27 MARCH 1959, Page 24

Incas and Other Men. By George Woodcock. (Faber, 25s.) The

Woodcocks travelled through the sierras and along the sea-coast of Peru, over the Andes and into the jungle, enjoying in the towns the sophisticated Spanish buildings of the eighteenth century, but noting, too, the 'for- midable solidity' of pre-Conquest Inca architec- ture and the way it survived the twentieth-century earthquakes that laid low some exquisite Spanish cathedrals. The author is equipped both to appre- ciate the great works of art and to assess standards of living and codes of behaviour, and writes grace- fully about it all.