Dragon Rampant

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 326, 21 September 1945, Page 9

Dragon Rampant

N the Famous New Zealanders series broadcast weekly by commercial stations I heard the other evening the session devoted to Iris Wilkinson, whose pen name was "Robin Hyde." The form used in the session was the stereotyped but still effective one of biographical commentary interspersed with dialogues. We had, for instance, an account of Iris Wilkinson’s distinguished school career, followed by a conversation in which she was shown doing what most women have failed to do-convincing an editor that as a reporter she might be fit for other jobs besides the society notes and the children’s corner. Throughout the 15 minutes of this session both script and production were competent, and if the authors failed for some of us to recreate "Robin Hyde’s" vivid personality, it is surely because they work under a heavy handicap. Were their subject still alive, a little more dash might go into the script with her laughing acquiescence. Had she been dead fifty years her biographers might proceed with the freedom of a Lytton Strachey. But it is only a few years since she was a familiar figure amongst us, and such a sketch is bound to have something still of the stilted care of a funeral oration. Yet I was led to look out and re-read her last book, "Dragon Rampant," where her personality is indeed very much alive. Written of China in’ 1938, it is a book we may now read with sympathy and appreciation more acute than when it was first published, having been required in the meantime to consider on our own account what type of enemy;is the Japanese,