Laughter in Court

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 313, 22 June 1945, Page 9

Laughter in Court

AM now able to report that the Brains Trust laugh is not a myth. Evidently microphone.conditions are the underlying cause, for the last session I heard from 3YA had none of the old familiar voices — Huxley, Campbell, Joad — and yet sounded once or twice like an asthmatic barnyard. The feature of that session was the denial of Hilary St. George: Saunders, author of The Battle of Britain and other publications which have raised the official booklet to the level of literature, that he was a historian. Mr. Saunders didn’t give the reasons for his denial, but from his remarks it was clear that he had no objection to being . regarded as a chronicler of contemporary events. One is therefore left guessing. Was it mere modesty? The remaining Trustees certainly appeared to reject his claim; and after all, how is one to classify the literary equivalent of the documentary film, which gives both the facts and the dramatic values of its subject, if not as: history? Journalism it is not, though journalists have written it, Perhaps, with modern methods of recording contemporary events, we must alter our classification.