NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19162, 19 November 1927, Page 13

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

A NEW ZEALANDER'S ADVENTURE.

Home: A New Zealander's Adventure. By Alan E. Mnlgan. Longmans.

The series of articles by "Pilgrim" which The Press printed last year have been expanded and gathered into a book by the writer of them, Mr Alan E. Mulgan. When wo received the first of Mr Mulgan's articles we know that we were in for something very good. Por it was a perfect approach to a charming book of impressions and appreciation. A cultivated, sentimental journalist had come to young middleage without seeing England, but like all intelligent and sentimental New Zealanders he had really lived his spiritual life as much in England as in his own native land. He told us what England meant to him, how it had met him at every turn throughout his thinking and reading from his earliest years. And at last he was going to see it—to see the great background of English literature, the great stage of a thousand years of world history. How he was thrilled and fascinated, how ho found that England was all, and more than all, that his dreams had told him, how keenly and sympathetically he saw and tasted the life of the Old Country, tho readers of his articles will sti'il remember with pleasure. His book i 3 unique. Some go to England to see and write of a political State, some to pick up an idea concerning the chief member of the Empire, some to enjoy the life and scenes, some to study industrial conditions. But Mr Mulgan is the first colonial who has gone to England because he was aching to see "Home," and has written of his adventure in that spirit. Even if he had not been well equipped, tho plan of his book would have made it unusual and striking. But he was very well equipped. Ho has a well-stored mind, a wide and loving acquaintance with English letters, the seeing eye of the trained journalist, and also a graceful and serious style. He was fortunate in the circumstances of his adventuring, and fortunate in the preparation of his book. For Mr J. C. Squire writes an introduction, grateful and appreciative, and even enthusiastic, and there are some charming woodcuts by Claire Lcighton. So good a book deserved a comely dress, ■and this it has fortunately got. It is as good to feel and to look at as to read —the nicest looking book, and on the whole easily the best, book that has ever come from a New Zealander. LORD LEVERHULME. Viscount Levernulme. By His Son. Allen and Unwin; ltd. It is a pity that when a man worth a biography leaves a son, the son more often than not becomes a biographer. In the case of men of affairs the risk is of course not so great as with poets, artists, musicians, and philosophers, and it is smaller in Lord Leverhulme's case than in almost any other that could be imagined. And yet it would have been better, even here, if. the work had been entrusted to some one with better literary equipment and a smaller personal handicap. The younger Lord writes of the older one with earnestness and modesty, and is far more successful than might have been expected in, getting his subject's true proportions. But he writes a dull admiring record of a man who, though his mind was ordinary enough, put up a most astonishing performance as a financier and business organiser, and was, in his peculiar way, a character as well as a millionaire. There was, for example, personality of a kind in the episode' of the Augustus John portrait, the correct version of which (according to the son) has already appeared in The Press, and there was intelligence as well as personality in the recovery of ninety-one thousand pounds from the "Daily Mail" for a series of libels. In the main, however, the book is the story of the growth of the business of Lever Bros, from comparatively humble proportions—though not quite humble—to its present extraordinary dimensions, and of the long series of social and industrial experiments which accompanied, and in part perhaps accounted for, that development. It is worth pointing out, also, since very few know, that Lord Leverhulme's personal part in that success was primarily that of an advertiser and salesman, EVERYMAN'S. Everyman's Library. Volumes 801-806. J. M. Sent and Sons. The wonderful "Everyman's Library" series is gradually approaching the thousand, which was the aim of the late Mr Dent. The ninth hundred (vols. .801-806) begins with a most interesting half dozen volumes.. These • are Lord Houghton's "Life and Letters of Keats," to which Mr Robert Lynd contributes an introduction, Dostoevsky's great novel "The Brothers Karamazov" (in two volumes) in Constance Garnett's translation, Harrison Ainsworth's fine old novel "The Admirable Crichton," Kenan's "Life of Jesus," ■with an introduction by Bishop Gore, and a delightful compendium of nonsense in prose and verse, drawn from Edward Lear and other writers. This last volume has the original illustrations belonging to the pieces.

WITH THE DUKE AND DUCHESS. The Eoyal Tour of Tbo Duke and Duchess of York. By Taylor Darbyshlre. Arnold.

It has been remarked that the main object of aIJ people who write books of this type is to mention aa many people as possible with a view to subsequent sales. But Mr Darbysbire cannot be accused of setting about his work with such an eye to business. The people he has mentioned are mostly those he could not avoid mentioning, such as Prime Ministers and others who entertained the Royal Party, and yet the record is most minute. There is not much humour in it, but Mr Darbyshire has made the most of any brightening incidents there were. He has devoted a fair section to the New Zealand visit, but, of course, the lion's share goes to his own country —Australia ; and in the intervals of official recording he has managed to introduce many little anecdotes and give much useful information about both countries. It is, indeed, the chief merit of the book, apart from its main purpose, that neither Australia nor New Zealand suffers any of the misrepresentations that so frequently follow fleeting visits.

TIME FOR A CHANGE. The Quest of Youth. By Jeffery rarnol. Sampson Low. Mars ton and Co. Mr Farnol's first romances of "Corinthian" days were at least out of the ordinary, but now, through apparently ceaseless repetition, ho is boring. The plot of this story is merely a mixture of previous ones, and the characters are the same. Once more there is a gentleman masquerading as a common fellow, once more a pedlar named Gabbing Dick, and so on through the whole caat. Those who are unfamiliar with the author's previous work will not find this a draw-