THE WOMAN WHO MOTHERS THE MOTHERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 151, 15 May 1942, Page 17

THE WOMAN WHO MOTHERS THE MOTHERS

Enid Maxwell And Her Radio Mission

EVEN remote listeners are apt to find the " Children and Parents" programmes of the British Broadcasting Corporation among the most emotional of all radio features — those programmes which link the British children who have been evacuated overseas, to their parents at home. It is still more moving to be in the British studio where the parents are hearing their children’s voices for perhaps the first time for two years, and getting their first opportunity to ask or answer questions. Here is a sketch of Anne, the woman who is responsible for these features, supplied to "The Listener" by the BBC:

which conceals the identity of Enid Maxwell, a woman with a mission. She regards it as her job, by means of radio, to stop the war from doing what it threatens to do — break down family life. She wants to develop this radio link with home, so that the children do not forget their old associations and their old homes; she wants to keep the parents so closely in touch with their children that they can understand and take part in their growth and new interests, instead of feeling-as so many of them tend to do — that their children are slipping away from them and growing up as strangers. That is Enid Maxwell’s mission, and she fulfils it in two ways-first the twoday "live programme" Children Calling Home, and secondly the Hello Children programme in which recorded messages from parents are sent to their children; both programmes can be heard in the BBC’s North American, Pacific and African Services. It is Enid Maxwell’s job to organise these, to steady and mother the parents so that they can control themselves before the microphone. In the Children Calling Home programme her assistant and compére is Roy Rich. ee is the microphone name

Born, brought up and educated in Scotland, Enid Maxwell is now a womari in her thirties, dark and good\ looking, almost petite in figure, and as trim and tidy in mind as she is in appearance. She has an exceptionally attractive voice. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she did a fair amount cf producing for amateurs, but never herself wanted to go on the stage. She reached radio some six or seven years ago, first in Edinburgh, where she started by taking a one-line part in an early radio play. She drifted into the Children’s Hour, went te London, and then went at short notice to Birmingham to take over the Children’s Hour there. She went to Birmingham for three weeks and stayed for three years, was there when war broke out, and came off the air in the Midland programme at three minutes to six — three minutes before the Regional programmes were abandoned and the wartime wavelengths came into operation. The Ministry of Information then claimed Enid Maxwell, sending her back to Scotland. A year later she was transferred, at forty-eight hours’ notice, back to the BBC to take over her present job. Incidentally, she has not been at home with her family for Christmas, except in 1939, for many years, since she has always been concerned with broadcast features to link other ae with their homes,