Jottings

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 25, 31 December 1931, Page 32

Jottings

Not for nervous maidens, if there are any nowadays, nor convalescent patients: at twelve midnight, is "Men in Darkness." The author. Mr. James Hanley, is rapidly winning his literary spurs, and in these tales of the sea and seafarers he displays exceptional skill and imaginative force. They are terrible tales, however, in which horror is piled upon horror: and calculated to disturb the phlegm of the most stony-hearted is the uncompromising revelation of raging cruelty and a fierce and fatal destiny. The stark realism brings shudders in its train, and this is not a cheerful volume to take with one on a week-end by the sea. Nevertheless it is a powerful and original contribution to contemporary fiction. * * * {N "The Life of a Mogul Princess," through the.diary of a Mogul princess of the seventeenth century, Jahanara, daughter of Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal for his queén, Madame Butenschon, has told the story of the breaking-up of the Great Mogul Empire. The terrible history of Shah Jahan’s sons, who, banished to distant provinces for fear of their ambition, rose .against their father and against each other, and the history of the -princess who lived to see her father imprisoned, her favourite brother slain, and her house ruined are here, related, while through the dark chronicle runs a passionate Eastern love-story-exotic as the heavy perfume of a@ summer night. The high-flown language and the descriptions of scenery are in keepjug with the exquisitely fantastic reproductions of Mogul miniatures that decorate these pages. Mr. Laurence Binyon has ‘written an introduction. * * * ORIGINALITY is the impression left by Mr. Maurice Richardson's novel, "A Strong Man Needed." This extrayaganza tells the story of an American female Samson, who; beside being 9 feet high, has a sound knowledge of how to use her far from: gentle fists. Intrigued by an impecunious English nobleman, she proceeds to retrieve his financial fortunes by achieving fame and shekels as the beavyweight champion of the world. assisted therein by a merry motley of minor characters. Entirely absurd it all is, and the most diverting book of the month, with the marriage in the fighting ring, the party at the Macgillivrays’ habitation, and the chatter of the rag. tag and bobtail who scamper through the pages. Mr, Richardson has proved himself an irresistible humorist, and we are gratefi] | for his quota of gaiety in a dullish world.

HERE. are still some people, one supposes, who remember the delight with which they read those fine and outspoken studies of psychology snd contemporary society entitled Wages of Sin" and "Sir Richard Cal mady." In those. days those novels were considered very daring’ indeed,

and the author, the late "Lucas Malet" (the pseudonym adopted by the daughter of Charles King-ley), greatly criticised for what was in those days a somewhat shockinsly unconvey#tional outlook. Frank, intimate, brillia:)tly incisive, the novels were memorable for their intense human interest, and might with advantuge be resuscitated from the limbo of the forgotten, for in zcute analysis of motive and sympathetic comprehension of the reaction of individuals to the bludgeonings of fate, they are miles ahead of many of the inept and frothy lucubrations turned out by some women writers of the present era,