... THE romantic approach is used in fiction perhaps more often than strictly neces sary, and certainly this is true of that form of fiction, the historical novel, a dangerously vague term in itself. There seems to be something particu larly tempting in trying this kind of approach in writing of the late eighteenth century, and the very early nineteenth century. vvnetner it is tne iteign 01 terror ...

... at tfe- Love in Albania*' (Si. James's) Aniliony Cooknian ANOTHER of the inconsequent plays, now very much in fashion, which abound in extravagant, amusing situations, pro duce every five minutes or so a really witty line and leave you in the end wondering what it has all been about. Mr. Eric Linklater (who, as the author, is entitled to his opinion) may know better, but his play, I am ...

... Elizabeth llewetis The Moment of Truth Condemned to Life Green Grow the Rushes The Rose and the Star SOME of us are so lucky-- even in these times, --as to manage to slip through life without any showdown. Or should it be called show-up? No single excoriating crisis forces the lucky one to dredge his soul to the depths, to examine his sense of values, or to his or her own meaning, as an ...

... THEATRE NOTES J. C. Trewin FRENCH WITHOUT TEARS. The Babylon of Alexander has fallen; but here again is the babel of Maingot's. Terence Rattigan, with the fame of thirteen years and half-a-dozen major plays behind him, is now represented in the West End by a revival of his first success. Does the farce of French Without Tears start tears of laughter? Sometimes, yes. It is the airiest nonsense ...

... . By Louis Golding. Rupert Croft-Cooke THERE is one superlative that must go to Mr. Golding-- he is the most persuasive of present-day novelists. He can make one believe anything. In this book, for instance, he has taken a theme which would wreck almost any of his contemporaries and developed it with such winning conviction that the reader has no resentment at being carried into phantasmagoria ...

... . By Gerald Kersh. Heinemann 9s. 6 d.) MR. KERSH'S book consists of three short novels which reveal his two qualities as a story-teller: energy and irony. The first story tells of a murderer's jealousy for the Press publicity given to a woman falsely accused of his crime, for which she is tried and acquitted. It is a good niece of hard-boiled reporting. ending in a twisted melodrama. The ...

... by Robert Dane THERE must be someone up there at Alexandra Palace in charge of Programme Planning, though at times the viewer might be pardoned for assuming that this important appointment has not yet been filled. The ouier evening, ior example, a complete night's viewing consisted of (a) the current edition of the newsreel, b the first in a series of magazine programmes about London, and (c) ...

... . Rupert Croft-Cooke By Oliver Onions. Michael Joseph 10s. 6 d.) THIS is a book to make most of us who try to write novels feel that we should have taken up bricklaying. Splendid in con ception and execution alike, it has as its core a story which is both heartrending and simple, a story of youth in a mediaeval forest: a love-story, in fact. Readers of Poor Man's Tapestry will remember the ...

... . By Nigel Balchin. Collins 9s. 6 d.) I have never been able to see in Mr. Balchin more than a highly competent novelist whose themes combine inner conflict in the minds of his characters with somewhat melo dramatic events in their lives. It is a good recipe and makes for brisk and lively books, but it needs a more profound writer than this to bring it to such success as it had, for instance, ...

... FRESH from her success with The Pursuit of Love, Miss Nancy Mitford continues her triumphant way to best- sellerdom with Love in a COLD CLIMATE (Hamish Hamilton. 8s. 6d.), already thrice chosen, by two newspapers and the Book Society. I he daughter 01 tne now iarnous noirer reus the story. Several of our old ■friends are still around notahlv Fa playing his loud gramophone, describing his ...

... TWO MEN WHO MET KING LOBENGULA The African Journals of a Bishop and a Financier Lobengula, savage King of the Matabele, who stood alike in the path of the missionary and the seeker after gold, who for a brief moment checked the acquisitive course of Empire, is revealed from two highly different viewpoints in two journals which are published this week within the same volume. The joint title is ...

... LOWLAND LAIRDS The Scottish Scene Through Three Centuries With his lives of William Wallace and Alexander III, James Fergusson, biographer and historian, acquitted himself well in a conventional manner, but infinitely more revealing in its portrayal of Scottish life, more charged with authentic atmosphere, is his series of essays on LOWLAND LAIRDS (Faber and Faber. 16s.). Mr. Fergusson, who ...