Book Review

"In Letters of Red."

Edited by E. Allan Osborne. Published by Michael Joseph (from Whitcombe & Tombs. 9/6).

The misconception that literature is a device for charming the minds of the cultured and scholarly is one that the University has traded in for years. A misconception which no English student dare for one moment question if he wants to fly high in the Great November Art Union.

So if you believe in charm, and Barrie, and rose-twined trellis, keep well away from "In Letters of Red."

But if you believe that writing should deal with contemporary problems directly and honestly, then read it if you got a chance.

"In Letters of Red" is a compilation of stories, poems and essays by an assortment of writers who have decided that the equivocal attitude, the Ivory Tower, the paradoxical, the ironic detachment will no longer do.

Here are some of the contributors: W. H. Auden. Louis McNelce. C. Day Lewis, Rex Warner, Geoffrey Grigson, Leon Feuchtwanger, Edward Upward, Siegfried Sassoon and Herbert Hodge.

"In Letters of Red" is a book well worth the reading.