16 MARCH 1934, Page 6

Does anyone, I wonder, read Vice Versa nowadays ? Mr.

Anstey Guthrie's death, coming within a day or two of the publication of his reminiscences of George du Maurier in Punch, makes the question inevitable. I was, of course, brought up, like all my generation, on the strange vicissitudes of Mr. and Master Bultitude, but I hear nothing of them today, and I doubt if any bookshop stocks what must no doubt be counted as F. Anstey's chief work. There is, of course, The Man from Blankley's and Lyre and Lancet and others, but none of them had the vogue of Vice Versa. Yet a story based on the magical interchange of personalities between father and son would, I fancy, have short shrift in 1934.