B. ATKINS, and illustrated
partly with photographs, partly with water-colour sketches by that
various craftsman, Mr. ARNOLD BENNETT. Let me say at once that you have
no need to be an amateur bargee, either by practice or desire, to enjoy
this most entertaining volume. Witness my own case, who read every
page of it with delight. It is a reasonable contention that a writer
possessing the enthusiasm, the humour and the persuasive gifts of Mr.
IONIDES, with a twelve-and-sixpenny book for their display, could
present a case that would give some theoretic and superficial charm to
the most uncomfortable conditions of existence. Not that _A Floating
Home_ is a work only of theory; on the contrary, nothing could be more
practical than its account of the purchase, conversion and enjoyment of
the _Ark Royal_. The most prejudiced--again I speak personally--will
find pleasure in the author's zestful story of how the dingy,
foul-smelling _Will Arding_, full of cement (and worse things), was
transformed into the spick-and-span _Ark Royal_, with a piano in the
saloon and Queen Anne silver on the breakfast-table; while for the
persuadable there are added plans, scales of expense and the like,
which bring the whole matter to a working basis. The book, in short, is
propaganda at its best (was it perhaps this that attracted Mr.
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