REMINISCENCES OF A

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 421, 18 July 1947, Page 30

REMINISCENCES OF A

JOURNALIST Autobiographical Talks Series by Alan Mulgan NUMBER of reminiscence talks have been broadcast by the NZBS, but a series of a new kind is to start shortly. This is The Making of a New Zealander, an autobiographical series by Alan Mulgan, New Zealand author and journalist, who retired last year from the position of Supervisor of Talks for the NZBS. The title of this series points to one of its two main themes. Alan Mulgan was born and partly brought up in the colourful Ulster settlement in KatiKati, Bay of Plenty, where his elders were all immigrants, and the ties with the homeland were miade all the stronger by the conditions of the times. He was educated in Auckland in the ’nineties, before there was a substantial sense of nationalism in this country. He traces his own development from those days when little attention was given to New Zealand history, or to the cultivation of national roots, to the present day, when the country has found a fair measure of self-expression. This is the intellectual and spiritual progress of a New Zealander who can look back more than half a century. The second theme is the changes Alan Mulgan has seen in the political, economic and social life, particularly social. He remembers such things as the reign of the chaperone, the trailing skirt, the telephone a_ rarity, main roads made impassable by mud, 30 hours by the quickest route from Auckland to Wellington (two trains and a steamer), and a week of six long days for many shop assistants. j After describing his life in Kati-Kati, where the Orangemen paraded on the. Twelfth, he recalls. Auckland of 50 years ago, including years at the Grammar School-an Auckland isolated to a degree hard to realise to-day, dependent: largely on timber, gold and gum, and , without pre-vision of the wealth that was to flow from the dairy cow. _ Oh

He has some interesting things to say about journalism in Auckland, then in Christchurch and back again to Auckland; his adventure in broadcasting in middle-age; a visit to England, and the writing of books. He will talk about writing in general, and the development of the New Zealand spirit in letters during the last generation. These reminiscences will be to some extent localised, but the speaker has seen most of New Zealand, and the talks will be given against a background of national conditions, achievement and character. "Between Two Worlds," "When Auckland was Growing Up," "Mud and Little Ships," "Spartan Schooldays," "Plunge into Life," "His First Top Hat," "Canterbury Conflicts" are titles that suggest that. the talks will be human. For a man who has been a journalist and a ‘supefvisor of broadcasts, and written a variety of books, may be presumed to find his fellows interesting. And he can hardly have been what he’s been and seen what he’s seen without encountering some good stories. The first station to broadcast The Making of a New Zealander will be 1YA. The talks will start at 7.0 p.m. on Monday, July 21, and will be heard on perceeding Mondays at the same time.