Mr. Eric Parker's Surrey has always held a high place
in -the well-known Highways and Byways series. But it was Written nearly thirty years ago, and a revised edition (Macmillan, 7s. 6d.) is more than welcome. For the changes the thirty years have wrought you must search the volume through, for Mr. Parker mentions few of them in his short new preface. Chief, of course, is the immense extension of suburban London into what was once Surrey countryside, and as part and parcel of that, the advent of the motor to overshadow every other form of traction. In Mr. Hugh Thomson's delightful illustrations every traveller not on his own feet is in a dog-cart-or on a bicycle. But there is a limit to London's encroachments. Beyond it Surrey can still show some of the loveliest villages (and village greens) in England, and some of the stateliest country seats. Mr. Parker knows them all and all about them. But he cares much more for Surrey and what it is than for Surrey as man made it. There is no Lloyd George in his page on Churt, not even a Prince of Wales in his page on Sunning- dale. But he has not only admitted the Guildford by-pass but eulogised it—very justly, though he might have taken the opportunity to contrast it with that vilest of detours that bears the name of Kingston. And to his admirable account of Friday Street he might, in his new edition, have added an authorita- tive explanation of the name.
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