What London Is Reading

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1939, Page 10 (Supplement)

What London Is Reading

By Charles Pilgrim

Books In Review

. LONDON. rmust come to almost everyone, from time to time, to long for solitude. The life of a city is almost deafening and stunning. Is there no retreat? There is for those who know how to find it, and amongst them is Mr. R. M. Lockley. In "I Know An Island" (Harrap) Mr. Lockley tells his readers how he leased the island of Skokholm, off the coast of Pembrokeshire. ' Skokholm is uninhabited and its tenant was as free and lonely as any Rob> inson Crusoe, free to observe the habits of birds on which he is an authority and free to build his own house from the timely wreck of a ship which he bought for £5. This purchase included many tons of timber and 50 tons of coal. A real islander's home was made, a home which 111 time was shared by Mrs. Lockley when the author married. Although there was peace and quiet in the retreat, there was no lack of vitality.' I Mr. Lockley shows us how one may live-a full and contented life-away . .from the crowd and all the distractions of modern civilisation. Many may find it an astonishing fact that very close to the British coast may be found a solitude which one is inclined to think reserved for distant Pacific or Atlantic islets. Adventure and Retreat Mr. Ncgley Parson is known to the 1 world as an adventurous journalist who . has given us the story of many of his , adventures in book form. Now he has ] turned to novel writing, but one feels ' that lie has not altogether departed . from the mood of autobiography. "The < Story of a Lake" (Gollancz) is the tale of Tony Lynd, a newspaper correspond- J ent who has settled down at the end of a somewhat exhaustive career on the c shores of a lake in British Columbia. £ There he leads a life of solitude and | the cultivation of the soil. The tale is ( the tale of how lie got there. His life c

; has been of the wildest. He has had an English wife whom he has loved, but ,that has not prevented him having more or less sordid; affairs with other women. He has drunk heavily and been altogether about as tough as they make •'cm, • His wife's sudden and violent death has. brought him up sharply against the tragedy of his own career and at the end of the tale one leaves him where one found him—trying to discover forgetfulness and health at liis lake side. His is > another way of retreat, but not so satisfying as-that of Mr. Lockley. Mr. Belloc's Youth Mr. Hilaire Belloc has written books almost beyond counting and books of almost every kind. His latest, "Return to the Baltic" (Constable), might be called a travel book and a travel in the matured soul of its author. Mr. Belloc deliberately went back to the Scandinavian countries after an absence of 43 years to find;out how they now might look to a man well on iu his sixties. Needless to say, the impressions Ave have on paper : are essentially and unrestrainedly Bellocian. Mr.' Belloc gives us to understand that he does not like the modern world and that Sweden, especially as it has developed, is not at all to his taste. He welds into everything his own interpretation of history and once more we arc up against his general belief that the Reformation ruined everything. Those who enjoy Mr. Belloc—and who does not?—must enjoy this book. It is full of all the old skill with its little vignettes of places seen and of historical characters mentioned. It may be that his French blood accounts for his innate conservatism. Certainly the man who wrote "The Path to Rome" is still the man who went to the Baltic the other day. There has been no change. An Eberhardt Mystery Miss Eberhardt, amongst the writers of crime stories, may be*described as a specialist in atmosphere.,- No one can excel her in developing suspense and that creepiness which assures us that a crime is round the corner or behind the door. Her gift has not forsaken her <

in "The Glass Slipper" (Crime Club). As is known, this author is something of a feminist in her approach to .the world of murder. She seems to wish to. show that women can da their bit when it comes to finding a criminal. ■ In "The Glass Slipper" the heroine is a nurse who marries a doctor and a widower." Unfortunately for all of them suspicion arises about the death of the doctors wife. There is an exhumation and traces of poison are found. Both 'the doctor and the nurse are inevitably suspect. But there are others who may have an interest in the dead woman's fate and Miss Eberhardt i has woven a complicated plot which does ■ t not Hag until the end and the well- . handed solution. Those who arc anxious to make their own flesh creep for an . hour or so will be well advised to read » "The Glass' Slipper." L Boer and Briton ! This year is being celebrated the ■ hundredth anniversary of the Great ■ Trek and Mr. Derek Temple has ■ obviously been influenced by this in i writing "Strange* Heritage" (John > Long). For the prologue is concerned with the hard adventure of the Voortrekkers in 1539. The main tale is one of the war which followed sixty years later when Richard Ollerton of the , I British Army was helped by Joanna Leroux, the daughter of a Boer farmer. The Boer girl nurses the wounded British soldier, the two fall in love and after the Englishman escapes, only to be killed, a son. Dirk, is born to Joanna. This son, who becomes the main character, is the heir to two warring bloods and it is with the problem of such mixed descent that the latter pages deal. The chief value of this novel_ lies in its pictures of South African life and its acquaintance with the Boer character. Joanna stands out as a pattern of splendid strength; Story of a Motor Car In "The. Magic of a Name" (Foulis), Mr. Harold Nockolds tells the story of '* the development of the Rolls Rovce car. Frederick Henry Royce began life as a - newspaper boy and learned something 1 of'machinery by AVorking'on a railway j at Peterborough. He studied electricity ' without success and then with n. total capital of £70 experimented with a ' second-hand car in Manchester. . < . He. was one of those experimenters « who left notliin'g to chance. He studied ( cars in all ! their details and all their < 'uncertain ways, for in those days the i way of a car was uncertainty, itself. ; But in time from his workshop, came c the first Royce. A partnership with Charles Rolls, a son of Lord Llan- i gattock, carried the Rolls. Royce fur- 1 titer on its way. This, little history of 1 the growth of a name should be of 1 interest to all those millions who are « drivers or owners of cars. t