9 OCTOBER 1976, page 23

Diminuendo

Nick Totton A Quiet Life Beryl Bainbridge (Duckworth £3.25) The Alteration Kingsley Amis (Jonathan Cape £3.50) A Quiet Lile might equally well have been named with another......

Tee Breaks

Benny Green Mostly Golf Bernard Darwin, Edited by Peter Ryde (A. and C. Black £4.25) There is nothing like inflated rhetoric on the flyleaf for putting the reader's back up.......

Arowsed

Roy Fuller Matthew Arnold: Poet and Prophet A. L. Rowse (Thames and Hudson £6.50) This critical biography has one great virtue from which its other merits stem—Dr Rowse's power......