... Anthony Cookman IN making up a party for the Lysistrata at the Royal Court (or later next month at the Duke of York's) there are sensible reasons for choosing your guests with particular care. The jokes about sex are as broad as ten thousand beeves at pasture, and it is hardly possible to mistake their meaning. Some people cannot abide such jokes. It does no good to point out that in usage ...

... lould never have been forced into the Church, as he was, by powerful family's ambition. He relaxed, though probably litt: nore, in the company of a delightful group of young wo: each of whose portraits, in words, our author provides. As atesman, he was temperate and adroit; he did all he pos could to avoid the final showdown with Savonarola but ,s, the martyr impaled himself on his fate. The ...

... by ELSPETH GRANT THE PARTNERSHIP between Miss Kim Novak and Mr. James Stewart, begun in Vertigo, continues in Bell, Book And Candle-- one observes that, though it does nothing for Mr. Stewart (he is invariably as good as ever he was), it may eventually do something for Miss Novak. In her, one felt, a couple of pictures back, room for improvement could be measured by the acre. She is be r in ...

... Book Reviews BETTINA LINN'S novel, A Letter To Elizabeth (Chatto & Windus, 15s.), is one of those infrequent books which remind one how great fiction's stature can be. The main situation, in itself striking, is declared in the first sentence of all: Foresta Jordan was going to see her father for the first time. And it is Foresta, aged sixteen, who speaks the closing words of the story: I ...

... by ANTHONY COOKMAN WE will put up with a great deal from a that is inflated by the absurdly personality of Mr. Robert Morley. He has a way of hinting that even if we take the story at all seriously there still a private joke to be enjoyed-- the of a mischievous small boy struggling to get out of a portly gentleman who is hard to be petulant or apoplectic ally with a ...

... 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 ...

... by ANTHONY COOK MAN IN The Kidders at the St. Martin's, Mr. Donald Ogden Stewart, the well-known American author, sets himself quite a theme. American life, he suggests, is bedevilled by a false sense of values which elevates commercial advancement and material possessions above human relation ships; and the corrupting effects make them selves felt as much in towns of the Middle West as in New ...

... by GERALD LASCELLES I WROTE SOME MONTHS AGO ABOUT THE prevalence of trio jazz in recent American recording activities. It is a dangerous medium, when used to excess by any but the most brilliant musicians. At the same time it is a quick and easy method of expression for those who are adroit at copying the great. Improvisa tion such as jazz demands, when limited to one or at the most two melody ...

... by ANTHONY COOKMAN GENTS, says the bagman in Pickwick, I give you woman. Giraudoux in his last play, translated by Mr. Christopher Fry as Duel Of Angels, gives us woman with a vengeance, and in a last smouldering diatribe seems to put the blame for what she is on man. There is no one quite so bitter as a wounded optimist, and Giraudoux at the end of the Occupation had come, ...