THE RAILWAY KING

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 742, 2 October 1953, Page 15

THE RAILWAY KING

EORGE HUDSON, the English: ‘railway financier known as the "railway king,’ who organised and built half the railways in England in the 1830s and 1840s, had a career as spectacular and tragic as any in the world of 19th Century capitalism. His name flared across the English scene like a rocket, and like a rocket it crashed and fizzled out. A BBC programme called Railway King, will be . broadcast from 3YA at 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday October. 7, and from 3YC at 9.30 p.m on Sunday, October 11. It tells how Hudson, a product of the railway boom started in life as a Yorkshire ploughman, but after grandiose speculations opened the York and North Midland. line in 1839, the Newcastle and Dar lington line two years later, and with George Stephenson extended the Mid land to Newcastle. In five years he was one of the’ richest and most sought after men in the country; the great Duke of Wellington himself went out, of his way to do him a service, He controlled a thousand miles of railway, was three times Lord Mayor of York, and was elected to Parliament for the Con servative Party. He was ruined overnight by the dis closure of the Eastern Railway frauds Awkward questions asked at a shareholders’ meeting cast grave doubts on his honesty, and he fled the country He returned years later to stand, for Parliament again, at the request of his

former constituents, but was thrown into prison after being arrested for debt. He died in 1871. In the BBC’s programme the part of Hudson is taken by. Mark Dignam. An unusual device is the use of contemporary ballads to tell part of the story. and these are sung by Ewan McColl. BURIED ALIVE Buried Alive, a BBC programme about a man who became lost in the Alps in a snowstorm, will be broadcast from 4YA at 2.30 p.m. on Sunday, October 11. Listeners to this transcription will hear the story of Alfred Southon, who, with a companion, was separated from a group of Italian partisans and escaped prisoners of war while ‘they were trying to get into France.. The \ two men became lost and took shelter under a rock. Southon’s companion died and he was left alone in the silence with the snow piling higher and higher. gradually burying him and the dead man in a natural grave. Southon himself speaks in the programme. which was written by Jerome Willis and produced by Alan Burgess MR. PICKWICK In 4YZ’s Weekend Magazine, at 1.45 on Sunday, October 11, listeners wil] be taken behind the scenes of the British | film The Pickwick Papers, in the lates’ edition of Picture Parade from the BBC Transcription Service. Noel Langley who wrote and directed the film,

_the film, reveals thet = discusses the problems to be faced in adapting Dickens to the screen from one of his most discursive and exuberant books. Maude Spec. tor, casting director for vhysical resemblance to the "Phiz" illustrations 'argely decided which actors, should be invited to play the parts and ‘er most perfect piece of casting. Mr. Pickwick himself as played by James Hayter is also heard in the programme. |