THE BACKWARD GLANCE

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22769, 22 July 1939, Page 18

THE BACKWARD GLANCE

* MR NEVINSON’S FANTASIES Films of Time. By H. W. Nevinson, Kentledge. 227 l>p. (10/e net.) Through Whltcombe and Tombs Ltd. To hold a book of Henry Nevinson’s in the hand is to have the promisd of adventure. His latest, with a wonderful head and shoulders photograph of himself for frontispiece, relates neither warcorrespondent’s nor traveller’s excitement. With one or two exceptions it is concerned with the backward glance, 12 fantasies, as he calls them, ranging over time and space. The most distant of them recall Lord Dunsany’s early tales; the most argumentative, Frederick Manning. Yet all are informed with Nevinson’s sense of irony and his love of humanity. ~ • The films of time, unexpectedly, are movie films. If we could but roll back the film of the past, and, with Nevinson’s eyes, choose our shots and run the'film through again, then we might see for ourselves events at Ur of the Chaldees and Gaza, at Olympia with Herodotus, at Vienna with Marcus Aurelius. Nevinson has a keen sense of the spirit of place. “Among castles and abbeys, battlefields or beautiful scenery,” he writes, “I have perceived a history or dim tradition of the human life that once lived there.” Certainly these fantasies are vivid enough for the reader 1 to share his experience. Through them all runs the plea that human beings should b£ used at their best. The most moving of them, set in a forest on a slave island in New Guinea, pleads that all life should be respected. In the last Nevinson looks forward to, his judgment day; and to the query whether there is any good'reason why he should not spend the rest of his time in Hell, he counters with the argument that, being neither good enough for one place nor wicked enough for the other, he should be granted another 50 years of life in Europe. Though Hell cannot be much worse than Europe these days, he cannot bear not to be alive.