Books: Great Man's Plaything

SAVROLA (241 pp.) — Winston S. Churchill—Random House ($3.50).

This novel is the work of a high-spirited Hussar officer of 23, caught temporarily between campaigns. It would not be uncharitable to say that its author should adopt some other line of work. This, to the great benefit of history and humanity, is what the author did.

Wittily, the publishers have decorated the book jacket of this literary curiosity with the novelist's figure in its more recent frame—sitting before his goldfish pond at Chartwell, with his back firmly turned. The frontispiece shows the face of a younger, less imposing man, who had just become...