REFLECTIONS FROM A VILLAGE

A convocation of gentle recall, talks about people and places, country contemplations from his Surrey village, by this popular British author of 52 books, now in his eighties. Swinnerton has always enjoyed and utilized country vistas, populated by villagers ""shrewdly known"" to one another, old houses, families, and vast stretches of greensward. In these casually autobiographical chapters, he spins off stories about real residents, old and new; the vagaries of cats, dogs, birds and gardens; a word or two about cricket; and a good deal about writing. As to Swinnerton's writing future: ""I should like to live another ten years, in order to write several books over which I have been brooding. . . but I am reconciled."" The loud modern age Swinnerton does not, predictably, find pleasant, but on the whole, his village remains a ""fair corner of England."" Alas, that the mellow country gentleman has preserved intact some brutal remnants of an earlier attitude toward, for example, the ""color problem"": ""the only colored people we see are some charming piccanninnies who are catered for in a large house about a mile away."" (a superfluous cruelty an editor could have whisked away). Swinnerton concludes his reflections with a simple ""Farewell,"" and admirers of his works will undoubtedly read these last serene musings in an affectionate perspective.