Shorter Notices
THERE have been a great number of books about individual counties published recently which are neither guide-books nor works of scholarship. Most of these fail to justify their existence; Sitwell's contribution is justified by its own merits and by the com- parative freshness of its subject. You will not see posters in foreign capitals exhorting the traveller to visit Northumberland. York, Edinburgh, Durham, the Lake District, the Highlands—these are the familiar lures of the north, but the Cheviots or Redesdale or the Roman Wall are usually passed over. This is no cause for complaint to Northumbrians such as Miss Sitwell, for whom the parts of their native county which have the greatest charm are the solitary areas which the tourist rarely visits—the valleys of the College and the Rode, the slopes of Yeavering Bell and Ros Castle. Of these she writes with a pride and enthusiasm which ought to encourage the reader to leap out at Belford station on his next journey to the wrong side of the Border. With this book in his hand he would then be able to discover for himself why the most northern county in England, which gave us Christianity before it gave us coal, and the ballads as well as ships, stirs such a fierce loyalty in those who have been lucky enough to live in it. Unfortun- ately the print and paper of this volume are not as good as the text, and it is spotted with scrappy drawings by J. Deliss which would be undistinguished anywhere, but which here have rashly been allowed to stand comparison with Bewick's wood-cuts.
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