‘We piped to you, and you did not dance.’ And when people do dance, we tend to look down disapprovingly from our upper window, like the worthy lady Michal. She remained barren, and so do we.

It has perhaps become commonplace to say that ours is an age which has forgotten how to play (eutrapelia a forgotten virtue, and all that). There are even therapists to teach us how to play! But somehow, the Church seems to go on, doing all things in moderation and busily turning the Lord’s wine back hto water.

Now the books under consideration—admittedly a rather heady mixture—are all about wine, or attempts at wine.

Richard Neville in Play Power (the book was previously to be called Flower Power) offers us his, in many ways attractive, version of ‘the underground scene’. He admits to being himself only halfliberated, so perhaps he won’t mind another half-liberated person venturing to offer some comments from a slightly different angle. Richard Neville’s background is political, and his interest in play power is as a form of political movement (when I first met him, he confiied rather shamefacedly to still writing letters to the New Stateman). Earnest protest movements suddenly caught fire (turned into wine), and became parties, games; people began to preach revolution, not because it was important, but because it was fun. People began to have confidence just to ‘do their thing’ (which is highly revolutionary in its implications). The whole thing became ‘turned on’.