2 DECEMBER 1938, Page 46

Refuge in England (Bell, 7s. 6d.) is a simple little

story of a jussian girl who left her home in Petrograd at the beginning of the revolution and came to settle in England. It is a story that has been told many times, but never in such a homely way—at least never in print. Compared with the tragic lives of

any refugees, Miss Larina's seems almost uneventful. In

e first and best part .of her book she gives an interesting 4bild's-eye view of the revolution : the sound of shooting was the- background to her nursery-life, to -stand in bread-queues , Was an exciting game, the journey to England, via Canada,

bewildering adventure. Her father, an engineer, got work first in Barrow and then in Newcastle where she went to her first school •and where the family lived in drab furnished rooms against which she rebelled, though she was too young to draw the obvious moral from her own dissatisfaction with working-class conditions. The story ends with a successful flat-hunt in• London, which gives her the opportunity to make some not very penetrating comments on English life which some readers may find entertaining.