THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 550, 6 January 1950, Page 18

THINGS TO COME

eer in Switzerland acclima- "~ tises slowly. "Look!" he says, "A fine day." And rushes up the Jungfrau. "Look!" he says, the day following, "Fine again." And does the Brenva route on Mt. Blanc. "Can’t still be fine,’ he says on the third day, propping open his eyelids. And does a double traverse. of the Matterhorn. The fourth day he doesn’t wake until the New Zealand mountain-

early afternoon, sees the weather. is still clear, and _ bursts into tears because he is too late to start a climb. As Arthur Feslier may point out when he discusses mountaineering from 2YA dn Notes For Your

Holidays, the New Zealand climber at home cannot afford to waste a fine day. The second part of this session at 7.20 p.m. on Tuesday, January 10, takes in what the mountaineer may have to do for a whole wet week in a high hut, if he cares to carry up the necessary material. In this part Stuart Perry and Brian Hood talk about holiday reading. Spider-Hunt STORY of the exciting adventures of two schoolboy brothers, Tom and Rodney Chester, and their friend, Judy Foxwell, in the hunt for a ruthless highwayman known as The Spider is promised listeners to 2YA’s Children’s session at 5.0 p.m. on Wednesday, January 11. The tale, which is called Catch That Spider, is set in the year 1812 and there is any amount of breathlessness what with mail coaches. rocking along. the rutty roads, wild chases on horseback and all the other features of that romantic timé. The author is Gilbert Dalton and the production is by Peggy Bacon. Dalton is a much published writer for boys and seldom has fewer than six or seven serial stories running in boys’ weekly papers. Before turning to fiction he was a journalist in the Midlands, largely engaged in sports reporting, and it was A. E. R. Gilligan, the English cricketer who, when Midland ‘ Regional sports editor for the BBC, suggested to Dalton that he should broadcast on Rugby football matches. This was his first contact with the BBC and out of it grew his collaboration with Peggy Bacon and led to his writing plays for the Children’s Hour. " Lost Library OVETLIST, poet, essayist, Rose Macaulay .won wide recognition while still a student in her teens, with the appearance of her satiric novel, Potterism. Since then, even with avowed serious purpose, her books are unfailingly judged as satires. Rose Macaulay’s current theme is the tragic futility and chaos of the post-war world, which she reproduces with an interest that is partly disgust. She revolts from hypocrisy of all kinds, as she has proclaimed through her fifteen novels from Potterism onwards. With wit and provocative satire she attacks shams and superficial codes in politics or society. She admires deftness and a light touch, disliking seriousness and lack of clarity. Her work has a personal flavour that is inimitable and whatever else she is; she is always entertaining.

One of her critics has applied to Rase Macaulay her own description of a character in her novel Staying with Relations -‘ironic, amused, passionless, detached, elegantly celibate.’ Of herself Rose Macaulay says, "I suppose, as I wrote fiction at the age of three, I probably wrote it before verse, but not long before." Most of her possessions, including her valued library, were lost in the London blitz and it is about her library that Rose Macaulay will talk in a BBC programme to be broadcast from Station 3YA at 2.30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 11, On With the Dance BOHEMIAN dance which originated early in the 19th Century, the polka, spread over Europe like an epidemic, so that streets and public-houses were named after it. The tempo is quite rapid and the dance itself as adopted in the ballrooms of the day, was graceful and gallant. Smetana, the national Bohemian composer, wrote some polkas. There is one in his opera The Bartered Bride, and he has also an. orchestral specimen, one in his string quartet From My Life, and a good many for the piano. The pretty story as to the polka being the invention of a Bohemian peasant girl is an. invention. The czardas is a Hungarian dance usually consisting of a slow, melancholy introduction, followed by a widly excited main section in duple time. Liszt was one of the first composers to become interested in the czardas as a basis for art music, and wrote Czardas Obstine and Czardas Macabre for the piano. In an item called Dancing Time from 2YA at 4.0 p.m. on Thursday, January 12, listeners will hear one of a: series of programmes illustrating dance rhythms — notably the czardas and polka-as used by some of the more serious composers. Handymen ARCEL CERDAN and Ginette Neveu both made their living with their hands. Cerdan doubled his into fists and won the middleweight championship of the world, Ginette Neveu took a violin in hers and was starting to win a place amongst the great violinists of the world. Cerdan’s timing was perfect and his touch bone crushing, Ginette Neveu also had perfect timing, but her touch was almost feathery. Both of them were killed in an air crash late in ‘1949, and both of them were created posthumous members of the Legion of Honour, a rather uncommon distinction for a woman. Cerdan left no audible record of his prowess except on the

soundtrack of newsreels, Ginette Neveu left gramophone records, and through them will appear as 3XC’s Morning Star at 9,30 a.m. on Sunday, January. 15, and from 4YC, where, at 8.36 p.m. on Friday, January 13, she will play the Sibelius Violin Concerto.

Pictures in Words OROTHY WORDSWORTH claims a distinct place in the history of English prose as one of the earliest writers who noted, in language delicately chosen and with no other object than to preserve their fugitive beauty, the little picturesque phenomena of homely country life amid. simple scenes and quiet people. Ruth Pitter says in a talk in The Written Word series on diarists and letter writers from the BBC, that Dorothy Wordsworth might have been a painter. Her eyes missed nothing, and in her journals she gives on almost every page something that could be made into a picture. Ruth Pitter herself is a contemporary English poet. She had an art china factory before the war and during the war worked at munition-making. Listeners to 2YA will hear. her judgment of Dorothy Wordsworth at 3.15 p.m. on Sunday, January 15. Payment Deferred "{T isn’t a body. . . it’s a proper skeleton . . ." Here was a crime committed fifty years ago but all evidence of it remained undetected until one of Hitler’s five-hundred pounders during the London blitz opened everything up. On the day of the discovery nobody had any idea who the unfortunate victim was; there was no certainty as to whether his death was due to natural causes, accident or murder. If it were murder, there was nobody who could say who the murderer was, much less whether he or she was still alive. Yet one by one these questions were answered. Listeners will hear how the strands are woven into a rope that hangs the murderer when The Black Cap Has To Wait, a whodunit by H. R. Jeans, will be broadcast from Station 3YA at 9.22 p.m. on’ Sunday, January 15. Augustine’s Church © AUGUSTINE reached Britain from Rome in 597 and founded his cathedral church in Canterbury as the seat and symbol of his authority. From that time Canterbury Cathedral has been the source from which the Christian religion has flowed throughout the Englishspeaking world. In the fifth talk in the BBC series, Landmarks of Britain, the Reverend J. W. Poole, Precentor of Canterbury Cathedral, traces the history of the Cathedral from Augustine’s time, and listeners can hear how the conjunction of the assassination of Thomas a Becket in 1170 and the fire in 1774 determined the shape of the east end of the Cathedral as it is today. The Precentor says that to his mind the two characteristics of Canterbury Cathedral are grace and dignity, and his talk leaves

in one’s mind a picture of that grace and dignity. He talks of the daily life in and around Canterbury Cathedral, and also tells you something of the thirteen centuries’ old King’s School at Canterbury. Canterbury Cathedral will be heard from 3YA at 4.0 p.m. on Sunday, January 15.