... AN OUTSTANDING WAR-TIME NOVEL Nevil Shute's Stirring Tale of the R.A.F. The Love Story of Goethe and Lofte Kestner Victorian Hilarity and Stuart Intrigue -By Vernon Fane IT is time the British public sat up and took notice of Mr. Nevil Shute. Not long after Munich, and just about the time when this country was becoming A. R. P.-conscious, a novel was published called What Happened to the ...

... AS Christmas approaches, the bookshop is our Mecca. We are looking, of course, for light and neutral stuff that will do just as well for Auntie Maud if we decide to give that tray- cloth to Auntie Dora after all. We hardly think in terms of weighty volumes like Lewis Mumford's THE CONDITION OF MAN (Seeker and Warburg. 25s.), which nowadays only America has the paper to print. But it is the ...

... STORIES OF PEOPLE AND PLACES --By Vernon Fane A Dramatic and Inspiring Play; An American Woman's Study of Japan; A Causerie on the Modern University A Smalltown Swashbuckler and the Thriller of the Week MR. MAXWELL ANDER SON is one of America's most distinguished playwrights, and I understand that his most recent play, THE EVE OF ST. MARK' (Bodley Head. 5s.), is now being performed in this ...

... Some New Anglo-Saxon Novels The Short Story Vogue Lending Libraries and Literature The plan of Miss Susan Ertz's new novel is simple. An ambitious New York lady persuades her husband to accept a busi ness opening in England. Very reluctantly he leaves his accustomed haunts and friends. After a year or two his wife, somewhat disil lusioned of European culture, persuades him to give up his post ...

... THE ART OF THE CINEMA. Ransacking the Ages Captain Blood More Out of Africa By So IR. LITTLEWOOD Those of us who are taking a more or less personal interest in these early and fascinating adventures of the young art of the cinema might well be pardoned for finding it hard to keep a clear course amidst the rush of ill-governed and sporadic energy apparent everywhere just now. The cinema is ...

... Americana, Young and Old A Novelist Fails at a Short Story A Volume of Short Story Masterpieces Speaking from memory, I believe that there are four or five Chester-Belloc novels in existence. Speaking from observation, I notice that-- if the catalogues of second-hand booksellers are to be trusted-- collectors attach no extrava gant value to these hooks. I am not surprised at that, for I have ...

... A LITERARY LETTER The Biography of Disraeli. London, May 23, 1916. It would seem that a kind of confession album which is really called the Strangers' Book is kept at Raby Castle, near Darlington, and through the kindness of the Lord Barnard I am able to re produce a strip from it showing the signature of Mr. Disraeli, who, it will be noted, enters his profession as patriotism. Under the ...

... LITERATURE Some New Books of the Season. Lnrd Strathcona I know not if it be more difficult for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle than enter Heaven, but this I do know-- the world would have it so. People are pretty nearly equally divided into two kinds-- the kind which believes that no rich man is honest, and the one which likes to fancy that he is so for the simple reason that he ...

... Travellers of All Kinds The Last of Tut-Ankh- Atnen The North Pole Old and New Stendhal was fond of saying that, in order to know a man, one must study his way of amusing himself. Hot all the authors of travel books will admit that they travel for pleasure; nevertheless, I believe that in nearly every case they do. The real differ ences are to be sought amongst the various kinds of pleasure ...

... -- Belloc on the Cecils A Disciple of Conrad Compton Mackenzie Does it Again The Alpine Arnold Lunn By CECIL ROBERTS Some years ago Mr. Hilaire Belloc began his task of putting right the history of England. With that began also the task of the critics in putting right Mr. Hilaire Belloc. The difference is all in the point of view. Mr. Belloc's scholar ship is unassailable, but his reading of ...

... A LITERARY LETTER Lord Curzon's Great Book on India. London, Juno 15, 1925. Who will write the authoritative biography of Lord Curzon? I have heard ominous rumours of quite the wrong people. I assume the decision rests with Lady Curzon, and I hope the choice will fall upon Mr. Harold Nicolson, who has written so well upon Byron and Tennyson, and has large Foreign Office experience to help him ...

... . si mold Palmer 071 As a rule, this page is devoted to the interests of those who look to books to enrich their lives. But such people are undoubtedly in a minority. Most men and women regard books as a distraction and a pastime, and never knowingly open a volume which calls for mental exertion on their part, How ever deplorable, this attitude may appear to the idealist, it is yet an attitude ...