THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 400, 21 February 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

The Celestial Omnibus « M. FORSTER’S short story "The * Celestial _ Omnibus" has been adapted by Leonard Cottrell for broadcasting in the BBC series "Mystery and Imagination," and it will be heard from 1YA at 7.30 p.m. on Monday, February 24. Although the title of the series has been borrowed from Edgar Allen Poe’s collection of tales, there are in fact no "horror" stories in it. Readers of Forster’s story will remember that it is about a boy who found the way to the world of poetry-a goal that could be reached only by those who worship poetry in spirit and in truth. Early Days at the Chathams N Tuesday, February 25, at 7.15 p.m., listeners to Station 4YZ Invercargill will hear another talk an the Chatham Islands, by Rosaline Redwood. This one will be about the early missionaries. In the early ‘forties, the Berlin Mission Society sent five young men, Baucke, Muller, Engst, Beyer, and Shirmaister, to New. Zealand to found a mission. But they had been forestalled by their Anglican brethren, and, after a discussion with Bishop Selwyn, went on to the Chathams. There they erected their own mission buildings, learned Maori, sowed and reaped their own crops, and opened a school. Then a thoughtful parent body in the Fatherland sent them help-meets-but only three young women for the five young men. So the usual method of ‘courtship was reversed and the women did the choosing. There will be two subsequent talks in this Rosaline Redwood series — " Prison Island of Te Kooti,’ which will be heard on Tuesday, March 11; and "Shipwrecks," on Tuesday, March 18; both at 7.15 p.m. Three Appointments "THERE are three Appointments with Fear in next week’s programmes: "The Case of the Five Canaries" (3YA, Tuesday, 9.30 p.m.); "The Customers Like Murder" (2YD, Tuesday, 9.2 p.m.); and "The Phantom Archer" (4YA, Thursday, 10.0 p.m.). Of these, the first is a new one. The young man in "The Case of the Five Canaries" went home one evening and opened the familiar door with the usual latchkey, to find himself suddenly in a house he had never seen before. What happened after that will be told as usual by The Man in Black. Stop You, Look You! AND, of course, since St. David’s Day ‘means something more than a mouthful of consonants, listen you, too -at 8.14 p.m. on February 28, the eve of the festival, to 3YA’s programme, High Days and Holidays. This will be a studio programme of "traditions and songs that are remembered," presented by Myra Thomson and H. G. Glaysher. We won't attempt a translation of the Welsh items which 3YA has listed, lest (like Ancient Pistol) we find a Welsh correction teaching us a good English condition. But listeners can be sure that they will be well interpreted by Mrs, Thomson, who. will be heard both

as soprano and narrator, and by Mr. Glaysher who will, as usual, bring his harp to the party. Man the Creator AS it ever struck you just how much the smartly dressed woman owes to man for the appearance of her clothes? There are men dress-designers, and very famous ones, too. Although it seems remarkably like treachery to her sex, Mrs. Dorothy White, of Dunedin, is honour bound to reveal the great part that men designers have played in making women beautiful. The Gentleman is a Dressmaker, a series of talks by Mrs. White, deals with a host of interest.ng persons (interesting for women, at least): Mainbocher, Poiret, Molyneux, Hartnell, Adrian, Worth, and Paquin, are some of the personalities she discusses. "The Gentleman is a Dressmaker" will begin at 2YA on Tuesday, February 25, at 11.0 a.m. Birds and Bush it HOSE of us who have to admit shamefacedly that we don’t know as _ much as we should about the native birds of our own country will welcome the series of talks recorded by J. H. Robson, of Stratford, and shortly to be heard from 2YA. Mr. Robson. who is 4

now in his 80th year, has since his childhood had both the opportunity and the .nclination (to study native birds From his mother, who was wise in these matters, he learned much, and he widened his own

knowledge by first hand observation. But his opportunities to study brds arose from the fact that his father’s work as a sawmiller required the family to live close to the bush. When Mr. Robson was born, at Carterton, his father ‘was working the then dense forest-land of the Wairarapa. From there he moved on to become the pioneer sawmiller in South Taranaki, and finally the family moved to Ngaire, three miles south of Stratford, where they worked a mill for 25 years. Mr. Robson, who followed his father as a miller, retired some years ago now, but he has maintained an interest in bush and birds’and timber forests that belies his years. The first of his talks (the general title is simply Some N.Z. Birds) will be heard from 2YA on Tuesday, February 25, at 7.15 p.m.

Something New E:Xx AFRICA (as Pliny points out on page 552 of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations) semper aliquid novi-or, to bring the translation more up-to-date, there’s always something in the news about Africa. This has been particularly evident in the papers recently and of late: there have been new diamond and gold strikes rivalling those at Kimberley and the Witwatersrand (or should it be the Witwatersrand and Kimberley?), there have been labour strikes not unconnected with the diamonds and ~ the gold, Field Marshal Smuts has had things. to say about UN, and the Union

itself has come closer to the headlines of the cable-pages with every knot H.M.S. Vanguard has logged on her journey southward. But the newspaper news has all been about big events and big people. Listeners who are interested in filling in the background to the news with some knowledge of ordinary day-to-day life in the Union will find the material ready-made for them in a well-timed series of talks by Vivienne Blamires, to be presented by 2YA. There will be three talks in the series, under the general title of A New Zealander in South Africa, and the first, dealing with the life of women there, will be heard at 11.0 a.m. om Wednesday, February 26. Unabashed Defoe ‘yUT of every hundred persons who know Daniel Defoe as the romantic but moralising author of Robinson Crusoe, it is doubtful if there are a dozen who are also aware that he was a poneer English journalist, and one of the most prolific writers of his time, as well as one of the most unfortunate. Defoe was continually in hot water, always {as it were) being pushed from pillory to post. He seems to have got off on the wrong foot by getting involved in Monmouth’s rebell.on (on the wrong side, of course). However, he later joined W_ lliam III’s army and might have made a comfortable corner for ° himself somewhere had it not been for an official misunderstanding of his pamphlet The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which brought him to the pillory.. From then on he seems to have spent his life on the defensive, so that "In Defence of H's Right," which will be heard in the Story to Remember series from 2YA on February 27 (3.15 p.m.) is an appropriate piece by which to remember him.