How Small the World Is

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 103, 13 June 1941, Page 5

How Small the World Is

A FEW years ago, I had the good fortune to find myself a guest for luncheon in the home of a famous Oxford don. I was seated on my hostess’s right, and on my other side was a boy of 11 or 12, her grandson, whose surname was Mitchison. Now Mitchison to me meant only one person — Naomi Mitchison, the author of "The Conquered," "When

the Bough Breaks" and many other books set in ancient Rome or Greece. So I made inquiries, and my hostess and I were both filled with delight, I at finding Naomi Mitchison was her daughter, and she at discovering that her daughter’s books were known and admired at the far ends of the earth. We fell to discussing the books, and agreed that we liked The Conquered

best; whereupon the small boy offered his opinionhe didn’t care very much for mother’s books, except perhaps Black Sparta. My hostess was Mrs. J. B. Haldane, wife of the famous professor and scientist, who died a year or so ago. The professor struck me as one of the kindliest men I have ever met, which was just as well, for my knowledge of science is so infinitesimal beside his that I might have been tongue-tied. But imagine how much at home I felt, when in that distant Oxford drawing-room he suddenly asked me about the success of the Hataitai traffic tunnel, about the ventilation of which he had been consulted!- ("A Few Minutes with Women Novelists: Naomi Mitchison," by Margaret Johnston, 2YA, May 10).