SHORTER NOTICE .
Britannica Book of the Year 195o. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Limited. £2 tos. od.) THIS annual volume, now published in England under the editorship of Mr. John Armitage, appears tc be gaining in liveliness while retaining its authority. The liveliness is not conspicuous in the solid and informative text but it is evident in the illustrations, which have been selected as much for entertainment or artistic quality as for instruction. The volume contains many striking photographs, notably a full-page photograph of a French forest fire. Low, Giles and Vicky are among the cartoonists called in to lighten the seven hundred shiny pages, and the editor's refreshingly subversive attitude may be deduced from the fact that he illustrates a straightforward article on patents in 1949 with a picture of a nineteenth-century Boston steam tram disguised as a horse. Biographies range from Danny Kaye and Roberto Rossellini to Robert ,Schuman and (by useful anticipation) Syngman Rhee. The intelligent use of illustra- tion has given a coscpreliensive work of reference much of the attraction of a first-class picture-book.
Previous page
