29 AUGUST 1931, Page 21

People and Things, by Harold Nicolson (Constable, Ss.), a collection

of Mr. Nicolson's wireless talks, and since, as he says in his preface, no alteration whatever has been made, he is to be congratulated. For these occasicuil spoken essays and anecdotes recall very happily in print the Mr. Nicolson of "Some People." There is the same serious approach to a climax which turns out after all to be the most delightful bathos, and the same counterbalancing anecdote for every excursion into the serious. As he suggests to the schoolboy in one of the talks, experience has made things for him "infinitely more amusing" and he is willing to share his amusement. His readers will be as grateful as his hearers.