PEN AND PLOUGH

 

Further Broadcasts

 

 

First edition, HWS, 1993
E-book edition, HWS, 2013

Introduction, by John Gregory

 

List of Contents

 

Extract

 

Critical reception

 

Book covers

 

Appendix: A Checklist of Broadcasts by Henry Williamson

 

 

Henry Williamson Society, 1993, paperback, xii, 108 pp, illus.; 450 copies

Edited by John Gregory

 

Limited edition, 1993; quarter-bound in blue morocco with blue cloth boards, 50 numbered copies

 

E-book edition, 2013

 

 

Introduction

 

John Gregory

 

 

Henry Williamson began broadcasting for the BBC at the end of 1935, while he lived at Shallowford in North Devon. In 1936 he gave twenty broadcast talks, and in the first few months of 1937 a further six. Many of these appear in Spring Days in Devon. However at the beginning of 1937 he bought a derelict farm in North Norfolk, and broadcasting was put on one side as he became anxious to learn as much as he could about farming, chiefly, it seems, from the Farmers' Weekly and similar magazines. He moved to Norfolk in May, although he was not due to take over the land until Old Michaelmas Day (11 October). The months until then were planned to be spent in the back-breaking work of making up roads, laying down concrete yards, digging a well, re-building cottages, hanging new gates and more. It was much more than either he or his capital could cope with, and money, or rather the lack of it, quickly became a chronic problem.

 

By August he was once again writing articles for the Daily Express and Evening Standard, written at night after the hard physical work of the day. Indeed, in his first farming article for the Express, he admitted 'I began this article three weeks ago, and only today have the energy to finish it.'

 

Two months later Henry was enquiring whether the BBC would be interested in a series of talks giving his experiences in farming. 'They would not be technical talks on farming, but talks which would be interesting to and appreciated by the townsman or woman who knows little or nothing of the country, and to the countryman also.'

 

Henry was first approached by the BBC's Empire Service, and the first eight talks reprinted here were transmitted to the Empire only. The Service had started on 19 December 1932, and was the forerunner of the World Service. Margery Wace had written to Henry on 11 February 1938:

 

We wonder if you would consider broadcasting some talks in April or May in Empire programmes. We want someone who will talk about everyday life in England, not only a description of what the countryside looks like at the particular moment of broadcasting, but also anecdotes about ordinary people which will reflect the spirit of the country . . . we very much hope you may be interested in this suggestion.

 

Henry was, and his series of six weekly broadcasts began on 21 April, under the general title of Green Fields and Pavements. Halfway through the series Henry sent a note to Miss Wace with the draft for his next talk:

 

Here is No. 4. I trust satisfactory. Is there any chance of extending the series? I should be glad of the job, or a similar one . . . We're so late with everything, and it's almost the deadline. This farm EATS money, and return nowt.

 

The request was borne in mind, and in July Miss Wace wrote and asked if he would be willing to give three more talks in the Empire programmes in the later part of September. The BBC also saw to it that their broadcasters received feedback from listeners, for Miss Wace wrote especially to say:

 

I thought you would like to know that we have just heard from a listener in Southern Rhodesia, saying how much he has enjoyed your broadcasts. He asks us to congratulate you.

 

At one time Henry had to attend an unexpected hearing of an arbitration case, and asked if he could record the talk 'by Blattner', and catch the early evening train back to Norfolk. The Blattnerphone was an early recording machine, using steel tape. However, it was cumbersome to use, expensive, and difficult to edit. Miss Wace was synpathetic but firm:

 

I am so sorry, but I am afraid we cannot arrange to record your talk beforehand. We have to be rather stern about keeping to our rule that talks must be broadcast 'live' . . . This is not red tape on our part, but simply that we have not found it satisfactory from the presentation point of view.

 

The insistence on live broadcasts was firmly kept no matter what the time, for in May 1939 Margery Wace asked:

 

I wonder if you could manage an Empire talk on Wednesday July 5 at the awful hour of 4.15–4.30 in the early morning?

 

If so, I would suggest another talk about the countryside . . . We would just like a talk, not about farming problems, but a description of what could be seen in the countryside round you, at the time of year at which you would be talking – a nice, pleasant, dreamy talk, to make people homesick for England!

 

Henry ruefully agreed, 'Yes . . . 4.15–4.30 a.m. will be the end of the day for me.' His fee was the standard ten guineas plus expenses: nothing extra for working unsocial hours!

