holly wood makes amends for anything beastly it may ever have said about the Germans. The hero (John Wayne) is captain of a German freighter, which slips out of Sydney harbour in an attempt to reach home waters by way of Valparaiso. The heroine (Lana Turner) is a German spy, who sees the light during her sea-trip, changes tight, white ...

... by ANGELA MILNE The Temptation of Roger Heriott: By Edward Newhouse. (Gollancz; 12s. 6d.) Intellectual supremacy, political dictator ship, the love of a beautiful woman one can imagine Mephistopheles looking over his little stock of offerings and reflecting that nowadays, for the average victim of civilisation, no temptation has quite the pulling power of money. And it 's money that is ...

... Stratford-upon-A von I write this with the cheers of a Stratford Festival audience thundering in the memory. One can be cynical about manufactured enthusiasm; but here was the real thing, the sustained shout of an audience excited by one of the least-expected triumphs in modern record. We had known that the creative imaginations of Peter Brook and Laurence Olivier would do much for Titus; we ...

... The Rornanticks Open Air The older French drama (Rostand's), graceful and crystalline. ...