... Significance of Sean Sean O'Casey and his Critics: An Annotated Bibliography 1916-1982, by E. H. Mikhail (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, New Jersey; Bailey Bros and Swinren, Folkestone, £30). Mikhail's previous bibliography on Sean O'Casey appeared in 1 972 but this is a substantially new work, taking us ten years further on and proving that O'Casey is still one of the most signifi cant ...

... came under European influence in the years before the Second World War, when a large number of European directors and actors, mainly Jewish, arrived in the States as refugees from the Nazis. But several noted directors had been lured to Hollywood nearly 20 years earlier, invited by the major studios because European films were challeng ing American product, at least in the eyes of critics. ...

... insists upon the ability and the necessity for the director and cast to remake the play they are staging and to present it in their terms. It has an interesting foreword by Peter Brook, which commends Marowitz's sharp and pitiless analysis ot all that was wrong with whatever he saw on the London stage and points out how a directorial concept must mean the search for potential and for ...

... Love's labour won in India Peter Hepple on Geoffrey Kendal, the man who brought Hamlet to the Hindus The Shakespeare Wallah, by Geoffrey Kendal with Clare Colvin (Sidgwick and Jackson, £12.95) Until Ismail Merchant and James Ivory made their famous film Shakespeare Wallah, few people could have known of the existence of the English theatre company which toured India for many years. Even now, ...

... come across a theatre so well restored as the Opera House, Buxton, particularly when one realises that Buxton was written off as a theatre town over 20 years ago, following years of attempting to make rep pay at the Playhouse. When I first went to Buxton over 30 years ago, I was not even aware of the existence of a perfect Matcham theatre in the town, for at that time it was unhappily ...

... though he had no notable interest in the serious stage, Betjeman was still one of the most interesting Englishmen of our times, handsomely commemorated in this book, which -'harts his life in pictures and examples of his extraordinary varied work. To few arc vouchsafed such a mixture of eccentricity and charm, knowledge and humour. Marlene Dietrich's ABC (Lorimer, £4.95) A revised edition of ...

... llected and com piled by Jean Nyburg (Bachman and Turner, $4.95 Celebrities and ordinary people donate their favourite recipes in aid of Cancer Relief, including Prince Charles, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Torvill and Dean. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Christ opher Biggins' speciality is Creme Brulee. ...

... Past Tense, by Jean Cocteau (Hamish Hamilton £15) COCTEAU HAD engraved on his tomb the haunting promise, Je reste avec vous. With the publication of this first volume of his diaries--which run from 1951 until his death in 1963--he is with us again, and a volume of his life in Paris under the Occupation is promised soon, to add to the astonishing eloqu ence of this indefatigably hardworking ...

... a quarter of a century ago, when someone told me that Rock Hudson was gay. In those days, such a statement came as a shock, especially as Hudson was a top box office star, a combination of tough masculinity and sensitivity whose films with Doris Day were what passed as sex romps then. Besides, he had been married and was constantly being link ed with desirable and glamorous women. That in ...

... Legendary interpreters Les grands interprets romantiques, by Claude Nanquette (Favard. Paris: 368dd: FF135). The idoiisation of outstanding interpreters of opera did not begin with druso and will not end with Pavarotti, though it has become more widespread with the advent of records, radio and TV. In the romantic era--a period that, in the present context, reaches, approximately from 1814 to.. ...

... James Scott Skinner is a reminder that he, and perhaps Neil Gow, are the only Scots fiddle players known to even the keenest folk music enthusiast. But there were dozens more, all contributing to a unique style which is part of the sound of Scotland and also influential in North American folk music. Abhorred by the aristocracy, condemned by the Church, Scots fiddle music survived, the ...

... The lady of Coole Lady Gregory: the Woman Behind the Irish Renaissance, by Mary Lou Kohfeldt (Andre Deutsch. £12.95) It is remarkable that much of Ire land's political and cultural renaissance was fuelled by the Protestant Anglo- Irish ascendancy, the perfect example I of the liberal conscience at work saving people from themselves. Lady Gregory, nee Augusta Persse, was an excellent case in ...