Books: Great Concert of Talk

THE GODSTONE AND THE BLACKYMOR (225 pp.) — T. H. White — Putnam ($3.95).

Because he likes sea birds and dislikes Britain's tax strictures, Author T. H. White (The Once and Future King) lives on low-tax Alderney, a 3-sq.-mi. dot of an island in the English Channel. There he flaps about in baggy fisherman's corduroys, roams the beaches with a red setter named Jenny, and drives about in a mud-clotted, war-surplus Hillman. He gets along well with the islanders, but fumes at the excessive pace (30 m.p.h.) of Al-derney's three cabs. He seldom ventures from the island these days, but during the...