BBC SURVEY OF THE HALF CENTURY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 634, 24 August 1951, Page 6

BBC SURVEY OF THE HALF CENTURY

HAT have the first fifty years of the 20th Century meant to the people of Great Britain? What has the riation contributed to those years? How has the pattern of life changed arid developed? The BBC, in a series of six programmes, has tried to answer these questions. The broadcasts, in spanning fifty years of event‘ful history, take the listener from the leisurely days of the Edwardian era with which the century opened, through two world wars to the present "twilight peace" under the shadow of the atom bomb. The authors-novelists, historians, dramatists and radio producers-have attempted to make the half-century live again; not on a world-wide scale, but at ieast the half-century as known to

the people of Great Britain, who well might claim to have played their part in shaping it. Compton Mackenzie’s memories of a sumptuous Edwardian England open the series,--recalling those far-off days. Through his eyes listeners «re made aware of ‘the political technological and social events of the period 1901-1914, leading up to the war that was to end all wars.. Compton Mackenzie has five plays and something like seventy books on numerous subjects to his credit, His birth into a theatrical family gave him his eye for a "character," and perhaps his passion for living on islands, ,well away from the crowd, has turned him into an onlooker who sees most of the game. But when it suits him Compton Mackenzie is to be found in the thick of the game. He has been soldier, market gardener, secret agent, editor, ardent Scottish Nationalist, Lord Rector of Glasgow University and film actor, as well as a broadcaster, The first World War is dealt with by Francis Dillon, who served on the Western Front as a young sergeant in the Cameronians. Breaking into radio with an experimental script which the BBC broadcast without a single alteration, he joined the staff and settled down to writing and putting on the air: what he himseJf described as "a wild variety of productions." This must have been a refreshing change from a career where he had been able to indulge a love for the drama and a gift for writing only in his leisure from auditing and work in the Inland Revenue. As an Irishman he has a strong leaning towards the fairy tale (his Rumpelstiltskin won second award in the first contest for the Italia prize), but he has also such a pronounced talent for writing and producing historical documentaries that the BBC chose him as one of their reporting and production team sent to India to cover the granting of independence to India and Pakistan. Rebecca West; political writer and literary critic, contributes the programme on the brassy, feverish ‘twenties. At the

age of nineteen she was a reviewer on the Freewoman. By the time she was twenty she had joined The Clarion as @ political writer. In 1947 the United States Women's National Press Club named her the world’s best reporter for The Meaning of Treason, her book on the leading war traitors, and in 1949 her eminence as an author was recognised in Britain by the award of a C.B.E. In the years between, an impressive list of books and many contributions to leading English and American newspapers established for her a high reputation for descriptive writing. The uneasy ’thirties, heading for catastrophe, are described by Frank Tilsley, who has made Britain’s social fabric his special study. To the home he made in London he took the factual, downright approack to life that was

born in him in his native Manchester, and which he has also expressed in scripts for radio and the films as well as in his novels. His preoccupation with social problems is reflected in the reference books, where he gives Industry, Commercial Subjects and Suburban Life as his main interests. Chester Wilmot chronicles the happenings of the Second World War, bringing to his script the combined fruits of his experiences as a war correspondent and his researches as an historian. To them he has added a book about the Second Front, and a commission to write one of the volumes of the official history of Australia’s part in the war. It was as a commentator for the Australian Broadcasting Commission; in the Middle East that he made his (continued on next page)

(continued from previous. page) name as a_ broadcaster. Finally comes the postwar world, about which Dr. J. Bronowski was selected to speak. Dr. Bronowski became Director of the National Coal Board’s Central Research Establishment early last year, and it was a tribute to his work as a scientist and mathematician. So far as the layman was concerned, however, he was better known as a_ broadcaster than as a mathematician and man of science. It was his description of the atom bomb havoc at Hiroshima that first made BBC listeners aware of a new personality’ in. broadcasting, and he was also familiar to

thousands as a lively participant in the Brains Trust. No attempt has been made in The Half Century to impart an unreal cohesion to the series. The writers have been given a free choice of treatment, and the result is six features of a completely

individual and, in two instances, a very personal and very English character. These programmes will start at 4YC en Monday, September 3, at 9.30 p.m., 2YC on Saturday, September 8, at 7.30 p-m., 1YC on Tuesday, September 1}, at 9.30 p.m., and 3YC on Thursday, September 13, at 9.30 p.m.