RAISING A LAUGH

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25306, 4 October 1947, Page 7

RAISING A LAUGH

THE "PUNCH” LABEL J. Basil Boothroyd’s collection of his pieces from “Punch,” Lost—A Doublefronted Shop (Allen and Unwin. 120 pp.), shows what a versatile performer he is. The fierce, pedantic controversies of the swing enthusiasts in the correspondence columns of their esoteric journals; the remorse of one who loftily snubs a diffidently inquiring stranger—“No, sir; I do not rejoice in the name of Bolsom”; polite letter, rejecting the offer of Mrs Shuckstraw’s five-guinea flat (“My wife always insists that merely to call a room a kitchen is not enough. Ifr needs a sink, don’t you feel?”)—Mr Boothroyd aims here, there, and anywhere, and never misses.

Including 14 stories and sketches and 150 drawings, A Third Punch Miscellany (Hutchinson. 128 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.) is the perfect remedy for a fit of the doldrums. ' LAUGH AND LEARN

Marjorie Woodson’s Leaves From a Woman Lawyer’s Casebook (Angus and Robertson. 166 pp.) contains a great variety of thoroughly useful legal information, warning, and advice —on fire insurance, on liability for goods sent on approval, on - alimony claims, on property transfers, on the difference between “puffing” by a vendor and specific misrepresentation, etc.—and conveys it in the form of easy notes on actual cases (real or imaginary), which often make very amusing reading. CLASS STRUGGLE

Ethel Mannin’s recent political conversion from Left to Right is symbolised in her satirical novel, Comrade, O Comrade (Jarrolds. 159 Pp. Though Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.), in which Larry ’ Lanaghan, the horse-loving Connemara Irishman, is inducted to a London circle of proselytising Marxists. FLYING BACKWARDS

The aeronautical freak which flung Osgood and Mtfnnering, pilot and copilot, and their two American passengers and one Egyptian back into the fabulous Baghdad of Harup-el-Ras-chid is one in‘ which the readers of Arthur Lfee Gould’s story. An Airplane in the Arabian Nights (T. Werner Laurie. 240 pp.) will willingly suspend their disbelief, the consequences are so entertaining. Mr Gould (otherwise known as Air Vice-Marshal Arthur Lee) twists out of the incongruities of time, place, and person, ancient magic, and modern mechanics a good blend of melodrama and farce. DOC

Dr. George Harper, who won the “Morning Gazette’s” prize for the man who most nearly fitted the description of an ordinary man, the man-in-the-sfreet, was launched into the circula-tion-building stunts of Lord Lencaster, the press baron. But he turned out to be not so ordinary. “Doc,” he was told at last, “you certainly have a genius for making things happen”— such things, for instance, as becoming involved in a murder case and turning Lord Lencaster’s best sob-sister, June Wade into a happy bride. Charles Hatton’s Mr Everyman (John Long. 192 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.) is a lively extravaganza.