Shor ter Notice Miss ALLINGHAM'S theme is the impact of war
on the village on the outskirts of London in which she lives. It is an agreeably tempered, quite well written and utterly uninspired book, faintly redolent of Punch, though without the perkiness of the average contribution about war-time subjects in that journal. Miss Ailing- ham depicts the village of Auburn before the war, describes the arrival of evacuees, the appearance in the village of soldiers, the first bombs, and the thousand and one changes, great and im- perceptible, which these phenomena caused in the daily life of the neighbourhood. As a picture of a section of English society yesterday and perhaps today, it is comprehensive and no doubt accurate ; but its somewhat parochial manner is unlikely to recommend it to readers who do not share at any rate a semi- personal interest in its subject-matter.
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