Books: Tourist Trade

TO SERVE THEM ALL MY DAYS

byR.F. DELDERFIELD 638 pages. Simon & Schuster. $8.95.

One can almost hear the anticipatory sigh going up from book clubbers, jolly olde Englanders, lending-library faithfuls and everybody's Aunt Sally across the land: another good read from Delderfield. To Serve Them All My Days, a chronicle about life in a British public school, is certainly that. But a good read is not necessarily a good write.

The point may be irrelevant. Delderfield, an Englishman who died at 60 last January, qualified in publishing terms as a phenomenon, which by all...