the Thursday critics . Kenneth Allsop . the new books . Behan bestows an accolade on Delaney . she &apos;s the flower in a cultural desert , he says . it is mid-morning on a Dublin Sunday . the streets are tranquilly sunny and still , for the town is at mass . most of it . in the front room of a house in Anglesey-road is a congregation who never actually got to church , but who are gathered with devotion around Brendan Behan and a brandy bottle . where the bhoys are . in the hallway are the empties ; through the door hearts are full , hopes are high . there are still a few amber inches in the bottle . present are some hard-core friends of Brendan . they listen with many an obliging guffaw to the brandy owner &apos;s solo swish on his anecdotal roller-coaster , with occasional stops for an old I.R.A air or a Connemara tear-jerker . pluckily . also present is a London journalist who arrived two hours earlier by appointment to talk to the author of borstal boy and the hostage about his new work , if any , and who is now being pluckily convivial to fight off the frustration . the telephone has rung a couple of times , calls from other chums sniffing the wind and offering to drop by for a chat . at last Brendan - to the journalist &apos;s relief - turns his attention to the writing scene . he proceeds to place himself in the literary hierarchy . I consider myself , he says , a cut above Evelyn Waugh socially , a cut above Nancy Mitford artistically , a cut above Frank Haxell conversationally . but , he continues , the greatest is Shelagh Delaney . just because a taste of honey was set in Salford they put on her the limiting label of working-class writer . that &apos;s as bloody silly as calling a Rolls-Royce a type of transport . she &apos;s the flower in a cultural desert . now , me - I &apos;m a journalist , I write to entertain rather than educate . and I do n&apos;t write at all unless I &apos;m exceedingly skint . but I &apos;ll say this . I &apos;d like to live in America and do some writing there . it &apos;s a very free place to write in , and there &apos;s the advantage that no one knows what you &apos;re writing about anyway . not that I did much when I was over this past two times , not with that great little Irish bar on Seventh Avenue , the pigsty , always open . I was there , in even faster orbit , when that third astronaut went up - what &apos;s his name ? I &apos;m the only man on earth who does n&apos;t know what his name is . do n&apos;t tell me . I want to preserve that distinction . I already know about Shepard and that salvation army chap Gagarin - the two biggest bores since Cardinal Newman . that &apos;s enough of all that hooey . gravely . he plunges on into reminiscences of his trips . there is much to recall . among other incidents he was banned from New York &apos;s St Patrick &apos;s day parade as a disorderly person . he was in a fight after telling a Canadian , during a chat about space-flight : Ireland will put a shillelagh into orbit , Israel will put a matzo ball into orbit , and Lichtenstein will put a postage stamp into orbit before you Canadians put up a mouse . and he suffered an alcoholic seizure and was gravely ill in hospital with a diabetic and heart condition . his return to Dublin was heralded by the announcement that he was off the gargle - a retired alcoholic . since then he has been heard of often in the newspapers - three times up before the beaks for drunk and disorderly conduct . partially . less has been heard of Brendan &apos;s work . it is now five years since his first play , the quare fellow , was produced , three years since borstal boy was published and the hostage was put on . what has happened to the play , Richard &apos;s cork leg , begun 18 months ago and due for presentation at the Theatre Royal , Stratford , last spring ? it was never finished . what happened to the new book partially tape-recorded by his publishers in March of last year ? still a skeleton . yet I have before me now a 12,000-word manuscript of a book planned to be called confessions of an Irish rebel which was delivered to his agents in June . zestfully . it begins : there was a party to celebrate Deirdre &apos;s return from her abortion in Bristol . it is ribald , funny , brilliantly observant of character , and authentic as a glass of draught porter . but will we see its end ? the last scene of this fragment is in a pub where the author throws a &amp;pound;10 note on to the bar and orders a round for the pals , one of whom cries : now are n&apos;t you the great sport , though , Brendan Behan ! it is apparently praise that is still so important to him that he lets his talent drown - for not very deep under the histrionics of having a zest for life must be a great fear of living . books in brief . Stephen Morris , by Nevil Shute ( Heinemann , 16 s ) . this first attempt at novel writing - two unpublished stories from the &apos;20s - is the last work we shall see of the late Nevil Shute . it will interest devotees , but , despite the accurate flying-lore and natural story-telling skill , it is a creaky piece of apprenticeship . L S Lowry ( Studio books , 21 s ) . the painters of today series issues this attractive collection of the work of perhaps the most fascinating artist in Britain today - the Lancastrian who does those vivid crowded dream pictures of the industrial scene . there is a warm and illuminating monograph by Mervyn Levy . pull my daisy ( Evergreen books , 10 s 6 d ) . Jack Kerouac &apos;s ad-libbed text for the beat film made in a Bowery flat by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie , with stills of the strolling players , including Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso . it reads like a demented kind of litany - the American free-livers doing what comes naturally , and with the beat between their teeth . Eve Perrick . the new films . la Lollo and the hockey girl bully-off . I am happy to report that I saw something this week I have never before witnessed , either in pictures or outside - a budgerigar playing a drunk scene , and playing it with perfect timing and technique . it gives one loud , clear hiccup and falls flat on its back . this brilliant budge , I may add , gets no credit in the cast list of come September ( Odeon , Leicester-square ) , which suggests that it is either using a stand-in for the stunt stuff or needs a more pushful personal manager . the performance of our talented feathered friend is not the only good thing ( although the one original touch ) in the film , which is better-than-average glossy comedy , Hollywood-styled , European set . most of it has been shot in and around the sun-terrace of the Hotel Splendido ( renamed the Dolce Vista for the picture ) in Portofino - and if there &apos;s a better view to be had from a more comfortable vantage point anywhere , I &apos;d like to see it . nighties . it also parades Gina Lollobrigida in a selection of neglig&amp;eacute;e-and-nightie ensembles not too well designed for sleeping in , and Rock Hudson at the wheel of a shining silver Rolls-Royce . Mr Hudson is an American millionaire who spends each September in his Italian villa and the company of Signorina Lollobrigida . in the holiday seasonal months before and after this annual idyll his major-domo ( Walter Slezak at his most nauseating ) turns the palazzo into a luxury hotel . inevitably there comes the time when Mr Hudson suddenly breaks with tradition and arrives there in July , when , just as inevitably , the place is full of American teenagers on an escorted tour . result : Mr Hudson and lady love Lollo find themselves playing chaperon ( Brenda de Banzie , the official one , has broken a leg ) to the girls , who have just been joined by a jeep-load of boys . it &apos;s hereabouts that the budge takes to the bottle , but I do n&apos;t think it was through boredom . the film is funny enough in places and has a line or two of painful home truths thrown in . goodies . I do n&apos;t want to talk like an adult , screams Gina , walking out on the man who has so far failed to make an honest woman of her . that &apos;s how I got into all this trouble . he &apos;s got to be 35 , says Bobby Darin , the chief spokesman of the jeans-and-jeep brigadiers as they &apos;re scheming to get rid of old man , solid Rock . how many hills can he take ? of course Mr Hudson can take one more hill than the youngsters . so all ends as you know it will , with the middle-aged romancers respectably wed and Master Darin going steady with the delectable Sandra Dee ( to whom , I believe , he is married in real life ) . Miss Dee , incidentally , who keeps turning up as the typical teenager in all the good girl parts ( Tuesday Weld gets the bad girl ones ) , is becoming quite an accomplished actress . studies . the marriage-go-round ( Carlton ) is also a comedy of manners , but fun-films toting an X certificate have to keep a sharp look-out that the jokes about sex ( what else would they joke about with an X ? ) are of the witty , verbal variety and not the visual slapstick . this has only one gag - that of the entry of a gladiator ( female , 7 ft high , stacked and Scandinavian ) into the cosy but unbelievably elegant household of a pair of married college professors . the girl is a knock-out ( see picture of Julie Newmar for confirmation ) . she also has quite a mission in mind . she , younger , prettier , stronger , and more intelligent than the wife ( as she soon tells her ) , wants to have the perfect baby . and she has chosen the husband ( James Mason ) , who is an academic friend of her Nobel prize-winning father to be big Daddy . this sort of situation calls for some subtle , slightly sardonic handling . it does n&apos;t get it . but the marriage-go-round is not entirely a waste of time . I learned from it that in the institutes of advanced studies attached to some American universities the subject social psychology used to be called home-making and is now known as domestic relations . Susan Hayward plays the wife sharply and sweetly . Mason is always good for a glower . and Miss Newmar is a stunner in every sense of the word . according to the script she was once captain of the junior hockey team at her school . so help me so was I . essays . il grido ( the cry ) - Paris Pullman - is an earlier essay in atmospheric meandering by the l&apos;Avventura man , Michelangelo Antonioni . in it Steve Cochran , deserted by Alida Valli , roams the Pontine Marshes , alternately enjoying the hospitality of three lonely , sex-starved women , before returning home . whereupon he climbs to the top of the tower in the sugar-beet refinery , suffers an unexplained attack of vertigo and falls to his death . maybe this is a masterpiece , too . I just would n&apos;t know . the Thursday critics . Kenneth Allsop . did the electric chair fully avenge this baby &apos;s murder ? now new doubts are raised about the most notorious kidnapping of the century . on a March evening in 1932 in the New Jersey family household the nursemaid tiptoed into the baby &apos;s room to see that 20-month-old Charles Jun was sleeping . bending over the cot , she suddenly realised that there was no sound of breathing . she thrust out her hand - and felt emptiness . national agony . a few minutes later the father gripping a loaded rifle , told his wife : Anne , they have stolen our baby . it was not only their baby - it was America &apos;s . the grief of the young parents became a national agony that erupted into hysteria when nine weeks later the child of Charles Lindbergh , hero aviator and golden boy , was found murdered . kidnap , by George Waller ( out today , Hamish Hamilton 30 s ) , is a painstaking , meticulous account of the most notorious and publicised crime of the 30&apos;s . the plain , sober manner of its style all the more tellingly points up not only the horror of the case itself , which floundered on to the electrocution four years later of a German-born Bronx carpenter named Bruno Richard Hauptmann , but to the raree-show emotionalism and sensation-hunger of that era . 