Curiosities of Town and Countryside. By Edmund Vale. (Batsford. nos.
6d.) MR. VALE has collected, possibly with more industry than dis- crimination, a large number of curiosities—some trivial or over- familiar (ducking-stools, the Panyer Alley Boy and so on). Mr. Vale's admirable and omnivorous passion for anything oddly- shaped or oddly-named gives a surrealist effect to the book, strengthened by his reference (the first met with for many years) to the Victorian cult of finding likenesses in cliffs or stones: " The Duke of Wellington, Mr. Gladstone . . . are to be seen in a number of places, according to old guide-books . . . but nobody seems to see them any longer." An appendix deals with Follies (when will Mr. Sitwell or another write the definitive volumes on this subject?). There are two extremely attractive photographs of unfinished Follies here, one of a great gaunt Elizabethan house, built to symbolise the Passion, another a " Colosseum " built in 19oo above Oban harbour to be an art- gallery and family-mausoleum. Italics are uncalled for : both centuries speak there.
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