MR MENZIES OFF DUTY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24415, 28 September 1940, Page 4

MR MENZIES OFF DUTY

FAVOURITE READING THRILLERS AND POETRY (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY, Sept. 18. When the Prime Minister (Mr R. G, Menzies) is travelling by train from State tq State to attend War Cabinet or election meetings he reads detective stories and poetry preferably Shakespeare’s plays. In an exciting yarn by Agatha Christie or a poem by John Masefield— 1 Helen of Troy,” for instance, or some of, “The Salt Water Ballads ” —he knows he can escape from the cares of office and the welter of electioneering. Mr Menzies was asked what he most liked to read-detective stories, poetry, or the Encyclopaedia Britannica? “Apart from detective stories, this is what I like most,” he said, taking from his pocket a slim volume of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” It was suggested that Kipling, whom he quoted in one of his recent speeches, was an appropriate poet for a wartime Prime Minister to read, but he said he read Kipling only rarely. Sherlockiana i In the United States, where the cult of Sherlock Holmes has assumed amazing proportions, there - has been published a pamphlet, “Baker Street and Beyond,” a “ Sherlockian gazeteer,” by Edgar W. Smith, with maps drawn by Dr Julian Wolff. This astonishing topography lists and comments upon 517 streets, towns, places or regions (from Abbas Parva to Zion) that have “fallen under the benevolent shadow of Sherlock Holmes ahd Dr Watson.” Another Prize-winner The 1940 Atlantic novel prize of 10,000 dollars has been awarded to Mrs Antonia ' Riasanovsky, of Eugene, Oregon, for her novel called The Family. It is the story of an exiled White Russian family composed of brave and amusing people, set against the background of Tientsin, China, whither they have fled. The author is herself a White Russian and lived in Tientsin after she was forced to leave her native country. She .has been living in the United States since 1938.

Kipling’s Home Arrangements were completed in July for the opening of Bateman’s. Burwash, the old house and garden in East Sussex which was Rudyard Kipling’s home for the last half of his life, Bateman’s, which was left by Mrs Kipling with an endowment of £SOOO to the National Trust, will open daily to the public from 2 o’clock till sunset. Two Million Copies A year ago the Oxford University Press published the first group of their “ Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs.” These “ short studies of great subjects ” have been coming out steadily ever since, generally in groups of three or four, and at intervals of about a month. The sales in English have already exceeded 1,750,000. and. with the numerous translations (the languages include French, German. .Italian, Dutch, Spanish Portuguese. Serbo-Croatian. Finnish, Chinese. Japanese, Urdu. Gujarati), the total sales are now well over two million.