... acting career in favour of working with a Christian organisation called the Navigators was one of the minor mysteries of the sixties. A considerable portion of this autobiography is devoted to an explanation of his conversion, and like most accounts of this nature it takes some swallowing. But the author's sincerity cannot be questioned, and there is much of interest in learning just how ...

... Terrifyingly true Galina, by Galiaa Vishnevskaya (Hodder and Stoughton, £14.95) An autobiography? Yes, but also a great sprawling Russian novel, all the more moving and terrifying because it is true, for it is the kind of tale one could hardly invent. Vishnevskaya is of course the wife of Mstislav Rostropovich, arguably the world's greatest cellist, and she is herself a singer of rare ...

... Defending Victorian taste for spectacle Victorian Popular Theatre 1850- 1910, by Michael R. Booth (RoutledEc Kenan Paul. £12.50) AT A TIME when London theatregoers are enjoying the most spectacular show for some years in the revival of The Sound of Music, it is interesting to be reminded that this highly-capitalised production is almost small beer by the side of Irving's 1885 production of ...

... Last line on the fab four Former Beatles press officer Tony Barrow on a new compilation The Beatles Live! by Mark Lewisohn (Published on May 19 by Pavilion Books in association with Michael IoMnh. at £8.95) Mark Lewisohn has spent something like seven years compiling a book of unique value to any media communicator who feels the need to have the ultimate work of reference on The Beatles at his ...

... the eighties, and it becomes apparent that Britain now has an exceptionally gifted crop of composers. As usual, however, they are probably appreciated more abroad than in this country, where concertgoers and record buyers are inclined to be ultra-conservative and most contemporary music is consigned to an artistic ghetto of new music instead of being prog rammed in ordinary concert ...

... monstrously priced, attempts to examine the variety of ways in which Shakespeare exploited basic techniques of structural design until, transformed by his ingenuity they become as recognisable a part of his signature as the dense poetic texture produced by his clusters of imagery. It is to actors rather than academics that Professor Brennan, director of the annual Shakespeare seminar at ...

... Linda Evans by Michael Freedland Published by Weidenfeld Nicolson £9.95. TO thousands of middle-aged women across the United States and in Britain, Krystle Carrington, the role played by Linda Evans in Dynasty, inspires hope. Hope that a woman in her early forties can still be sexually attractive, glamorous and charming and retain the untiring love and respect from a wealthy oil magnate ...

... Why doesn't Paul do a better job himself? The ex-Beatles publicist on a sketchy portrait of McCartney Goddess: the Secret Lives of Marih/a Monroe, by Aatkoay Summers (Gol- laacz, £12.95) Anthony Summers has researched this book with a thoroughness which is a cross between that of a private detective and a serious historian, not a particularly good combination for an easy read. But in its ...

... theatre as a distinctive genre, and are quite right to take this attitude, because plays which adopt feminist stances should be treated on their merits as theatre. It seems a trifle strange to find pieces which have been widely presented in Britain, such as Top Girls, Piaf, Once a Catholic and Steaming, signposted as feminist landmarks in this book. But this volume in the Macmilian ...

... Yearbook continues to be the finest reference work of its kind, and even though, as is often the case with reference books these days, there has been a spin-off in the shape of the British Music Education Yearbook, the previous small section in this volume concerning music education still re mains. There are no new features but one can commend Robert Maycock's usual ex cellent Musical Britain ...

... that one cannot place a lot of reliance on the biographical sections of Kate Lynch's study, particularly because, as an American, she can have little personal knowledge of the singer's background or his work in the mid-sixties with a variety of bands, like the King Bees, the Lower Third and the Mankh Boys. Bowie is quite unique in that he has invented a whole range of personae for himself, so ...

... Denison must be the most fully chronicled theatrical married couple of modem times, including the jointly-written The Actor and his World, two autobiographies by him self, Overture and Beginners and Double Act and now the eagerly awaited one by herself which, along with 24 other books, one of which, The Glanville Women the story of a theatrical family is at least part autobi ographical, is a ...