ROWN knows
the life of modern stageland, one would say, with the intimacy of
personal experience. More important still, he commands an easy style
and a flow of genial, not too esoteric, humour that combine to keep
the reader chuckling and curious to the last page. His title is
characteristic, _Lighting-up Time_ symbolising here that period in
the career of an actress when her possibly waning attractions need the
illumination of a judicious boom. The two main characters are
_Mary Maroon_, the leading lady, and _Peter Penruddock_, the astute
publicity agent who engages to set her upon her financial and artistic
pedestal. _Peter_, in other words, is _Mary's_ tide, taken at the
flood in chapter one, and leading her, very divertingly, on to
fortune. Both the tour of _Stolen or Strayed_ and the company that
present it are admirably true to life, while Mr. BROWN has even been
able convincingly to suggest the atmosphere of theatrical Oxford, when
in due course his mummers descend upon that home of lost comedies and
impossible revues. If I have a complaint against the book it is that a
tale of such pleasant irony hardly needed the general pairing-off with
which the author rings down his curtain; but for this Noah's Ark
I should have more easily believed in a story that entertained me
throughout.

* * * * *

There are some forty-odd bits in _A Bit at a Time_ (MILLS AND BOON),
and they embrace a variety of subjects, ranging from crocuses in
Kensington Gardens to corpse-boats on the Tigris. They are all,
whether sentimental, satirical or pathetic, fiction of the lightest
type. Such literature was eminently readable during the War--most
of Mr. DION CLAYTON CALTHROP'S bits have to do with somebody's
"bit"--when a touch of conventional pathos and pretended cynicism
and a generous padding of humour, real or forced, provided sufficient
relaxation from the strain of anxious hours. But the wisdom of
republishing them in book form in these sober days of peace is open to
question. When Mr. CALTHROP talks satirically of "perfect officials"
or of an earnest young American aviator who writes letters home in
a United States dialect that was never heard on land or sea outside
Bayswater, or of the war-time adventures of one _Mr. Mason_, skipper,
and _Mr. Smith_, his mate, he is tolerably amusing. When he becomes
serious, as in "The Prayer of the Classical Parson" and "When the Son
Came Home," his limitations beco