Jottings

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 17, 6 November 1931, Unnumbered Page

Jottings

"H{OtEL AND RESTAURANT CARERS FOR WOMEN," by Ernest M. Porter, will be valuable to all those wip are either already engaged in the bus{ness or who contemplate entering it. Most-of us have no realisation: of what a busy, complicated world lies in the working quarters of a large hotel. As Mr. Porter points out, the management of English hotels has altered so widely during the last few years that they offer pleasant, interesting and remunerative posts for women of energy and intelligence. Every position in a usotel is described, and there is an appendix showing how to obtain. hotel employment. TILL another added to the wellnigh interminable list of stories of life at a public school... In "Pyramid" is related the saga of a sensitive boy uring his passage through the communistic scholastic routine, which is oftentimes a crucial ordeal. ‘Tony is a natural, human lad, particularly when he is dodging authority or proving his prowess on the cricket field. Not quite so convincing, perhaps, in his more sentimental moments, but the book is written with sincerity and a penetrating knowledge of youth, which will ensure it an interested circle of readers, who will await with agreeable anticipation the next book of the author, Mr. Lionel Birch. * od oo HE author of "The Romance and Realities of Mayfair and Piccadilly," Mr. Perey Rudolph Broemel, has written a book on the unsolvable problem of the ages in "Ageless Woman (Manners, Morals, Modes, and Merits)," in which he deals interestingly with the foibles and fashions of w ‘n in the eighteenth century and afte He has not solved, nor does he claim to have solved, the problem. as he shows in an early chapter, in which he says: "Externally, woman bas adapted herself, as she always does, to the conditions of the period in which she moves and has her being, while sacrificing not an atom of her . natural qualities." Many anecdotes about women who lived in the centuries covered by the . book are given, and the author, after his survey, appears to admit that: he, like his ancestors of all time, has come to the conclusion that woman is still mysterious as the Sphinx, It is a pleasantly interesting book, ranging from grave to gay, but with regard to the great problem in thé concluding words of the author: "Woman remains Woman, the most adorable, complex, and baffling enigma sent from Heaven for the Joy and Tormént of Man."

ror some years before the advent of broadeasting, public interest in the speaking voice had faded out. Now, it is stated, there has been a revival. Professor Pear’s "Voice and Personality’ may be regarded as a useful sign of the times. Broadcasting and the talking film have revived public interest in the speaking voice. In the days when oratory and fine speaking were popular, one heard frequent comments on the voices of orators and preachers. ‘The yoices of Mr. Gladstone and John Bright were priceless assets, and even unbelievers admired the Rey. Charles Spurgeon’s belllike tones and went to hear him just for the pleasure of listening to a perfect speaker, Lord Rosebery also possessed a beautiful speaking voice. What broadcasters all four would have made! The wonders of Mr. Gladstone’s voice were discussed as if he had been a prima donna. Indeed, he shared the honours with Mme. Patti! ‘2 e e yr. DAVY'D GARNETT, author of "Lady Into Fox" and "A Man in the Zoo," winner of the Hawthornden prize and the James Tait Black Memorial prize in 1928, gives us another short example of his brilliant art in "The Grasshoppers Come." It is the story of an attempt to make a longdistance record by aeroplane, an overland flight which begins in England and ends in a crash in the desert of Gobi. Mr. Garnett is as good as Defoe in convincing his readers of the actuality of the events he describes. The description of the flight over Europe is itself a triumph in this sort of writing; it has never been done so vividly, and one feels that it can never be better done. The endurance of the pilot alone in the desert, his joy when the locusts begin to arrive (they mean food. and survival), his subsequent sickening horror of their incredible multitudes, and the relief of his escape, are all actually conveyed. My. Garnett uses a narrow art, but uses it to perfection.