ONE MAN IN FOUR ROLES

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 715, 27 March 1953, Page 19

ONE MAN IN FOUR ROLES

HEN Prisoner at the Bar LY was broadcast by*the, BBC last year listeners and critics in Britain hailed the series as a tour-de-force in radio. This programme in. which Edgar Lustgarten assesses some famous criminal trials, is now to be heard from New Zealand stations, starting from 2YC at 10.0 p.m, this Sunday (March 28). In Prisoner at the Bar Mr. Lustgarten, himself a former barrister, gives special attention to the drama and technique of crossexamination. The critic of the London Daily Telegraph said Lustgarten "has brilliantly achieved what I thought was impossible, He has found a new, strikingly effective way of using the sound medium." And describing Mr. Lustgarten as the broadcasting sensation of 1952, the Sunday Chronicle said that giving accounts of famous trials he was "undoubtedly a spelibinder and a wizard with words. He plays all the parts himself — judge, defence, prosecution, ac-cused-and to each he brings an acting ability remarkable in one trained to the law. His exposition of sometimes horrible crimes is masterly, His voice has an uncanny compulsion. And listeners have risen to Mr. Lustgarten as a trout to a fly." New Zealand listeners will already have heard the voice of Mr. Lustgarten as chairman of London Forum. programmes, or they may know him as a writer of crime novels such as One More Unfortunate, Blondie Iscariot and Verdict in Dispute which have been very successful in both Britain and the United States. In 1930 Mr. Lustgarten was president of the Oxford University Debating Society. From 1930 to 1940 he practised at the Bar, and during the war he was a regular broadcaster in the BBC Overseas Services, on which he is still heard in current affairs programmems die has also arranged a series of weekly television discussion programmes. The first. programme in. Prisoner at the Bar is about a sensation of 1931, in which William Herbert Wallace, a quiet, methodical, Liverpool agent was accused of the brutal, and seemingly motiveless, murder of his wife. A remarkable feature of the Wallace case is that there were two possible solutions-for and against Wallace-and every known fact can be used to support both. Wallace was found guilty and sentenced to death, but on appeal the verdict was set aside. At the close of his study of the case Mr. Lustgarten leaves a large query ‘in listeners’ minds. What other cases does Mr. Lustgarten reconstruct? He looks back to the case of Steinie Morrison, whose trial on a charge of murdering a Russian Jew, in 1911, threatened to get out of hand, and to the trial of Lizzie Borden, a modest, reserved American gentlewoman, accused of the brutal murder of her father and mother. He remembers the case of Richard Pigott, a key witness before the Commission which investigated a controver‘ial letter Charles Stewart Parnell was accused of writing to The Times. Pigott, _ says Mr. Lustgarten, "was never arrested, he was never tried before a jury, he was never sentenced by a judge: but there’s -no doubt he was a criminal, that he did commit a crime, and that he died as a

result." And to complete the six cases which make up Prisoner at the Bar, Mr. Lustgarten takes the trial of Frederick Seddon, who despite the pleadings of his counsel, Marshall Hall, insisted on giving evidence at his own trial for murder; and the, case of Adelaide Bartlett (a young wife accused of poisoning her husband), whose magnificent defence by Sir Edward Clarke lifted the trial into the classic annals of the English Bar.