Regency Romance

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 796, 22 October 1954, Page 17

Regency Romance

KENT in the early 18th Century was a county of labyrinthine lanes, lone wayside taverns and almost forgotten feudal villages. It was the heart of an England which had no heart. Along the broad highways, with pleasant green fields stretching out on either side, it was no uncommon sight to come upon the scarecrow figure of a highwayman hanging grotesquely from a gibbet, the tar fresh upon his body. It was a hideous warning, but highway robbery flourished. Jeffrey Farnol’s novel, The Broad Highway, adapted for radio by John Gundry, takes us back to his Regency world of rosycheeked, loyal country lasses and mettlesome, haughty ladies of fashion. Farnof writes, too, of humble men who were gentlemen and. gentlemen who were knaves at a time when Prince Regent George of Wales was the first of them all. When The Broad Highway opens, Peter Vibart, the hero, is listening to the terms of his uncle’s will, It is a strange one. He is left the sum of ten guineas, but there is a greater prize in store. If by the end of a year he has married the Lady Sophia Sefton of Cambourne, then he is to inherit a great fortune, But Lady Sophia, as Peter Vibart knows, is no easy catch. She is tall and beautiful, with a spirit as untamed as the horses she rides. She has also had the notable distinction of refusing the Prince Regent himself. How Peter, robbed of even his ten guineas while on a walking tour of the West Country and become the poorest of the poor, regains his fortune and a proper appreciation of the fact that "A man’s a man for a’ that" makes lively listening. Earle Rowell plays Peter Vibart, and has also produced this Sunday . night

serial in the Auckland studios of the NZBS. It begins from 2ZA on October 24 at 8 p.m., from 4ZB on November 7, and will be heard later from other ZB stations. a en A A Rt