I MUST CONGRATULATE our contemporary, the Twentieth Cen . tury, on becoming
an octogena- rian; particularly as it has had to undergo three trying changes of name since its birth in 1877, when—rather naturally—it was christened the Nineteenth Century; and the subsequent com- promise Nineteenth Century and After, besides being clumsy, can hardly have been calculated to attract new subscribers. But recently the Twentieth Century has proved itself the most consistent of the monthlies. Its eightieth birthday number is curiously unrepresentative, containing as it does some padding, and also some scraping of the 'bottom of the Angry-Young-Men / the- Movement barrel, by writers who are becoming as tiresome as the subjects they are discussing (though Jenny Nasmyth's spirited onslaught on the press must be excepted). Professor Gilbert Murray has written a preface : Charles Tennyson contributes an interesting article on the Idylls of the King; and John Wain succeeds in producing as ingenious a 'commercial' for John Wain as any I have seen on CTV.
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