... SCARBOROUGH SPA SEASON TO BE CUT rIK season M the Scarborough Spu is lo be curtailed Mil summer. InMead ot opeoiog at Whit sun. as but been the custom for a long time, the season nHI not ttart until Sunday June JO. The mam reason for thn shortening of the reason, says Dennis LovHI, the S|M) manager, because it i unprofitable to run the Spa for a full 16 weeks. Neither Charles Shadwclt and his ...

... At the Theatre OPENING somewhat later than usual, the Shakespeare festival at Stratford found that spring had advanced to greet it. Cohorts of daffodils dancing along the river's edge in the bright evening sunshine sent us all into As You Like It in a holiday humour. And as we walked home with the leisurely, gossiping gait suited to a night of high summer we readily agreed with each other that ...

... Anthony Cook man THE theatre goes on playing a game of snakes and ladders with our hopes. Only a few years ago poetry was about to put on a new look and return to the stage in a big way Alas, Mr. Eliot was plainly seen in The Confidential Clerk to be marking time, and the true successor to The Lady's Mot For Burning was unaccountably delayed while Mr. Fry fashioned a vehicle for Dame Edith ...

... Elizabeth Boiven ROBERT SPEAIGHT'S The Life Of Hilaire Belloc (Hollis and Carter, 30s.) has the merit of being a living portrait. This book has a liveliness and unconstraint which removes all chill from the term official biography-- in undertaking to write it Mr. Speaight, one feels instinctively certain, was actuated by love for the great man. Affection followed Hilaire Belloc throughout ...

... ZULEIKA (Saville Theatre). Sir Max Beerbohm's Oxford fantasy has been turned into a work which, though much resembling an Edwardian musical comedy, has occasional life- saving touches of irony. Below, the infatuated Duke of Dorset (David Morton) is loftily disdainful with Zuleika (Mildred Mayne) the woman who has stolen his impregnable heart. Below them, the endearing Noaks (Peter Woodthorpe ...

... ODD MAN IN (St. Martin's Theatre). Adapted from a French play, this is a very Parisian threesome, including as can be seen above, the husband (Derek Farr) threatening an innocent interloper (Donald Sinden), with sudden death. Since this is a triangle comedy, no actual slaughter takes place, despite the fears of the wife (Muriel Pavlow). Below, mat ters have now been seen in an altogether ...

... Anthony Coo km an AT the first night of Miss Lesley Storm's Roar Like A Dove at the Phoenix I came across several people who seemed mildly disconcerted to find themselves enjoying a play which they insisted was rather indelicate. The obvious cause of this discomfort was the attitude of a pleasant Scottish laird to his pleasant American wife. It was that of a stockbreeder. The healthy young ...

... IT is becoming more and more widely accepted that, with the exception of a few individuals, big-game animals are only dangerous as the result of provocation by man. John F. Burger, who was born in South Africa, and has hunted in many parts of east and central Africa, specialising in buffalo as quarry, supports this theory in African Buffalo Trails (Robert Hale: 18s.). He writes, In parts of ...

... A CITY which excelleth all others was the descrip- tion which one of Henry VIII's physicians used about London; he was thinking in terms of Venice, Home and Constan tinople. And Oliver Lawson Dick, who has written The Vanished City: a Prospect oj London t lutcninson 63s.), for which Robert Carrier has selected about 130 contemporary engravings, supports the claim with enthusiasm and ...

... Those of the Forest (Faber 21s.) is by Wallace Byron Grange, a member of the U.S. Biological Survey, and his book deals with American animals in an American landscape. The principal characters (and his method verges on that of characterisation) are snowshoe rabbits. His study of them is knowledgeable, serious and thorough. Yet, although' he can write well, and has some impressive descriptive ...

... Anthony Cook man IT WAS Lady Precious Stream (a most adroit piece of Trojan horsemanship) that first introduced the fascination of the Chinese theatre. Since then a company from Peking and a variety troupe also from the People's Republic have shown us the real thing and the fascination has grown. Now comes to Drury Lane a group from Formosa offering further examples of the exotic theatricality ...

... FROM FRENCH SOUFFLE TO RATTER PUDDING Anthony Cookman POOR Mr. Nigel Patrick! As decent an English comedian as ever put bigamy into a charming light, he finds himself set in The Egg at the Saville to perform the well known Gallic trick of making what is really odious irresistibly comic. As a good Englishman he clearly has only the vaguest idea of what to do about it. The Remarkable Mr. ...