PERSONAL PORTRAITS
EOPLE are a most interesting topic of conversation; and famous people simply more so. The BBC programme, As I Knew Him, brings to the microphone friends of famous Britons, and those who hear the feature from 2YC on Monday evenings at 10.0 p.m, will be able to get away from _ the rather dry biographical or obituary note concerning great figures in recent British history and hear instead personal comments by people who knew them. In the first episode, to be broadcast on Monday, April 28, St. John Ervine speaks of Thomas Hardy, relating personal anecdotes about’ the great novelist and poet and bringing out facts to dispel the theory that Hardy was a_ pessimist who withdrew from the world into a _ gloomy solitude. The greatness of such men as Hardy, and the- quality of their work, is sometimes recognised during their life, but more often not
until after their death. St. John Ervine points out that in Hardy’s case his greatness was perhaps best seen in his humility. In this account St. John Ervine relates how Hardy, at the height of his career (when publishers and editors vied for the chance to publish anything he wrote) still included a stamped and addressed envelope when he submitted a poem. The second speaker in this series is James Laver, and he talks personally of Eric Gill, the artist and craftsman. Also a humble man, Gill was nevertheless willing to take a stand™against "the notion that there was something called high art on the one hand, the job of the artist, and applied art on the other, the job of the workman. He always insisted on being both." And as such Gill lived. Occasionally he may have seemed out of touch with the times but in retrospect, the clarity of Gill’s vision and perception has ‘led many to the conclusion that he never lost touch with the fundamentals of art and craftsmanship. In the remaining three episodes of this BBC series, Sir Adrian Boult aa
speaks of Sir Edward Elgar, John Summerson discusses Sir Edwin Lutyens, and Frank Swinnerton recounts personal reminiscences of H. G. Wells. RE
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 668, 24 April 1952, Page 16
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356PERSONAL PORTRAITS New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 668, 24 April 1952, Page 16
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