 

Henry also gave talks on his farming experiences in the Regional Programme. The first series of four was called Close to Earth [the series was reprinted in Spring Days in Devon] – Henry had wanted to call it English Swiss Family Robinson, but his producer had demurred, saying tactfully that the title 'would seem to me a little to stretch the point'. Later, in a memo to the Assistant Director of the Talks Department, the producer stated that:

 

I have had the scripts for these through my hands and am very favourably impressed. It is a good story Williamson has to tell. Williamson himself is anxious to extend the series . . . I think he could go on without drying up for some time and be well worth listening to.

 

The upshot of this was a new series of three talks, Still Close to Earth, transmitted between January and March 1939, and which are included in this book.

 

Henry's broadcasting stopped with the outbreak of war; afterwards he was never again to broadcast with the same frequency.

 

Two of the scripts, On Seeing Marilyn Monroe and The River, came about through a meeting with Marguerite Cutforth, a BBC producer, in January 1961, probably when Henry was either discussing or recording his interview I Remember with Goronwy Rees. She invited him to give a talk on

 

a subject dear to your heart; it could be an experience that made a lasting impact on you, or a particular bee that you have in your bonnet that you'd like to buzz on the Home Service.

 

At the time Henry was fully occupied in the writing of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight, and his worry was that

 

sitting writing 7 days a week all day, my life is so dull that a present-time 'bee' – except that rivers should be cleaned & salmon return! – hardly buzzes. But I could do a talk on that subject.

 

The script for this talk, which Henry originally called The Stream, was delivered in person to Mrs Cutforth. After their meeting she wrote an urgent internal memo:

 

Henry Williamson arrived with his script and we discussed it and he has made some changes. However during the course of our meeting and conversation he started to tell me about how he likes to go to the pictures in Ilfracombe and he has had a go at that too. I like it – couldn't we use that soon (it should be out-of-seaside-season) . . . and put the other in a general space in May?

 

The BBC thought that the script for On Seeing Marilyn Monroe was 'fresh and delightful', and it was rehearsed and recorded on 7 March 1961.

 

Part Two of this book collects together talks on books and writers, opening with an early talk on Lorna Doone. There follows an interesting account of Henry's first meeting with Arnold Bennett, and then a talk on his own books, On Writing a Novel Series. This was at the invitation of the producer of the weekly programme The World of Books, who wrote to Henry at the end of August 1961, 'there is really no restriction as long as the subject is literary in some sense.' He delivered his script the following month, but the producer was not entirely happy with it:

 

Your script seems just about the right length [the requirement was 800–900 words] and most interesting. I think however, that after the first two pages (which are delightful), the listener may find difficulties . . . Some of the important questions will seem to the audience to have been begged; some of the general conclusions only implied by the way.

 

The revised script itself was then edited down before the broadcast, as can be seen from the BBC's file copy.

 

All the talks reprinted here have been taken from the BBC's microfilms and scripts and transcripts. The scripts are the ones that Henry actually used, and the great majority bear changes in his own hand, many extensive. The versions given here are not quite as broadcast; while additions and revisions have been kept, deletions (some times whole paragraphs) have been restored where appropriate, for usually these were made purely to tailor a talk to the time available, at the time it was rehearsed.

 

The editor's intention is to offer to the reader an enjoyable yet authoritative collection which is, the the words of the BBC, 'fresh and delightful'.

 

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[This Introduction is taken from my longer essay ‘Henry Williamson and the BBC’, in which this sometimes fraught relationship is reconstructed from the BBC's files. Originally published in HWSJ 29 (March 1994), it has been added as an Afterword to the e-book edition of Spring Days in Devon. Neither this nor the two collections of broadcasts could have been compiled without the generous help and permission of the BBC Written Archives Centre.]

 

 

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Contents:

 

Part One: The Country Reporter

 

Norfolk Farmer

Field and Pavement

The Malkin

Rail and Fen

The Rain Comes

Birdsong Reflections

Family and Farm

The Forest of Exmoor

Still Close to Earth

The Reckoning

The Gale

Baggy Point

More West Country Reminiscences

On Seeing Marilyn Monroe

The River

 

Part Two: Books and Writers

 

Lorna Doone and the Doone Valley

Arnold Bennett

On Writing a Novel Series

Book Reviews:

1. The Home Letters of T. E. Lawrence & His Brothers, edited by M. R. Lawrence

2. Morale, by John Baynes

3. The Sea Years of Joseph Conrad, by Jerry Allen

 

Appendix: A Checklist of Broadcasts by Henry Williamson

 

 

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Extract:

 

On Seeing Marilyn Monroe

 

 

At night, when I leave my cottage near the sea to go to the cinema, I feel like a character in a film about a ghost town. Before me lie several wide roads, visible for hundreds of yards in all directions under high lights. I am apparently the only living or moving thing in a fluorescent, lonely world. A few yards away is the sea, breaking on the rocks. I pass an early Victorian pavilion where grow semi-tropical plants – it’s locked and dark. On the far side of the promenade are empty boarding houses, some of whose tenants are on the dole. My rubber-soled shoes make no sound on the promenade, or on the road. I come to a horse drinking trough, still brimming with spring water which runs over non-slip stable-type tiles for hackney carriages and cabs.

