THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 365, 21 June 1946, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Understanding the Novel NEW series of Winter Course Talks is to be given from 2YA at 7.15 p.m.:on Mondays by Professor Ian A. Gordon, Professor of English at Victoria University College, under the title Understanding the Novel. Professor Gordon has shown us that consideration that Shaw shows for reviewers, and has made his titles and sub-titles so complete that it would be superfluous for us to do more than quote them as they stand. Here they are: (1) Introductory; (2) The Beginnings-The Big Four (Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne); (3) The Novel Turns Its Back on eed — the Romantic Historical Titers, Scott and Stevenson; (4) The Novel Becomes a Vehicle for Ideas; (5) The Analysis of a Society-Jane Austen and her followers; (6) Dickens, the Great Practitioner-The Development of a Public; (7) The Expansion of Tech-nique-~Joyce, the Master Craftsman; (8) The Novel To-day. Talk by a P.O.W. "ASK me _ about Germans, Poles, Egyptians, Greeks, Italians and any one of a dozen nations-I know them all," says W.O.1. R. H. Thomson, D.C.M., who has had enough interesting experiences since he went overseas with the first echelon of the 2nd N.Z.E.F. to find a place among NBS speakers. Mr. Thomson is to describe part of his adventures in a new series of talks, beginning from 4YA at 7.15 p.m. on Monday, July 8. He was in the Greece and Crete campaigns in 1941 and was captured at Sphakia in June. After a few months in a p.o.w. camp at Salonika, he was put on a train going to Germany. He escaped, and was free for most of the succeeding five months, till February, 1942. He was finally released by advancing Russian troops in April, 1945. A teacher before the war, Mr. Thomson is now nominally on the staff of the Karori West School, but is at present studying full time on a rehabilitation bursary at Victoria University College. The Woman in White As its new serial next week, Station 2YA will be broadcasting a BBC production of Wilkie Collins’ story The Woman in White, with Flora Robson as Anne Catherick, the title role. It will be heard on Mondays and Wednesdays at 4.0 p.m. A Mendoza drawing of Count Fosco, one of the chief characters, appears on the Wednesday programme page in this issue. Fosco was fat, genial and dangerous. He kept performing mice in a little cage and seemed to be extremely fond of them, and he wore the most extraordinary and elaborate clothes. This is a new adaptation of The Woman in White, and has not been broadcast here before. Symphony of Strings HIS is the title of a new series of programmes (to be heard from 2YA at 8.0 p.m. on Wednesdays, starting on June 26), made by an orchestra chosen from Britain’s best string players and conducted by "Spike" Hughes. Mr. Hughes may be known to some listeners as the arranger of some of those witty

musical parodies featured in "Itma.’"’ He is the son of the composer Herbert Hughes, and has just published an autobiography in England called Opening Bars, which Daniel George reviewed in the Pacific Service of the BBC the other day. He learned to swear in Sicilian while begging, along with Sicilian urchins, from English visitors, first became interested in music when his father took him to hear Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and got his name from the spike of his ’cello. The programmes he conducts will feature familiar music in unfamiliar settingspieces by Albeniz, Eric Coates, Ravel, Tchaikovski, Jerome Kern, and others. New Peter Cheyney Series HE ADVENTURES OF JULIA, which begins at 3YL at 8.30 p.m. this Friday, June 21, is a new BBC serial written by Peter Cheyney. Julia Heron is a young woman more than able to look after herself. Playing off a couple

of continental crooks and the British Secret Service against each other, and making money out of both sides, are little matters that she takes in her stride in the first episode, "Presenting Miss Heron." Tough

types (ike the one here depicted by Mendoza) may think they are running things their own way, but Julia knows better. In Episode 2, which will be on the air at the same time on Friday, June 28, Julia is well launched on her secret service career. Joy Shelton plays the part of Julia, and the series is produced by Martyn C. Webster. New Zealander in Nevada E always thought New Zealand held the palm for its devotion to sport, but the United States goes a good deal further in some respects-in some universities there is even a football scholarship, Peter F. Lawlor will tell us in the course of three talks from 2YA. Mr. Lawlor was in the American Merchant Marine during the war. For a year he took an arts course at the University of Nevada, Reno: The title of his talks will be A New Zealander in Nevada and the theme will be university life in the United States. Incidentally, he did a hitch-hike through New Mexico. The first talk will be heard at 11.0 a.m. on Saturday, June 29, and the other two will follow at weekly intervals. (A photograph of Mr. Lawlor, taken with other members of the University of Nevada ski team, appears on page 21.) Poet’s Life R. ALLEN, the Dunedin poet, has * written an autobiographical piece for radio called "A Man and His Verses," which will be heard from 4YA at 2.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 30. It is semi-humorous, semi-serious-an autobiographical essay incorporating some of his own poems. It takes him from his schooldays up to the present time, and listeners who know Mr. Allen’s writing will want to hear this programme.

Vanity Fair HIS Sunday, June 23, Station 3YL is to begin a»new serial, a BBC radio adaptation of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. The first instalment will be heard at 8.0 p.m. Our illustration is Thackeray’s own drawing of Becky Sharp, done for the original edition of the book. Vanity Fair was satirically sub-titled "A novel without a hero." It is perhaps the most satirical of any of Thackeray’s novels, and full of all sorts of people he didn’t

like-Becky herself, Rawdon Crawley, and many others. Episode 2, which comes on at 8.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 30, opens with Becky Sharp about to take her departure as quickly as possible from Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for Young Ladies, and "Poor Amelia," that colourless, virtuous heroine, being superbly tearful and generous.