18 JUNE 1942, Page 22

Shorter Notices

The Annual Register. Edited by Dr. M. Epstein. (Longmans. 42s.) THIS indispensable volume is a little slimmer than in the previous year, though there is no reduction in the number of pages, and a little dearer. Both changes are no doubt inevitable. As a record of the events of the past year at home the book is invaluable, but the editor does not seem ' in all cases to have turned to the highest authorities available for his chapters on foreign countries or his retrospect on literature, arts and science. None the less, The Annual Register remains, what it has been since Burke founded it, the most convenient and authoritative work of reference on the principal events of the year dealt with.