 

The High Street lies steeply above the promenade and lower road. Which passage, shall I go up tonight? There are a dozen or more, each winding under steep walls and past dark doors. Who lives behind those doors? My footfalls are still the only sound in the world. In places two people couldn’t walk abreast in comfort up this dark alley. The surface is often rough, and varied. Worn-out asphalt; smooth cobbles brought up from the beach a century ago; then a patch of horrible ashes, which haven’t been sifted, an occasional crushed egg-shell among them. I recall that our town has the highest unemployment figures, for its population, of any town in England except one.

 

There are ten minutes before the final programme starts. Am I thirsty? Yes – which of scores of small pubs shall I go to for a glass of mild? My usual local is down by the harbour, where two trawlers are moored. These ships were built a century ago with straight bows; oil engines were fitted perhaps forty years ago. Often they come in at night, on the tide, when a bell rings, and we go down and buy our fish from the basket. It is cheap, for the unemployed – the genuine out-of-works – can’t afford much for fish, and anyway that’s the local market. As for the catch, it might fill two crans, possibly three with luck. The sea is nearly fished-out.

 

In the bar of the local there may be four or five figures, drinking a pint of mild, perhaps two, of an evening. And this is the hotel, to give it its dignified Victorian status, where King Edward VII used to stay when our town was a fashionable place, with hundreds of carriages, and several coaches. Some of the old fishermen still recall King Teddy.

 

I am still on my way to see Marilyn Monroe. I admire her as an actress. I have known several actors and actresses, and have seen films being shot in various places, including Berlin. This was before the last war, when Lilian Harvey was a star comparable to Miss Monroe. I used to watch Lilian on the set at Neubabelsberg, in the pine-woods outside Berlin. There I realised for the first time that a good actress must have staying power, patience and endurance. It takes something to put over a feeling of gaiety and delightful naturalness in a film studio, a bare and unnatural place if there was one.

 

But I have gone off my course; I set out for the steep High Street, I went up the passage which ends at the Arcade – now a sad and rather dreary place, like all emptiness – and find myself almost at sea-level again. I drink my glass of mild, and am about to go out of the door when there is a tap on it, low down. A mongrel dog, an habitué of the pub, asks to be let in. He has been coming to the public bar for years, regularly every night at the same time. He uses it as a club, to lie before the fire and crunch a small biscuit or two thrown down by the lady who pulls the handles. If he is thirsty, he taps at the half-door in the bar, asking to be allowed into the barrel room. There he laps his saucer of bitter, and returns to the fire. He won’t drink mild; he is used to bitter. Who is his master?

 

‘Oh, his master never comes in here,’ says the lady behind the bar. ‘His master’s a teetotal, he spends his time doing the pools. No, Punch is the only one of the family who uses the hotel.’

 

I must go. I shall be late. I like to be at the start of a show. Even the local advertisements are a kind of reassurance that the picture palace is still there. In fact, we have two in our town. One was closed two years ago, but later reopened. Not, alas, because of a new generation of film-goers, but, because, if it rains in summer, as it usually does, summer visitors will again be queuing up.

 

Well, here I am at the nearest, and oldest movie-palace, which just escaped being called an electric theatre; it was built after the Great War, and not before. Just after.

 

I like the old-fashioned wooden seats, the long coffin-shaped auditorium. I get down in my three-bob seat just as the curtain, lit by three bulbs of different colour, is rising. There’s by now an audience of about twenty, scattered about. ‘Buy a Rarleigh! Take your photographs with a Rarleigh! You’ll love a Rarleigh!’ Then there follows a series of photographs. ‘Remember the name – RARLEIGH!’

