Arthur Marshall
There are a number of books that I happily re-read every year, among them The En- chanted April, Vile Bodies and Wode- house's The World of Mr Mulliner, and to this list I now happily add Molly Keane's Good Behaviour (Andre Deutsch), an Ireland-based story that for wit and charm and observation has few equals. Impossible to summarise the plot: just get along and read it! Two other great pleasures have been The House (Macmillan) in which the Duchess of Devonshire, Chatsworth's landlady, provides a marvellous mixture of history, comment and humour, and, for theatre addicts, Those Dancing Years (John Murray) takes us autobiographically through the dazzlingly varied career of Mary Ellis, as at home in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, as in the plays of O'Neill and Rattigan, and who could also give such strength and reality to Novello's delightful vintage schmaltz.
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