... A Little Love and Good Company. Cathleen Nesbitt. Faber and Faber. £4.25. NOTABLE actresses often tell their stories but few as well as Cathleen Nesbitt in A Little Love and Good Company. The main quality that distinguishes her book is its combination of sensitivity and intellect. Miss Nesbitt is a very intelligent woman, not in the merely brainy sense, but in her appreciation and ...

... Playwright's Theatre: The English Stage Company at the Royal Court. Terry Browne. (Pitman £3.50 cased edition; £1.95 paperback.) A MAJOR period in theatre history opened on April 2, 1956, when the English Stage Company presented its first production. And at the Royal Court the Company continues, with two newly-appointed artistic directors, Robert Kidd and Nicholas Wright, despite the ravages ...

... Jane Fonda Thomas Kiernan (TaJmy Franklin, £2.95) It is an odd paradox of our times that those who affect to despise the establishment most end up as the greatest celebrities, and are made that way by that very same establishment. Jane Fonda is an excellent exam ple, famous now largely because of her espousal of radical causes rather than for her ability as an actress, which has probably still ...

... Dancing for a Living Hilary Cartwright (Educational Explorers. £2.10) ANY young person considering a career in dance would be well advised to read Hilary Cartwright's book. Miss Cartwright s ow n career in the Royal Ballet is described with the expert skill of a good storyteller, and it comes as quite a shock when she tells of how she had to face up to the end of this career when a spinal ...

... BY J. B. PRIESTLEY HEINEMANN: £5 This handsome volume is a veritable treasure trove. Mr Priestley calls it a personal record of some varied arts and many different artists nearly 200 perfect illustrations concerned with painting, music, acting and clowning. The latter category ought to come under the heading of light entertainment. Here is this grand Yorkshire author recalling fun from the ...

... BY DENNIS CASTLE BAILEY BROS. & SWINFORM (FOLK-STONE) £3.50 In a recent Stage Man's Diary by George Wood, this fine novel was mentioned most favourably and quoted the unqualified praise it got from the well known broadcaster and cricket enthusiast John Ariott. This new edition fills me with admiration for the author's tough struggle to keep his book alive when the original publisher fold ed ...

... Writings on Dance, 1938-68. A. V. Colon (Dance Books, £3 paper, £6 cloth). DANCE AND pop music have one thing in common in that they both collect vast numbers of partisan admirers, often hysterical and usually non-performing. In the case of dance, even certain critics are not far from that lunatic fringe which pays more than due homage to the cult of personality. The late A. V. Coton was ...

... ONE OF the delights ot piavgoing is a visit to the Chichester Festival Theatre. If the production is a good one, you have in addition charming country surroundings and the handsome building itself. There is an air of festival, always there is choice of good things to eat, and to drink, in the restaurant. If the production is not so good, well, you still have the welcome trimmings. It is not ...

... Das Braune Buch--Richard Wagner, edited by Joachim Bergfeld. (Atlantis Verlag, Zurich, Sw. Fr. 48) Of the writing of many books about Richard Wagner there is no end. and they may well become, as the Scripture says, a weariness of the flesh. But the one under review is something else again nothing less than an intimate journal he kept from 1865 to 1882, the year before his death, and never ...

... Robert William Elliston: Manager. Christopher Murray. (The Society for Theatre Research £3.50) WE HAVE another of the excellent Society for Theatre Research publications in this biography of one of our finest actors. It is especially welcome because Elliston has largely been forgotten and is neglected by writers. But in his day--he lived from 1774 to 1831--he was dered by some critics to be ...

... Picture Shows Peter Bogdanovich George Alien Unwin, £3.85 The rise to fame as a film director of Peter Bogdanovich over the past few years is encouraging proof that there is still occasionally some room for the enthusiast as against the conscious artist. For Bogdanovich began as a film fan, which he still remains. His entry into the high echelons of film direction was via the unusual route ...

... THE PROPOSITION that the fusion of comedy and tragedy used by Thomas Middleton helped in the shaping of a new method of drama is the basis of Dorothy M. Farr's Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism (Oliver and Boyd £2.25). Beginning his career as a hack writer with Henslowe, Middleton developed into one of our most important playwrights, now oddly neglected. His development is examined ...