... 111 ■Hill THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRESENT BY JOAN HEILBRONER (WORLD'S WORK, 16s. 6d.) UNDER THE RED ROBE, NATIONAL VELVET (3s. 6d.) THE NEW NOAH, A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST (4s. 6d.) PENGUIN BOOKS SEMOLINA SILKPAWS COMES TO CATSTOWN BY GLADYS WILLIAMS (METHUEN, 9s. 6d.) RED IS NEVER A MOUSE BY E. CLIFFORD (WORLD'S WORK, 12s. 6d.) MERRY CHRISTMAS! (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 12s. 6d.) TINTIN IN TIBET BY ...

... IMlilHI WATERCOLOURS FROM THE CECIL HIGGINS ART GALLERY AGNEW'S I SUPPOSE I HAVE DRIVEN THROUGH BEDFORD at least a dozen times in the past few years but I have to confess that I have never stopped long enough to visit the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery there. If you ask me why not, I can only echo Dr. Johnson's reply to the lady who asked why, in his dictionary, he defined the pastern as the knee ...

... ELSPETH GRANT ON IN ONE OF THOSE SMALL, INTIMATE restaurants where you can't help hearing your neighbour's conversa tion-- because they will speak up as if addressing the multitude from the steps of the Albert Memorial-- a grey-haired gentleman was deplor ing the lack of alluring entertainment in London. One goes less and less to the theatre, he yawned: And, of course, one never goes at all ...

... The] slapdash and the facile mm Victor Pasmore, New London Gallery. Bernard Buffet, Lefevre Gallery LAST WEEK I WENT TO VICTOR Pasmore's show at the New London Gallery and I didn't know whether to cry or laugh. I am still wonder ing whether I should think of it as a tragedy or a joke. But before I say more let me tell you briefly something about this artist of whom Sir Herbert Read has said, ...

... ■HUM A Motley to the View, by Marigold Armitage. (Faber Faber, 15s.) Four Voices, by Isobel English. (Longmans, 16s.) Wolfbane, by Pohl Kornbluth. (Gollancz, 13s. 6d.) Marilyn Monroe, by Maurice Zolotow. (W. H. Allen, 25s.) Zsa Zsa Gabor, by Gerold Frank. (Barker, 21s.) IF THE OBJECT OF WRITING-- A difficult, lonely and dispiriting business at the best of times-- is to produce a masterpiece, ...

... rILIIIa FIRST FIVE: 1 Cul-de-Sac. 2 Ivan the Terrible. 3 Becket. 4 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 5 Mary Poppins. Right from the opening credit titles, which resemble nothing more than two rain bows fighting over possession of a crock of gold, it's pretty obvious that Stanley Donen is prepared to resort to all the tricks in the cinematic bag to make Arabesque (A, Leicester Square Theatre, ...

... NOTHING, ESPECIALLY CHRISTMAS, IS going to put the merry publishers off their stroke. Here, while the days shorten and the book-lists lengthen, is a selection to he getting on with instead of sitting around worrying about the shopping. A cold kept me away from the only fancy dress party in London to which I can remember being invited, but Julia went alone and reported that all the six ...

... THcHTRE Accent on the ladies this week, with Fenella Fielding moving from The Mermaid to the Comedy in Let's Get a Divorce, and at the Strand Honor Blackman making her first stage appearance for a dozen years in Wait Until Dark. In many ways both actresses have managed to shed their respective images, built up over the years, for these appearances. Miss Field ing, instead of appearing like a ...

... nuns I would be wise not to make too many cutting (ouch!) re marks about the length of Nevada Smith (A, Plaza, Piccadilly Circus, currently), as I have been told that, since the magazine showing of the film, cuts have been made which have proved of great benefit. I think, though, that it s only because I like watch ing Westerns so much that I enjoyed watching Steve Mc Queen as a country boy on ...

... iff Willi IT IS NOT CERTAIN WHAT KIND OF GESTURE Mr. Osborne intends to make by giving his two plays this overall title. It is even less certain how grateful England ought to be. Each play is devoted to an attack on one of the playwright's public bugbears: the fact of royalty and the theory of Press corruption. In The Blood Of The Bambergs, directed by Mr. John Dexter, it is a royal marriage ...

... Mil i Willi MUL1IM liiuBJUDiluMQI) ZOOT AT RONNIE SCOTT'S BY ZOOT SIMS TUBBS IN N.Y. BY TUBBY HAYES THAT'S IT! BY BOOKER ERVIN ORNETTE BY ORNETTE COLEMAN THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER BYCANNONBALLADDERLEY THE RESULTS OF AN INTERESTING EXCHANGE OF British and American musicians have been perpetuated by two Fontana albums released early this summer. Tenor player Zoot Sims spent a month at Ronnie ...

... FIRST FIVE: 1 Noel Coward double bill. 2 Arsenic Old Lace. 3 Hello Dolly! 4 Man Superman. 5 Incident at Vichy. One thing you can say about the theatre-- it's always being enthusiastic about itself, always pushy, always sound ing off, always trying to be the most important thing around. It needs to be like this, of course. For basically the British are not a great theatre- going public. They'll ...