THINGS TO COME A Run Through The Programmes

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 49, 31 May 1940, Page 6

THINGS TO COME

A Run

Through The Programmes

&¢ ERE’S a health unto His Majesty!" H The King’s birthday is observed on Monday, June 3, and 2YA, Wellington will present special features on that day. At 8 p.m., "Kingship," an unusual history of British monarchs, will be broadcast. Next at 8.35 p.m., the new BBC show "Coronation Diary" (previewed in The Listener on May 17), will be presented, and, since all the world loves a laugh, "By Royal Command," a programme by some of the best-known variety artists, will follow at 9.15 p.m. "Swing" Nearly Swung If our jitterbug readers think that "Captain Swing" is a new session for devotees of the gutbucket, bullfiddle, et al, they are mistaken. This is the title of a highly exciting radio play by Francis Brett Young and Edward Stirling. "Captain Swing" was an imaginary character, living about 1830, who was blamed for outrages against machineryusing farmers; such as the burning of

hayricks, a crime punished by death. "Swing," captured, is tried by his own father, but ultimately escapes through the help of a labourer’s daughter whom-he loves. Female lead in the play is taken by Lorna Forbes, well-known in this country as a member of touring companies. If you want good, highhanded, hot-blooded romantic adventure, don’t miss tuning in to 1YA, Auckland, at 9.15 p.m. on Sunday, June 2, when "Captain Swing" will be presented. The Mountains The origin of mountain ranges will be discussed by Dr. F. J. Turner in Dunedin (4YA, Tuesday, June 4, 7.30 p.m.) while, in Wellington, A. P. Harper will talk about the people who climb on them (2YA, Friday, June 7, 7.40 p.m.). The subjects of both talks are peculiar. New Zealand mountains are very young indeed, compared, for instance,

with the Alps in Switzerland. They are still settling, and going through the fierce process of erosion which ultimately will make pasture-lands of the moraine valleys, and fertile deltas where their rivers now take so much controlling on their way to the sea through shingle beds. These mountains have produced a special sort of mountaineer, and it is with his activities that Mr. Harper will deal from 2YA. A Loaf of Bread, And How... We don’t seem to hear as much of our old friend Omar Khayyam these days as we did a generation ago. There was a time when the. verses of Fitzgerald’s adaptation were on the lips of many, and there was an Omar Khayyam Club in London that gave literary people an excuse for dining and speechmaking. The publication of Fitzgerald’s translation of the Persian poet is one of the romances of literature. The first edition went almost unnoticed, and was actually put into the penny box. Then recognition came, and those who were lucky enough to have bought the book for a penny, and kept it, reaped a fortune in actual money value. A poem, however, does not lose any of its beauty because it is hackneyed, and there will be numbers of listeners interested to hear how it sounds when read. O. L. Simmance is to give extracts from the Rubaiyat at 3YA on Wednesday, June 5, at 8 p.m. Hearing Stars If you care to tune in at 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 2, to 2YA, Wellington, you'll be hearing stars instead of seeing them. Gustav Holst’s suite, "The Planets," will be presented in the "Music Since 1900" series. It is of interest to note that during the later part of the last Great War, Holst went to Salonika and then to Constantinople to organise musical activities among the Allied soldiers. The composer always had the power of communicating his own love of the finest music to other people, men, women or children, whom he met. His work aroused great enthusiasm among the soldiers, and under Holst they put on a number of performances, even of such difficult works as Byrd’s three-part Mass. Strike up the Band! One of the players in the Wanganui Garrison Band, which will play from 2YA during the evening programme of Sunday, June 2, has played the soprano cornet for more than 40 years. He is W. Francis, and he can look back over a very long record

of successes by his famous band. From 1898 to 1934, for example (as they show proudly, on an official letterhead), the band secured eleven firsts in championship selections, and fourteen firsts in championship marches. Only in two or three years over that long period have they failed to gain second places, if not firsts, and their full record in that period was 28 firsts, 10 seconds, and 5 thirds, plus the championship of Australia and New Zealand won at Ballarat in 1910. Points of View The talks at 2YA relating the University to daily life, are to be followed, appropriately, by a series on a direct line of research that the University has recently taken up. During the last fifty years, this country has passed a vast amount of labour legislation, but has not avoided strikes. H. Valder, of Hamilton, who has been studying industrial relationships for many years, recently gave the University of New Zealand a foundation to enable a study of the subject to be made. He is to give the first of the three talks in this series. He will be followed by W. N. Pharazyn, who will consider the question from the employee’s point of view, and by Frank Campbell, who will discuss it from the point of view of the employer. Mr, Valder’s talk is in the 2YA programmes for Monday June 3, at 7.40 p.m. Air on the Air With all due respect to the Royal Air Force trainees, we reserve the right to whisper an opinion that there are less wearing jobs than that of a flying instructor. Excellent as their material may be, flying instructors must feel sometimes as if they were riding in a powerful car, in the back seat, while their maiden aunt learned to drive. And there is not only the uncertainty of flying with pupils, not knowing when they may have to take over the controls: it must be about the worst moment of all when they watch their protégés take their first solo flight, but worse still when they come in for their first solo landing. Just how it feels will be described by an instructor who appears in 4YA’s "Job of Work Series," on Friday, June 7, at 7.30 p.m. In the News We sometimes wonder how Mr, Bagley decides which personalities and which places in the news he should include in his broadcast from 3YA. These days, especially, it must be difficult, Probably over the weekend he gives some thought to what will hap-

pen on Tuesday evening when he has nothing but a microphone between himself and the cold, hard world. Then Tuesday comes, and he finds that all the material he has prepared about Poland, for example, has to be scrapped in favour of a talk about Finland, and at the last minute, Norway goes. Lately, no doubt, he has been all set to cover Scandinavia, and found a more pressing engagement in The Netherlands at the eleventh hour. Some prescience must be required. It would be nice to know what he has in his appointment book for next week. He is in the programme at 7.20 p.m. on June 4. The Dishes Our artist suggests that "Dish Washing Up-to-Date" is a personal problem. rather than a question of mechanics, but perhaps the A.C.E. has other ideas. Certainly listeners will, as usual, hear something worth while if they tune to 4YA on Friday, June 7-9 31S

p.m. Dish-washing is not a very advanced art in New Zealand. Few of even the biggest hotels for instance, possess modern hygienic appliances, Now that Denmark has been cancelled out, we lead the world in the ratio of radio sets to population, but in dish-washing we are still where we were before Marconi. However, it need not be a matter of going out and leaving the dishes to Father. The A.CE. will suggest some happier alternatives. Romp! Throw off your set expression, relax your stiff upper lip, down tools and get into your rompers in preparedgess for "Ours Is A Nice Hour Ours Is," mischievously but quite accurately called a "radio romp" by the people who made it-Clarkson Rose, actors, musicians, and the BBC. This is a programme with pep. The time is 9.15 p.m, on Monday, June 3, and the station, 3YA, Christchurch.