THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 435, 24 October 1947, Page 4

THINGS TO COME

A Run Through The Programmes

Vive le Cyclisme! NCE upon a time, when Borotra ani Brugnon dominated the _ centre courts at Wimbledon, when Suzan.ie Lenglen was still something of a figur., and when France was a not inconsiderable quantity in world sport generally, a Parisian newspaper conducted a poll te discover the French sportsman most popular in his home country. (When the ballots were counted the name of an obscure cyclist (obscure, that»is, to the rest of the world) led all the rest. In France, of course, they take their cycling seriously, but there are plenty of serious cyclists in New Zealand, and for the latter the broadcast of the Palmerston North to Wellington road-race by 2YA this Saturday, October 25, will be an event of some importance. Progress reports of the race will be broadcast by 2YA at intervals during the day, beginning at 10.0 am. An even more important meeting will be held next week, when the North Island Olympic cycling , trials will be run at Feilding on Wednesday, October 29. Progress reports of the trials will be broadcast by 2YA at intervals throughout the day and the results will be broadcast in the National link at 6.40 p.m: Cockaigne Again BC producers R, D. Smith (who gave us Middle East) and Douglas Cleverdon (the man behind The Brains Trust) have joined forces to make another feature This is London, a documentary series picturing various outstanding aspects of | England’s capital. -As in other BBC documentaries, the authors have given themselves the difficult task of presenting a convincing picture of the life and manners of the people in the areas they describe, and in this case historical research has been combined with accurate reporting. For instance, No. 3 in the series, "Inner Suburb," tells in dramatic fashion the story of Hampstead .and how it has changed over the centuries, from, the days when Hampstead Heath was the haunt of highwaymen and robbers, and those when the suburb became the favourite home of poets and artists (Keats and Constable were two of the more famous), to the present day, when it seems almost like a new Latin Quarter because of the thousands’ of European refugees who have settled there. But all of the seven programmes that go to make up This is London should be equally interesting, and the first, "The Royal Thames," will be heard from 1YA at 7.47 p.m. on Monday, October 27. Pioneer Women ,. WHAT pioneering means to a man or to a young, unattached woman with a love of adventure and free time to indulge it, is quite different from the meaning it had for the Scottish women who came out with their husbands in 1840 to settle in Otago. For them, pioneering primarily meant home-making; yet, before they could begin their homemaking they found themselves faced with pioneering of another calibre, under conditions such as they had never before dreamed of. How they reacted to their lot, and the eventual effect it had upon them will be described in the talk, | "Pioneering in Otago From a Woman's

Point of View," which will be given by Eileen L. Soper from 4YA on Tuesday, October 28, at 8.30 p.m. This talk will also be heard from 4YZ at 9.15 p.m. on October 31. Apotheosis of the Dance ~ HOUGH W. B. Yeats’s lines "And the merry love the fiddle, and the merry love to dance" are applicable to every musical period, they are particularly true of Elizabeth’s Merrie England. The Morris Dance was an indispensable feature of all holidays and was usually performed to the music of a one-man band-generally a pipe and tabor. But

the nobility were more decorous and stately. Sir Andrew Aguecheek claimed to be as grand a dancer as any man in Illyria. He "went to church in a galliard and came home in a coranto." Thé galliard. was a slow dance (implying that the knight was in no hurry to arrive at church), the coranto a quick one, representing his speedy return to a magnificent Sunday meal. A session of two hours, describing The Apotheosis of the Dance, and dealing with the influence of dance-forms on classical music will be heard from Station 2YC starting at 8.0 p.m., on Sunday, November 2. Written by Bessie Pollard, of the NZBS staff, the session will give a description (with 18 recorded illustrations) of the evolution of the dance, from the Elizabethan period to the Romantic, and from the Romantic period to the 20th Century. The Leopard That Changed URING the recent visit to New Zealand of H.M.S: Theseus, her commander, Captain R. K. Dickson, D.S.O., recorded Ship in Disguise, one of a series of talks he originally made over the BBC describing his wartime experiences. It is the story of a daring Mediterranean expedition,’ made in 1941 by the mine-laying cruiser Manxman (which Captain Dickson then commanded) and aimed at the destruction of units of the Italian fleet. It all began, he. tells us, when he received a mysterious message from the Admiralty stating that’ his ship was to be converted within 24 hours into an exact imitation of the French cruiser Leopard. When the job was done the disguise -was so complete that even the crew wore French uniforms. French’ funnel tops were made from sheet iron, and false decks from wood and_ canvas, while to top it off it was arranged that if enemy aircraft were encountered the signal was to be flashed, "Attention, Vichy!" Their task, which was successfully accomplished, was to make a single-handed run in daylight through enemy-controlled waters to the Gulf ofGenoa and lay mines off the port of

Leghorn. Ship in Disguise will be heard from 2YA at 7.15 p.m. on Friday, October 31. Heavenly Inspiration "AS a rule I only study things that suggest music to me. That’s why I worried at Sanskrit. Then recently the character of each planet suggested lots to me, and I have been studying astrology fairly closely," said Gustav Holst in a letter written about 1914. The result of his study was the symphonic work The Planets, a suite of seven tone poems which suggests in a remarkable way the sense of vast and timeless space we associate with the heavens. The titles of the individual movements, "Mars, the Bringer of War," "Uranus, the Magician," and so on, help to convey his idea of the mysterious influence that the planets are supposed to have over human lives, and the whole is characterised by an impressive orchestral brilliance which led A. L. Bacharach, in his British Music of Our Time, to describe it as being "among-the most remarkable and individual compositions of the 20th Century." The Planets will be heard from 4YZ at 2.15 p.m. on Thursday, October 30. Wool is Her Business N Australian business woman who made a tour of New Zealand recently knows more than most pastoralists do about wool, for she has studied the commodity from the fleece to the pullover. She is Gracemary MacKinnon, secretary of the Australian Wool Board, and she came here to meet members of the New Zealand Wool Board, and representatives of the woolgrowers and, allied interests to disctiss closer co-op-eration with Australia in wool publicity, production, sales and research. Listeners to Station 2YH Napier, at 11.0 a.m. on Friday, October 31, will hear in a recorded interview what Miss MacKinnon has to say about wool and its uses. She will be interviewed by Elsie Lloyd of the NZBS (see page 21).