A. G. MACDONELL'S DEATH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 84, 31 January 1941, Page 8

A. G. MACDONELL'S DEATH

A Tribute Broadcast From The BBC

By

Reginald

Pound

' ALL who knew A. G. Macdonell, and especially those who worked closely with him, as I did, for several delightful and stimulating months, are united not simply in a common and faithful regret, but in a complete inability to believe the occasion for it. When this evening I heard of his death I was more deeply shocked than by any similar news I have heard for a long time.

He was so eagerly, so humorously, so very alive, so enormously interested in people and events, so immediately responsive to every sympathetic appeal of mind and heart, so very keen to make friends, and so loyal always in keeping them. But it seems absurd that all this vivid thought and integrity of personality should have gone from us. I feel sure you must have caught some of this spirit in his many broadcast talks to you.

By birth a hundred per cent. Scots, in appearance and speech he was 150 per cent. Englishman. I may be allowed to quote from something I wrote about him in a book of mine last year. Describing him, I said: " He has the facade of a brigadier, the wit of a beau sabreur! In fact, he was the most soldierly looking of our writers. More so even than Major P. C. Wren, and much more so than Major-General Ian Hay." Like a soldier, too, he expressed his opinion, as you know, straight from the shoulder, and he was no great respecter of persons. Some of his very best works

consisted of criticism, but he was rarely unkind and still more rarely unfair, and he could be impulsively generous. Most genuine humorists have a gloomy side to their temperament. Unlike some humorists of my acquaintance, Macdonell seldom inflicted his darker moods on others. He had his troubles but he would keep away from his friends until his natural high spirits came back, until he had a new joke to tell you, a fresh bit

of gossip to write about, a lively new idea for a book or an article, or a talk to discuss with you. And many of you I am sure will agree he imparted something of this gift of friendship to his broadcasting-many listeners must have felt that he was taking them personally into his confidence. I shall be going home this week-end to the Sussex village in which he laid the scene of the celebrated cricket match in his first and in many ways his most memorable book, " England, Their England." I shall take down from my shelves the copy he inscribed and gave me, as he did all his later books. Slipped between the pages I shall find some of his letters, which I now remember he always finished with the phrase, " Yours, Till Death do us Part."