Learned Friends

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 382, 18 October 1946, Page 11

Learned Friends

STATION 3YA has another new series of talks on historical personages, this time on Famous Figures of the Bar, delivered by Richard Singer. Mr. Singer speaks with the dry yet vivid precision of a Dickens character; he has relish, wit and information. The two figures he has so far dealt with are Thomas Erskine and Daniel O’Conngll, both lawyer politicians of the reforming and radical era of 1790-1830. Erskine, who possessed a power over juries little short of magical, won a name by defending liberal-minded persons accused of treason and conspiracy in the frequent governmental panics of the days of the French Revolution. A Scot and himself a radical, he averted many of the more scandalous miscarriages of justice that marked the day. O’Connell was an Irishman foremost in the fight for Catholic civil liberties and Irish self-government. An even more picturesque figure than Erskine, he killed a man in a youthful duel (continued on next page) ]

RADIO VIEWSREEL (Cont' d)

and ever afterwards wore a black glove -it is said-on his right hand to remind him of this fact; he publicly declared that Disraeli was descended from the thief who died impenitent on the cross on the left hand; and what with one thing and another, he kept British public life in his day fairly warm with. his exuberant 18th Century rhetoric. It

is to be hoped we hear more from Mr. Singer; the theme he has chosen is rich in good stories.