... THE controversy as to whether women should be permitted to take part in the Olympic Three-Day Event (at present they are barred, although they may compete in the European trials) will almost certainly be revived after the Badminton trials this week. Sheila Willcox, who won the European individual championship at Copenhagen last year at the age of 21, is one of the strongest argu ments in ...

... THERE is a tendency in some scientific circles to belittle the mental processes of the higher animals. Their better efforts are so often dismissed with contempt. They are deemed incapable of memory, emotion, or reasoning power. All, or nearly all, is put down to conditioned reflexes. ine Mind ut ine uog (oountry Life i8s.) makes a refreshing change. The author, R. H. Smythe, M.R.C.V.S., does, ...

... CINEMA RECENT PRODUCTIONS STAGE STRUCK (on release) is a new version of Morning Glory, the film that won stardom and an Oscar for Katharine Hepburn twenty- five years ago. Today it seems likely to do the same for nineteen-year-old Susan Strasberg, the girl who played Anne Frank in New York and Kim Novak's kid sister in Hollywood's Picnic. It tells the old story of little Miss Nobody from the ...

... THEATRE RECENT PRODUCTIONS THE MOSCOW ART THEATRE (Sadler's Wells) offers one of the most extraordinary experiences within the average playgoer's memory. I don't understand Russian, but I have long known the wistful magic of Chekhov; and' those two great plays, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters, and a slightly lesser one, Uncle Vanya, have never been more magical than they are at the ...

... Horses and Horses One of the most remarkable things about the late Baroness Wentworth, who was a world authority on the Arabian horse, was her encyclopaedic knowledge of the genus or species which ordinary people call the horse. In an age of specialising, in which one individual or group of individuals will spend lifetimes in the study of one type or variety of a species, it might seem ...

... MARES, Foals and Foaling (J A- Allen and Co.; 5s. 6d.) is sub titled A Handbook for the Small Breeder, and is to be strongly recommended to anyone who has an in-foal mare or a young foal in his or her charge. The text has been translated by A. A. Dent from the German it represents the horse section of a larger work by Frederick Andrist, a Swiss, covering all the larger domestic animals. ...

... And Fishing Thoughts TWO or three years ago Com mander C. F. Walker, the author of Angler's Odyssey (H. Jenkins; 15s.), suddenly decided to give up fishing; he sold his rods, all except one of sentimental value, and took to archery instead. Whilst his friends-- and no doubt his relations-- marvelled at this strange decision, there came an invitation to fish some lakes. For various reasons he ...

... SINCE the war there has been a considerable increase in bird- watching and some of it is to be encouraged. I am no more in favour of the accredited orni thologist almost literally poking his nose into a rare bird's nest or keep ing a specimen as an unwilling captive on his pond or in his garden, than I am in favour of the antics ol hordes of enthusiastic amateurs beating a path to a nesting ...

... by SIRIOL HUGH- J ONES SOMETIMES a novel comes up that is more than easy entertainment, more than a way of merely passing the time. (Occa sionally in my gloomier moments I am driven to believe that most of us, myself included, read fiction obsessively because it is there, like the classic answer to the question, Why do you want to climb Everest?) Alberto Moravia is a very distinguished ...

... by ELSPETH GRANT IT may take a little time before you succumb to the curious magic of The Sea Wall-- in fact I am almost prepared to bet you will be telling yourself uneasily, early on, that this is a very rum, demented piece. But M. Rene Clement, its director, is a skilled and relentless magician and it's my belief he'll get you in the end. He certainly got me. I felt at the outset as if I ...

... he Titanic sinks-- and you are there by ELSPETH GRANT THE STRANGE and terrible story of the Titanic disaster still grips, chills and mystifies, though it is 46 years since the largest liner in the world, on her maiden to New York, struck an iceberg and was lost-- with fifteen hundred and two souls. A Night To Remember, excellently directed Mr. Roy Baker, is based on Mr. Walter Lord's ...

... by ELSPETH GRANT IN an enthralling, illuminating and moving documentary, No Room For Wild Animals, Dr. Bernliard Grzimelc, head of the Frankfurt Zoo, and his son, 22-year-old Herr Michael Grzimek, put up an impassioned plea for the preservation of Africa's multifarious faunae which are threatened with extinction by the ever-increasing encroachments of civilization upon jungle and veldt. Year ...