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A BOOK WHICH should be most interesting to New Hampshirites or to any who know New England is George Woodbury's John Goffe's Mill (Norton, 1948). The author has put into practice an old New England aphorism: "Fix it up; make it work; wear it out." He has done this by putting to work again a 200year-old ruin of a water-power mill built in 1744 by John Golfe near Bedford, New Hampshire (southern part of the state). Mr. Woodbury, who is a professional archaeologist, bought a wood lot, a vacated house, and the old mill, and with the aid of a few characters out of Roland Robinson "fixed it up." How he made it work, made it pay, and made it even a way of life, he tells here in a lively and amusing manner guaranteed to make many envious. The book is pleasantly illustrated by Arthur Conrad.

If Rex Stout should ever see this I hope he will order from London, Jocelyn Brooke's The Military Orchid (Bodley Head, 1948), in which the creator of Nero Wolfe will find something to interest him. The book is about orchids, namely the rare military orchid (Orchis militaris not the Orchis purpurea), but it also reveals one of those "mad dogs of Englishmen" who turn up now and then. Glubb Pasha is another and of him more anon. This book, an autobiography, concerns itself with ideas on co-education, Victorian botanists, Christian Science, the "roaring twenties," and in Part lll deals with the author's experiences as a private soldier in the Middle East and Italy where he continued his search for the military orchid. This book I regard as a real find.

For those who have memories of Switzerland, and who only incidentally may like the writings of Llewellyn Powys, I can recommend his posthumous Swiss Essays (Bodley Head, 1947). A collected edition of his works is now in the press in England.

Lucius Beebe, gourmet and railway fancier, writes, apropos of Dreadful California (Bobbs): "In the course of ten decades only one voice, literally crying in the wilderness, has been raised against a monstrous fabrication. Alone among the multitude, Hinton Helper has denounced the siren voices of Chambers of Commerce and torn the veil of hypocrisy from all the hucksters who traffic in California's nonexistent advantages." It was Helper who wrote in 1855 about the Golden State: "We know of no country in which there is so much corruption, outlawry, intemperance, licentiousness and every variety of crime and folly."

This is not the only recent book debunking the home of the Yogi; it has been done to the Queen's taste by Evelyn Waugh in a sardonic and ribald manner in The Loved One (Little, Brown). The curious fact is that Waugh has not exaggerated; he is a master of understatement. Admitted, the book is malicious, but he has embalmed California most cleverly for all to gape at. Naturally one excepts San Francisco which is a highly civilized and jolly place.

Those who remember Bruce Lockhart's British Agent will enjoy his more recent Comes The Reckoning (Putnam, London). This is a review of the war years in England by one of the better known propaganda directors for the Foreign office.

For those who remember Spain before that "Christian gentleman" Franco took over I can recommend Gertrude Bone's Days in Old Spain, a reprint of which recently came to hand.