4 MARCH 1916, Page 20

The Accolade. By Ethel Sidgwick. (Sidgwick and Jackson. 6s.)—Miss Sidgwick

has given us yet another book about the members of the Ingestre clan, and the family chronicles are growing so complicated that she has had to provide us with a genealogical table. It is difficult to say whether a new acquaint- ance would be able to read the Latest story with interest and understanding : to those of us who have long known and loved the family it comes as a renewal of old friendships. The prologue, which is quite admirable, full of expectation and restlessness, goes back a little, to the time before Violet Ashwin married Charles Shovell, for the sake of introducing Violet's lovable, worthless kinsman, Johnny Ingestre, and his fiancée, Ursula Thyme ; and the rest of the history, for all its emotional cross- currents and complex relationships, is chiefly concerned with the matrimonial tangles of these two young people. The book is long, possibly too long, and filled in every chapter with fresh figures, but Miss Sidgwick's power of vivid characterization seems unlimited and untouched by any danger of caricature.