Poor Nijinsky! His bones and his reputation, and his diary, are being turned over again. His diary, a not untiresome document in the first and expurgated place, is now given to us in full, replete with ravings, remorse and rehashing of his life. I am not persuaded of much value to all this, except as corrective to the sanitised portrait of his genius that his wife, Romola, wished to offer to the world. The new translation by Kyril Fitzlyon reads well and must have been an Augean task. Joan Acocella’s introduction is sympathetic, well-reasoned, and warns us that the Nijinsky industry still rumbles tiresomely on – with ‘reconstructions’ of his ballets, whose imper tinence seems to me as great as their improbability, plays, one-man shows, another film, all threatening. Peace, thou troubled spirit, peace. Clement Crisp dance research

century have provided all subsequent writers with a marvellous resource, combining meticulous scholarship with a sense of the period that goes far beyond mere research and documentation, taking the reader on a voyage of the imagination as vivid as it is fascinating that golden past lives again in his pages. Ivor's own journey began almost by accident. Born in Chislehurst, he was intrigued by the town's association with the exiled Napoleon III, the Empress Eugenie and their son, the tragic Prince Imperial. Thus his first book, Napoleon III in England. And thus, as his researches progressed, the decision of an already confirmed balletomane to learn more about the ballet of the Paris

OLGA SPESSIVTSEVA In his study of Olga Spessivtseva, /Olga Spessivtseva. Magicienne Envoutee; Libraire Les Lettres: Paris, 19541]. Andre Schaikevich provides a first-hand account of the Opera's revival of Giselle and of Spessivtseva's appearances. Thanks to the will-power and tenacity of its Director, M. Rouche, several ballets old and new were mounted to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Opera's building. Among the ballets were: Le Triomphe de l'Amour by Lully; Namouna by Lalo; The Bees by Stravinsky; and Giselle by Adam. It was the

The Library of the Royal Academy of Dancing is named after P. J. S. Richardson, for it is Richardson who was a founding figure not only of the Academy but also of the Library's collections. Philip Richardson (1875-1963) was a significant figure in the development of both ballet and ball-room dancing in Britain. As editor of The Dancing Times from 1910 to 1951, Richardson nobly served the cause of dancing by providing critical commentary and a forum for the discussion and teaching of theatrical and social forms. He was a co-founder of the Royal Academy of Dancing in 1920, and his breadth of interest and understanding, and a commandingly measured assessment of events and developments, meant that he was to exert a benevolent and always balanced influence upon many aspects of the dancing profession. His love for the art in the theatre or in the ball-room was sustained by wide reading, and by a desire to acquire the major printed texts concerning dance. At a time when few other bibliophiles were interested in dance materials, Richardson collected wisely and well, and in this he was much helped by the bibliophile dealer, Ifan Kyrle Fletcher. For forty years Richardson bought with enthusiasm and knowledge; Fletcher sought, and found, rarities, and in 1954 published a monograph Forty Rare Dance Books in the Collection of P. J. S. Richardson, which gives a very fair indication of Richardson's catholic and refined taste. With texts which ranged from such rarities as Le Ballet Comique de la reine and Arena on