22 OCTOBER 1927, Page 9

Dr. Cyril Norwood, the Head-Master of narrow, finds that "it

is difficult to pick out three books, and I cannot name those which have influenced my career. Those which have most influenced my mind at fitful stages of youth and have not lost their power are, in chronological order : Tennyson's Poems, The Gospel of St. John, Browning." Sir Josiah Stamp has deeply philosophic tastes for one who is famous as an economist and administrator. His choice is : "(1) Sartor Resartus. (2) James' Varieties of Religious Experience. (3) is more difficult. There are several candidates : Marshall's Principles of Economics for continuity of influence, Graham Wallas Great Society, for new direction of practical thought, Bergson's L'Evolution Creatrice, and VVhitehead's Science and the Modern World for philosophic background." Sir Valentine Chirol writes as follows : "I regret I cannot possibly specify any three books as having had a great or decisive influence on my career. Speaking generally, I have taken perhaps the greatest interest in history and travels and poetry, and might mention in this connexion, Gibbon's Decline and Fall Seely's Expansion of the British Empire, Marco Polo and Wordsworth's Patriotic Sonnets." Mr. H. W. Nevinson finds it "hard to exclude the great influence of a few among the writings collected in the Bible and the works of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Ruskin, but as you asked definitely for three books only, I should say, though with great hesitation, The Prometheus of Aeschylus, Gulliver's Travels, and Carlyle's Sartar Resartus." Mr. Murray Allison's choice is : "Emerson's Essays, Montaigne's Essays, White's Selborne." Miss Maude Royden, searching for something more individual than the Bible, Shakespeare, and Shelley, gives us The Imitation of Christ, The System of Animate Nature by Professor J. Arthur Thomson, and one chapter only (that called "Prayer as Understanding ") in Concerning Prayer by Mr. Harold Anson. Dr. Shadwell finds it almost impossible to single out particular books, but considers that Mill on Liberty made the most distinct impression on his mind. It gave him "great delight when at school, for it taught me that I might think for myself, which I had always done, but was told I ought not to do at that age. The two books from which I have learnt most arc, I think, Aristotle's Ethics and Aquinas's Theologica, or perhaps Spinoza. But the ,book that has given me most pleasure, if it can be called a book, is Schubert's Songs."