THINGS TO COME

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 655, 25 January 1952, Page 24

THINGS TO COME

dealing with a tribute to the famous French author, Jean Balzac, will be broadcast from 4YC at 9.30 p.m., starting this Friday, January 25. Weekly thereafter various subjects relating to French literature in some way or another will follow. After the programme on Balzac will .come Colette, dealing with France’s greatest living woman writer; M. Georges, by Henri Duvernois, journalist and friend of de Goncourt and de Maupassant; Mm. Les Ronds de Cuir, a comedy of the Civil Service by Georges Courteline; Romain Gary, a talk on this modern novelist, and an interview; and Lou Calinaire, a folk-lore programme of Provence. Monical Stirling handles the translations. The recordings were made -available through the courtesy of the French Embassy in Wellington. ‘No Zippers, No Buttons | N these days of flying saucers, radiocontrolled rockets, and potential jaunts to the moon, the improbable fiction of a few years ago is becoming : : , SERIES of six programmes, more and more probable. The time may even be coming when Buck Rogers, the wide boy of the _’forties, will have to take a back seat. However, there’s one sort of modern myth that’s not likely to see reality quite so soon, and that’s the myth of the super-charged, quadruple- | expansion, jet-propelled genus homo, in fact (with a roll of drums) Superman. | Superman's "whams" and ‘"zowies" have ‘been heard around the country quite a lot lately, at least, in a recorded radio | programme. The latest report is that. he has gone to 2ZA, where he will begin to perform on January 28. The programme will be heard four/days a week from Monday to Thursday, at 7.0 p.m. Electricity from Steam \W ANDERING about Wairakei_visitors often have the unpleasant feeling that the ground will crumble under them at any minute. The steam that | spurts from the ground in that region | may, however, prove of immense worth 'to the country if the present plans to ‘capture it. and turn it into electricityproducing power are fulfilled. A documentary programme, Harnessing, Vulcan, | which deseribes recent progress in this field, will be heard from 4YA at 8.30 p.m. on Monday, January 28, and from 2YA at 8.0 p.m. on Wednesday, January 30. During the following weeks the programme will be heard from the other YA stations, 2, 3 and 4YZ, and 1XH. The geothermal power project has counterparts in other countries, but is an innovation in New Zealand and may prove to be one answer to the power shortage in this country. Technicians at Wairakei are. at present observing results of the first bores in operation, and / these may lead, as the programme re- | veals, to extensions of the use of yet »another~ of the country’s~ natural re- | sources. ‘Red Cross Story } LJNDER the title of Symbol of Humanity, a recent BBC programme by Alan Burgess, Britain’s part in the activities of the international Red Cross are described. To obtain material for his hour-long script, Mr. Burgess travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, Germany and Great Britain, and he pre‘faces his deductions with a coverage of the Red Cross’s history since its inception ‘in 1864 at the Geneva Conference. In this feature, which will be broadcast from 3YA at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, January 30, Dr. Marcel Junod, a dele-

gate of the International Cominittee of the Red Cross and author of the book Warrior Without Weapons plays a part. Although concerned chiefly with Britain's

/ role in the Red Cross, Mr. Burgess emphasises those aspects of their work which have gained fame for the organisation throughout the world. Deep Woodlanders LD Sttipe was entertaining two of the Woodland Folk, Digger Mole of Mole’s Mound and" Potter of Otter’s Island, in his sitting room, lit with the pale flicker of candles’ and the warm gleam of. firelight. They were cosily settled for the evening, each with a pot of honeybrew and a pipe of clover leaf. Outside it was autumn. The west wind was blowing, rushing and whispering among the leaves of Old Stripe’s Home, Badger’s Beech. Suddenly there was a .knocking at the door. Who could it be? You'll find out if you listen to Elleston Trevor’s new BBC serial Highwayman’s Hill. Now being broadcast in the 2YA Children’s Session at 5.0 p.m. on Mondays (it started this week), it will be heard in the 1YA Children’s Session at 5.15-p.m. on Tuesdays from January 29. Later listeners will hear it from YZ and X stations in the North Island. The Deep Woodlanders are not,. of course, unknown to readers of Trevor’s books, much less to those who heard his earlier radio serial The River Bandit. In Highwayman’s Hill, Otter, Mole and Old Stripe, with Tufty Squirrel and Woo Owl embark on an adventure in which they triumphantly track down and capture a highwayman. Teen-Age Toilers "HOSE who have heard the discussions by various panels in the Women’s Session from 2YA on the question of children working during their vacations, will be able to consider another angle of the same problem. Two Wellington teen-agers, Bernice Currie and Euan McQueen, of Wellington Girls’ College and Wellington College respectively, will answer questions about the jobs they have held during the recent Christmas holidays when they are interviewed during the Womea's Session from 2YA at 11.0 a.m. on, Thursday, . January 31. Bernice, a fifteen-year-old fifth-former, has now worked for three summers in a large Wellington grocery store, and six-former Euan, who is fourteen, is a Post Office employee of two holidays’ standing. ~ According to Browning NOT, of course, that Browning had very much to do with it, except that he wrote the verse translation of the

Agamemnon which acted as a spark to blow up the Crocker-Harris’s . powderbarrel of a household. He could no more be blamed for the effect of his book than the Crocker-Harrisces could be blamed for the wreck they had made of their marriage. They had tried to combine two kinds of love and two -kinds of world and had failed. The breakup, together with the people who helped implement, it, is skilfully drawn in Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version, which has been produced in New Zealand for broadcasting and will be heard from 1YC on Saturday, February 2, at 9:51 p.m, It will also be discussed in Picture Parade, a BBC feature .to be broadcast from 4YZ on February 2 at 8.30 p.m. Japan and the West S the sun that set under the smoke drifting over Nagasaki about to rise again? Sir George Sansom, Professor of Japanese Studies and Director of the East Asian Institute at Columbia University, believes something of the sort is happening. He explains why in his talk Japan’s Reaction to Western Culture, a BBC feature to be broadcast from 2YC at 8.0 p.m. on Sunday, February 3. Sir George Sansom traces the development of Japan from a feudal country cpened by America to western exploitation, up to the present day when, he claims, Japan and the-rest of Asia threaten to overtake the west in technical productivity. He explains also, the changing attitude of the Japanese before the war and their assimilation of material aspects of western civilisation. With this in mind Sir George goes on to consider the state of relationship between the West and Asia. St. Valentine’s Day AT 8.0 p.m. on Thursday, February’: 14, 2YC will present a programme whose principal feature will be the presentation of winning verses in a St. Valentine’s Day contest. Light-heartedly the producer of the programme has listed the of contestants’ ten-line verses as either Aunt Daisy, a West Indian cricketer, Lady Godiva, a film star, George ns or a racing commentator. Closing» for sentimental odes is February 8, ma the address is Station Manager, tion 2YC, Box 2396, Wellington. The judge will be Anton Vogt. Fits Georgian Tunes eee Six typical tunes from 18th Century instrumental "tutors" have been harmonised and given original orchestral treatment by Adam Carse in his Suite of Eighteenth Century Georgian Tunes. A Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and Lecturer on the History of Music, Mr. Carse has specialised in the study of instruments and orchestration. From his work in this field has evolved these Georgian tunes, representing the major types of melody popular to the period from which they were taken. This work will be heard on the BBC programme London Studio Concerts from 3YC at 7.0 p.m. on Friday, February 1, presented by the BBC Northern Orchestra under their conductor, Charles Groves. x