6 MARCH 1926, Page 23

When little " Lord " George Sanger was driving, one

night. into Reading with his father, he looked into the mouth of a long sack which they were carrying for two strangers. " The moonlight shone clearly . . . and I saw a naked human arm and the pallid, wax-like face of a dead woman." The strangers were body-snatchers taking their prize to the medical school at Oxford. This is an incident from the beginning of Sanger's Seventy Years a Showman (Dent, 6s.). Thirty-eight years later, " Lord " George was owner of Astley's Circus, In 1872 he took part in the pageant to celebrate the Prince of Wales's recovery from typhoid fever, and on this occasion Lord George Sanger's Royal Thanksgiving Procession, with Mrs. George Sanger as Britannia, carrying a live lion, was received with frantic applause by the crowds who lined the Royal Route, for the finery of Sanger's show (on which he spent £7,000) had more glitter than the solid grandeur of the real pro- cession, on whose heels it followed. What times those were Our modern advertising seems anaemic by comparison with `` stunts " such as these. Mr. Kenneth Grahame writes a delightful introduction to this really fascinating book, which we believe is destined to outlive many more pompous remin-

iscences. * * * *