“A CHANGED MAN”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 22 June 1936, Page 2

“A CHANGED MAN”

NEW BOOK BY BEVERLEY NICHOLS Mr Beverley Nichols has written a new book and the reviewer in the course of an article in the “Spectator” says, “I do not think it is possible to doubt that England is a far more Christian country than it was 10 or 15 years ago, or that the diffused influence of Christ’s Spirit is gaining strength in our people every day. The Christian religion is alive and winning. In public opinion it is becoming vocal, and it is making notable new converts —not least recently, in the world of literature.” This book is the confession of the latest of them. Mr Beverley Nichols is a changed man, and he writes this very bravely and sincerely to explain what it is that has happened to him. He has passed from the phase of “Twenty-five” to the ' consciousness “of a certain rising rather than falling—rising on to a new life.” When he wrote “Cry Havoc”--his greatest book—it was clear that a new-found moral passion and the sense of vocation which that gave him was drawing him on towards Christian conviction. He has found it now and writes to bear his testimony: “My object in writing this book is different. . . . All I want is to get as many people as possible to share with me in the excitement of living Christianity.” The second half of the book is more direct, and it is, in my judgment the strongest. It contains the author’s witness to Christ, as the life-giver who can remake men and the revolution implied in His teaching under the headings of sex, war and money. The chapter on Church and War is the best in the book out of a passionate conviction which has the quality of a consuming fire.”