Page 4 Advertisements Column 2

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24021, 9 August 1943, Page 4

BOOK OF THE DAY CRECY AND POITIERS The Black Prince. By John Cammidge. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 469 pp. (18/- net.) This “historical pageant,’’ as Mr Cammidge describes it, and with truth, draws copiously on Fronissart, Chandos Herald, Higden, Baker of Swinbrook, am', other prime sources and owes as much to their glorious vocabulary and tapestried manner as to their substance. The romantic may lose himself here, falling back to boyhood, in Mr Cammidge’s really brilliant battlepieces, Crccy and Poitiers, the great battle of the cogs against the Spanish carracks, prefiguring the Armada, off Dungeness, and, perhaps the finest of the Black Prince’s victories, that of Najera, in Spain. There are as brilliant scenes of tournament and Court, monastery and mart. But—the reason why th ; = i? truly a pageant—the savagery that was chivalry’s twin, the fruitless stupidity of the captains and kings, the decay of their feudal system, and the silent revolution of economic forces are all skilfully revealed. Supplies for Prisoners.—The Red Cross Commission has announced that large supplies irorn South Africa and India have reached civil internees and British. Australian, and Indian p-ison-ers of war in the Far East, sta'cs a message from Allahabad.—tß.G.W.) Rugby, August 7.