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THE ART OF THE ROYAL BALLET by Keith Money. 272 pages. World. $12.50. For six months Author Money recorded the leaps and pirouettes of Dame Margot Fonteyn, Nureyev and the other members of Britain's Royal Ballet. His several hundred photographs and sketches, many in color, fall a bit short of technical perfection. This is more than compensated for by the zest and understanding that went into their execution; before too long, Money knew the choreography as well as the dancers. His scenes of the company in the studio, the ballerinas in practice leotards and the heavy, woolen leggings worn for warmth, have a special charm. One can quarrel, however, with Money's emphasis. His camera lingers all too often on the figure of Christopher Gable, still only a rising star in ballet's firmament, and not often enough on the established brilliance of Nureyev and Fonteyn.
IVORY HAMMER 2: THE YEAR AT SOTHEBY'S. 256 pages. Holt, Rinehart & Winston. $12.50. For art lovers who like to look at the price tags too, this book is just the ticket. The annual report of Sotheby's, Britain's venerable auction house, which has been a British institution for years, has graduated into a profusely illustrated volume worthy of deposit on any drawing-room table. Ivory Hammer 2 is the second annual report to be published in the U.S. It reprises the 1963-64 season, during which Sotheby's knocked down an unprecedented $37 million worth of art, from an 11.80-carat unset emerald ($65,800) to the bugle that blew the charge of the Light Brigade ($4,480). More than 250 illustrations, some in color, all priced in pounds and dollars, plus—for no good reason—an original short story by Wolf Mankowitz about an imaginary sale at Sotheby's, of all places.
PLEASURE OF RUINS, text by Dame Rose Macaulay. 286 pages. Thames & Hudson distributed by International Book Society, a division of Time Inc. $17.50. On none of her 30 books did the late Dame Rose Macaulay bestow more love and scholarship than on Pleasure of Ruins, her unique evocation of civilization's past. Troy, Nineveh, Tyre, Thebes, Babylon, Carthage, Persepolis, Byzantium—all the fallen cities rise again from the centuries in her memorial. In this volume, Constance Babington Smith, Dame Rose's cousin, and Canadian Artist-Photographer Roloff Beny have paid lovely tribute to those glorious ghosts. Beny's 172 photographs, twelve in color, make a perfect setting for Dame Rose's text. In these pages the wayfarer irresistibly shares the author's "intoxication, at once so heady and so devout," at "the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs."