In Fleet Street

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 450, 6 February 1948, Page 9

In Fleet Street

A RECENT instalment of This Sceptred Isle (2YA, Sunday mornings) dealt with Fleet Street, and formed an interesting contrast to Mr. Jefferson’s Friday night talks on the London Popular Press. Whereas Mr. Jefferson knows his Fleet Street inside out the Sceptred Isle scriptwriter gives the impression of knowing it only from the outside looking in; whereas for Mr. Jefferson the romance of Fleet Street is implicit in its everydayness the Sceptred Isle gentleman sees the concept in capitals and quotes, and the whole pageant of Fleet Street’s history moving towards the splendid culmination of the present day. If you like a plummy programme you will prefer the double-length, doublestrength BBC feature, although little Virginia, to whom the programme is addressed, may prove a little hard to stomach, and I felt that her presence was a bar to our hearing any but the

more elevated anecdotes of Fleet Street. To be sure we did hear about Mr. Hannen Swaffer having his face publicly smacked by one of Mr, Cochran’s Young Ladies because he had said she was a bad actress, but the incident was used not for its own sake but to illustrate the fact that Mr. Swaffer was another of the many martyrs who "help to fight the grim battle of the Freedom of the Press."

I 2 orm notes are not written by the staff of "The Listener’ or by any member of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service. They are independent comments for which "The Listener’ pays ‘outside contributors.