15 MAY 1976, page 22

Slipping Out

William Trevor A New Life of Chekhov Ronald Hingley (Oxford University Press £8.75) The old cliché that everyone has a story to tell is true, and more often than not it's a......

High Things

I. A. Richards The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy Edited by James Gibson (Macmillan £6.50) After Hardy's 'earliest known production in verse, Domicilium'—descriptive rather than......