Jottings

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 11, 25 September 1931, Unnumbered Page

Jottings

"MN HE Key," by M. Aldanoy, a Russian emigre, is an extremely interesting novel. Perhaps the most curious thing about it is that a casual glance at it might lead you to suppose that jf is little more than a murder mystery. Just before’ the Revolution a rich banker is found dead in a questionable flat, and one. Zagryatsky is accused of the murder. The examining nagistrate is corivinced of his guilt, The head of the political police, howcyer, has other ideas, which happen to be right. But although the solving of the mystery runs’ right through the book, and by itself holds attention, the author is also attempting to solve . &@ much greater problem: he is at. -y tempting to explain Russia at the time of the great change. And in the most ingenious way the Key of the title is niade to serve a triple purpose. There is an actual key, which is of importance in the ¢rime; one of the charaeters writes a book of the same title, and the whole, ironical picture. of socalled liberalty-minded circles in St. Petersburg that was falling to pieces provides a key to much that to many people hax remained irritatingly vague. "WV OMEN: AND POLITICS," by the Duchess of (tholl, M.P., is a notable contribution to feminist literature. This is a peculiarly difficult type of book to write, It aims at providing a textbook of politics for women, and particularly -for’ women who, while "keenly anxious to make good use of their citizenship," have had little time or opportunity for study. The fault of 2 book is that it is too diffuse, buig@hen this has been said it must be conceded that the author has triumphed over the worst of her difficulties. She gets down to the level of the uneducated woman and contrives to convéy to her the basic com-mon-sense truths of polities without ever appearing to "condescend." Here are shrewd and homely, and yet in their way rirasterly, defences of the principle of private property against Socialism; of marriage against theories of companionate marriage; of capital against unfair taxation. Unfortun4 ately the book does not lend itself to brief summary, but perhaps that is as well since, more people may be led to read the original. The author makes a trenchant reply to some of Mr. Bernard Shaw’s statements in "The Intelligent Woman’s Guide. to Socialism," and appears to convict him, on official evidence, of some remurkable mis-statements, ;

TX "The Lavender Dagger," Mr. Dion Clayton Calthrop gives his readerg a series of village vignettes, shrewdly drawn and put together with no little ingenuity. Old Miss Ermaine dies, and leaves her great fortune to her godson, together with a charming private secretary, and a series of notebooks containing her views on the people whom he will meet. It transpires that the ‘young man named Seaton is the dead woman’s son, and he does his best to live up to her traditions. She was a wise and keen-eyed old lady, and her son takes after her, knowing how to deal with viragos like the vicar’s wife and Lady Biddle. He marries the sec retary, of course, in this gentle story, with its unexciting episodes and amusing portraits, * * * ss A MODERN VANITY FAIR," by Mr. Stephen Graham, is an entertaining achievement, half satire and half romance, A young man, who talks with an American accent and seems to have considerable credit, appears in London and‘drifts into smart social circles in an engagingly casual way. He has some odd friends, the chief of his feminine friends being Vhoebe Vindex, a baronet’s daughter, who likes to be thought much wickeder than she is, and Lady Juliet Lyminge. Iie put up for Parliament and wins au seat in the East End of London. There is some mystery about.this young man, Who is he? And, quite in the old-fashioned romantic manner, Mr. ix Riddell turns out not to be an American soldier of fortune but a rich baronet with a castle of the most substantial kind, he story is told yery well, with a spice of the risque, and amusing digressions, * * * Miss GRACH THOMPSON has done well in "The First Gentleman: The Story of the Regent, afterward George IY." Mr. Lytton Strachy could scarcely have devised a more ironic nickname than that of "the first gentleman in Europe." by which George IV will go down to history. Readers with a knowledge of the byways of Regency gossip are well acquainted with the immense mass of stuff. written round this most ungentlemanly' gentleman. Miss Thompson has cer tainly made a most enlivening "cons yersation piece’ of George, who wag admirably etched by Justin McCarthy us "the malignant enemy of his unhappy father, the treacherous lover, the perjured friend, the heartless fop, the soulless sot." Without dates, exe cept at the heads of her pages, and with no apparatus of footnotes, she has made an amusingly mordaut mosaic of the monarch, whose example, if imitated by his successors, might easily have ended our system of sovereignty.