SOURCE: "Brief, Poetic, Probing Stories," in New York Herald Tribune Book Review, February 26, 1956, p. 1.

In the following review, Hay praises Winter in the Air, and Other Stories, calling it "rewarding and stimulating."

Charlton Mackrell, impaled on the shaft of Sylvia Townsend Warner's fine irony, was a gentleman who, "in seeing both sides of a question, giving the Devil his due, stating the other man's case, allowing that to err is human, and never committing himself to any opinion till he had made quite sure there were no signs of error or prejudice about it . . . had attained eminence both as a judge of Shorthorn cattle and as a literary critic." This pleasant baiting brings to mind an apposite statement made by a certain writer a few weeks ago, who remarked that he believed the most valuable criticism to be highly opinionated, personal, emotional and biased. Somewhere between these nice...