2 AUGUST 1940, Page 22

Shorter Notices

MR. ROBERTS thinks that motorists travel too quickly. He promises to go to Bath "very slowly," and at the end of the book one has the impression that he has amply kept his word. Every build- ing, every signpost by the wayside, has its appropriate story, concerned with the vagaries of the brilliant rich and well-con- nected or the lurid activities of the throat-cutting poor, and appropriately Mr. Roberts tells it. Substantial and vigorous, his book has all the advantages which might result from a marriage between an A.A. itinerary and an encyclopaedia. And So To Bath is, indeed, exceptionally knowledgeable. Perhaps because of this Mr. Roberts does not wholly conceal that its primary impulse is to convey, not a feeling, but information.