Polka Dot
Vogue's Gallery. (Conde Nast, 35s.)
Tuns anthology of pictures and pieces from Vogue is, as one would expect, beautifully pro- duced: an olive-and-white cover, heavy paper, handsome type and four interspersed sections of photographs.
The contributors appear to have little in com- mon apart from their appearance in the maga- zine. Except, perhaps, that all are well known. There are short stories by Muriel Spark, Gerald Hanley, Tennessee Williams and Norman Levine. There are light pieces from ngsley Amis, Frank Norman and Alec Waugh.. ere is a section.on travel: John Gielgud on aiti, Patrick Leigh Fermor on Jamaica, Rose Macaulay on "Travel Pleasures' and Michael Frayn on the Dordogne. And there is a section of chatty, informal remi- niscence: Lionel Trilling on children's books, Lord Kinross on Unstately Homes, John Davenport on How to Grow Old Quickly.
The majority of the contributors are English, and being English, many of them still nurse an affection for that weary form, the essay. Lord David Cecil writes a string of banalities entitled One Man's England.' Is it because the essay is more literary' than the column? Or is it because the English are still nostalgic for that discursive detachment which presumes an audience?
The anthology is lightweight and intended to be so: a Christmas present, or a bedside book for those people who have special books by their bed. As an entity it does not exist. But there are some entertaining pieces and a fine short story by Gerald Hanley. The photographs of the rich, the famous and the beautiful are closer to the Vogue tradition than the writing is. They have all the élan and technical perfection we associate with Vogue and the captions written in mandarin prose have all the confidence we expect from a magazine which is able to decide whether butter- milk or alizarin shall be our fate next spring.
F. X. RUMBOLD
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