THE COMPLEAT IMBIBER

Collected from the English house journal of W. A. Gilbey Ltd., this is ""an entertainment"" on plain and fancy tipple from many hands. Elbow bending and glass lifting are by Michael Foster, Nancy Mitford, Louis Golding, Margery Allingham, Wolf Mankowitz, Sir Compton Mackenzie, Raymond Postgate, Rupert Croft-Cooke, Marghanita Laski, and others and others, and their interests range from glassware and furniture, drinking characters, drink in sport, on the stage, in opera, and on trains. Laws about drinking, teetotallers and temperance, prohibition and its effects in the United States, drinking in songs and in the blues are additional portions of this rew as are other dissertations on kinds of wines and their requirements, education in wines, tribal customs among tipplers, and bibulous doings on an international scale. There are some stories and sketches, many illustrations, quotations and other spot pieces about spirits. Liquid, sometimes learned, this is a handsome assembly of distilled serendipity.