DICKENS, WREN AND OTHERS
OULD anything be more peculiarly English than Mr. Pickwick? Probably not: So it’s appropriate that the first talk in a_ series British Masterpieces, originally broadcast in the General Overseas Service of the BBC, should be about "The Pickwick Papers," and that it should be given by a very English writer, J. B. Priestley. He says: "Pickwick, it seems to me, is the expression in English literature of that youthful ecstasy of high spirits, and that is why it isand will remain-a masterpiece, easily the best of its kind in ouf language, and probably in
any other, too." Yes, all the rumbustiousness of the youthful Dickens went into "The Pickwick Papers’ (which established his fame as a writer), as Samuel Pickwick, Esq., and other members of the Pickwick Club gallop merrily in and out of situations that had teemed in the mind of their creator. The Fifty Churches After getting off to this merry start, British Masterpieces builds up very solidly with a talk by John Summerson on "Wren’s Churches." Sir Christopher Wren built fifty churches in London on the ashes of the Great Fire. All too many of these perished in the element that’ gave them birth when London endured more great fires from 1940 £0, 1945, but twelve of them still stand. +! British Masterpieces’ was designed" ‘to. introduce overseas listeners to British masterpieces of art, literature, architecture and the like, and other talks in the series and the speakers are about the
village (John Moore), landscape painting (Eric Newton), portrait painting (Professor Thomas Bodkin), madrigals (Sir Steuart Wilson), . the English country house (Vita Sack-ville-West), English furniture (Gordon Russell), the Authorised Version (J. Isaacs), King’s Col-
lege Chapel (Sir John Sheppard), Mill’s "On Liberty" (Bertrand Russell), and Shakespeare’s Plays (Alec Guinness). Some of these programmes have been heard from time to time over the past few eatin from NZBS stations in the p.m. on Beaute fauie 4 yer stations will start playing the series during the following six months,
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 654, 18 January 1952, Page 7
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333DICKENS, WREN AND OTHERS New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 654, 18 January 1952, Page 7
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