... INCOMPARABLY the finest production of the week is THAMES TRIUMPHANT (Studio. 15s.), a volume which is half text and half drawings in pen and pencil on a subject which seems as inexhaustible as the Seven Springs from which England's river starts. The text is a pleasant and discursive mixture of anecdote, historical fact and rambling reminiscence, whereas the line drawings are exquisitely ...

... A SATIRIST'S ENCOUNTER WITH THE BOCHE feter de folnay s Adventures; A Jxovel by Hugh walpole; An Historian's Autobiography Summer Holidays of Yester-year By Vernon Fane STILL they come, these hooks by writers who stayed, saw and suffered in the fall of France. One and all they have loved France. One and all they testify to the sickness of equi vocation, bewildered acquisition and frustration ...

... The World of Books Reviewed by VERNON FANE CHILDREN who are brought up (as all children should be), on the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, keep all their lives an affectionate, hero-worship ping feeling for him, that no more mature enthusiasms can replace. My own childhood was enlightened to the extent that I thought R. L. S. the greatest living writer, and I confess that nowadays I still ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD (Stoll). The title of this revue is a fair sample of the type of entertainment it affords. There is neither subtlety nor wit, but these are hardly suited to the broad acres of the Stoll Theatre. What Mr. Jack Hylton, who presents the show, has been shrewd enough to realise is that there is a huge public for broad jokes, slap-dash and very noisy ...

... I NEVER knew a humble bee but it was sure to sting. For me the apiary is a place to be avoided. Yet I confess to getting a great pleasure out of books about bees and bee keeping, for apiarists, like fishermen and golfers, have the habit of being readable, inter esting and literate. The first thing that at tracted me about SHINING HOURS, by C. N. Buzzard (Collins. ios. 6d.), was the dust-jacket ...

... THE B.B.C., even with the addition of the distin guished Third Programme, is a popular Aunt Sally for near- wits and carpers in general, but the whole of the case for the defence lies, possibly quite unintentionally, in one volume. VOICES FROM BRITAIN (Allen and Unwin. 18s.) is a neces sary book. It is not the kind of book which you will want to borrow from a friend, because you won't want to ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE A MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM (Hay market).-- Of the present series of classical revivals at the Haymarket, the latest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, has evoked by far the most dis cussion. Not all the criticism, professional and otherwise, has been favourable by a very long chalk. The main reason for the pother, I fancy, is the obvious desire of those concerned in the ...

... THE scope of Mrs. Markoo sha Fischer's novel. THE NAZAROVS (Gollancz. 12s. 6d.), is very wide, as it embraces not only the Russian scene from 1905 to the end of the Moscow siege in the last war, but also the rise, fall and renascence of a Russian family, together with their husbands and wives and some of their dependants. Nevertheless, the storv is not confused and the author has been able to ...

... BY long odds, THE AMERICANS (Cresset Press, 10s. 6d.) is the most remarkable book of the week. This is a study, revealing and readable, of the characteristics of the people of the United States, and it has been made by Mr. Geoffrey Gorer, a British anthropologist whose serious contribution to this science is only equalled in value by his admirable candour. Mr. Gorer's findings are sometimes ...

... Reviewed by PHILIP PAGE UINE FEATHERS (Prince of Wales's).-- Before becoming the chief attraction in the above revue, Mr. Jack Buchanan had a most successful shot at straight comedy, appearing in a revival of Frederick Lonsdale's sophisticated The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. I should be very sorry to see the last of Mr. Buchanan. But anything less sophisti cated than Fine Feathers I have rarely seen ...

... IT has been announced that book publishers are to receive an extra 15 per cent. on their paper ration, which brings their allocation up to 65 per cent. of their pre-war con sumption. That does not mean that the famine in the book-shops and in the libraries will be relieved, since the pub lishers have been requested by the Government to use the extra allocation for export. How far this dole ...

... fi m u slc T of th&(Week^ jWVAviv-. V V '^''SSSSS&t^Tp a n V fl |P^G By I4:- FRANCIS TOYE. I feU V I wonder if many of my readers are in the habit of attending the Chamber Concerts in the National Gallery on Tuesday afternoons. If not, I strongly advise them to adopt it. Dropping in almost by chance last week, I had a most pleasant experience. For the first time, I think, in London I lighted ...