tions, and although Mrs Lewis hasn't the Margaret Yourcenar or

Mary Renault gifts of empathy and total immersion in the chosen time and subject, she writes a spankingly good story about Matilda, whom the legends cal] gentle but she calls a good deal more.

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SI' To: Municipal & General Securities Co. Ltd., 9 Cloak Lane, London E.C.4 The plot of Allan Turpin's Ladies recalls Howards End a bit: two 'artistic' spinster sisters, set firmly in the upper middle class and at their • particular cultural level, take up a young man who is very much 'beneath' them; the younger and more impulsive, pressed on largely by feel- ings of social guilt, is made love to by him— once. It has other Forsterish qualities as well: discretion, exactness, a fine ear for the cadences of this or that class's speech, above all a sense of what you might call implication—suggesting much more than is actually put down, a sort of compression and reticence that are very effec- tive. It has the faults of its virtues as well, and, just as happens in Howards End, one wonders how the girl and her lowly suitor actually got round to making love, if I may put it so. But

on the whole realism of a firm, quiet sort pre- vails; and as 'an episode of the revolution' (its sub-

title—the revolution being ours of the past thirty years) it is, I think—though having just read it I can't prove this—even memorable.

ISABEL QUIG LY

It's a Crime

doted harmless. This is the essence of a story

simply told with adequate suspense and tension.

MAURICE PRIOR

CHESS by Philidor

No. 309

Specially contribu- ted by W. B. TRUMPER

(Birmingham) WHITE to play and mate in two moves; solution next week. Solution to No. 308 (Kraemer) : t Kt - K4,13-Q7i 2P - Kt 41 and now (a' 2...P=Q; 3Kt- B5,QanYi 4Kt- R 4 or Q 7 mate (b)2...PxPe.p.: 3 Kt x P, P- Kt 7 ; 4 Kt – B 4. But not Kt 6?,P–Q 7; Prospective purchasers of The Most instructive Games of Chess Ever Played by Irving Chemev (Faber, 3os.) should not allow themselves to be too put off by the absurd and grandiloquent title. Of course these sixty-two games are not 'the most instructive ever played' and I cannot think why the author and pub= fishers should find it necessary to claim that they are —I suppose this urge for sweeping generalisation is one of the more tiresome aspects of the American vitality and belief in themselves which we could do with in our own chess (as well as in other things). What the book does contain is sixty-two well chosen, entertaining and moderately well annotated games ; here is one of the lighter-hearted games—very amus :ng, but I'll eat my chess-board if it is one of the sixty-two most instructive games ever played. BLACK (9 men)

wear rE fro men) P Kt 4, P x P e.p.!