22 MAY 1959, page 29

Down And Out In Buenos Aires

The American Rat. By Jacques Lanzmann. Trans- (Wingate. 15s.) Italian Stories of Today. Edited by John Leh- mann. (Faber, 16s.) 'al y toes were screwed up in a desperate effort......

Backstairs Boy

Tun most charming thing aboUt Endymion Porter is his name. It should have belonged to a pastoral swain, yearning for the moon as he watched his flocks among his native Cotswold......

Padovano

'My native place is the city of Padua : I am of a Roman family which had resided there for many years,' wrote Giovanni Battisla Belzoni in the Preface to his Narrative of the......