FROM OXFORD TO OXFORD.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20772, 4 February 1933, Page 13

FROM OXFORD TO OXFORD.

BomuUbout W»7, T>7 LouU Maloao. ' Putnam. „v Devlin Urquhart behaved erratically enough at Oxford to persuade Sir' Sandal Belcher, the great nerve specialist, that he was, perhaps, '"not quit*. 7 '. Sir '. r Kandal himself presided over .his nptts*hold with such pomp' and- authority that his daughter Janet, in the end, had to assert herself by hurling the decanter at the mirror. Both Devlin ands she wanted to find their -own way-- He, rebelled against the futility of his jab- cbcring intellectual circle \ she, .against the safe and narrow programme of life drawn -up by Sir Kandal. Mr .-Malone * throws them together and -provokes them to elope and marry; and-Devlin " continued the course in humanistic-real-istic education 'which- he began whoh h* , slipped away from Oxford, found a job .'. as a gardener, was dismissed as' an .impostor because his sham Westmorland dialect let him down, and moved on to work in London. He "returned to Oxford, sobered and wiser, and the reader will agree that the roundabout -way. ionestly leads to the cheerful-ending; 1 but Mr Malone's 'chief success is in exhibit- ■ ing, without false 1 brilliance or bitterness, the desolate, unsatisfying ■environment against' which Devlin's ■ protest was made and the types Which create it. ' '....■-