 

The huddled figure nearest to me, about two rows away – in a red trench coat, cap, and a bristled moustache – reacts as usual. ‘RAWLEIGH!’ he growls. ‘Why don’t you pronounce the name correctly, you dolled-up U-fop!’ This to the unseen, crew-cut voice. Hardly has ‘the Colonel’ – he’s always there when I go in to the Taj Mahal Palace – settled down again when a bread loaf is flashed on. It slices itself, the slices fall forward; then change to foamy waves. A slim female figure rushes through the surf; the rarleigh voice then coos, ‘Milkmaid Bread, delicious with butter, soft, and crunchy! Keep fit by Eating Milkmaid Bread!’, and then the waves transform themselves into slices again. No comment follows from the pit: the whole-wheat-berry back-to-nature ‘faddist’ has bought a telly, one hears.

 

They all fall at last.

 

I won’t bore you with more advertisements; but as the curtain falls, to rise again and reveal the first picture, an X, with discordant brassy music, I start on my first bar of nut chocolate. The cigar in my breast pocket is kept for Marilyn.

 

Two stout ladies five rows behind come in, and begin to talk. They have a discussion; I can’t hear what about, since both are talking at once. But it keeps up when the film starts. There are two talkies now; one in front, the other behind.

 

At last I get fed-up, turn round, and give a gentle hiss. The conversation, or dual-monologue does not stop for a moment.

 

Soft music now. I want to hear what the young woman is saying in front on the screen before me, not what the two old so-and so’s are discussing behind me! So I turn round again and hiss loudly. No response. I half rise and say distinctly, ‘Please be quiet ladies!’

 

It works.

 

But now the so-called music, or cacophony, in front is far too loud. Fortunately the reel breaks, the screen flickers, and becomes dark. A small boy way up in front, smoking a cigarette, whistles ironically.

 

The film starts up again. I console myself by thinking that I am living in the last Edwardian town in England, where the High Street has only a few motorcars along one side of it by day, and is quite a good place for shopping. And the old tradition of service still remains; the old days are not quite gone, in fact they are retained by necessity, I suppose, by the fact that it is a poor town. This is rather a sad thought. And it’s a nice town, it is pleasant. For young people the winter is possibly distinctly dull, in spite of a go-ahead hotel-keeper who has installed a large circular bar, which on Saturday nights holds a hundred or so youths and young girls, drinking beer or soft drinks, and dancing to a local band, the chief instrument of which is a howling voice relayed by loudspeakers. The boys stay together, in their stovepipes, winklepickers, and drapes; the girls with Chinese faces and kohl-lashes worn with hairdos in shape between badly made haystacks and weeping willow trees, more or less dance together. They perform that excellent p.t. dance, the rock and roll, with modesty and a minimum of effort, while the boys look on, in groups or singly. Their hair-styles are either cropped, with fringes, or bobbed tonsures. The crew-cut, I fancy, is old-fashioned. One has a fringe of whiskers; another favours a dundreary which gives to an innocent and friendly face a comforting appearance to myself, feeling a bit of a fuddyduddy with a moustache. And yet – eyes look my way – with a sort of curious respect – ah, they have seen my moustache on the telly! And with Cliff Michelmore!

 

Marilyn Monroe at last. My wife does not think so highly of her talent as I do. Why, I ask. We-ell . . . she says. I tell her that to be able to project gentleness, kindness, and what Arnold Bennett called ‘the sweetest laughter in the world’ (only he was talking about Shakespeare) is quite a gift. And Marilyn has had a pretty tough time, by and large. Also, I say, to give out, as she does, and indeed as all good actors and actresses do, costs quite a lot in nervous vitality.

 

‘You,’ I say, ‘work extremely hard! I realise that. I know that I am often tiresome, I wonder sometimes why you stand it, writing eight or ten hours a day, but it saps me, you know, so –.’ ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘Marilyn is very sweet and kind, that’s honestly why I like her. I wish you had come with me to the film.’

 

My wife is mending a sock. She is making jam. She is also reading my book in typescript. Tomorrow at 8 a.m. she will catch the bus to where she teaches at a school.

 

‘Anyway, I like Marilyn Monroe,’ I persist. ‘You know, “How far that little candle sends its beam, so shines a good deed in a naughty world.” You,’ I say, ‘are rather like Marilyn.’

 

But I don’t feel I deserve the touch of her lips on my head, as with feet up before the fire I read my newspaper.

 

 

Broadcast in the Home Service on 3 May, 1961

 

 

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Critical reception:

 

Henry Williamson Society Journal (Richard Williamson), September 1993:

 

Pen and Plough completes the collection of my father's broadcast essays, once more put together by the indefatigable John Gregory and dedicated to the late and equally hard working John Homan. Most of these short stories, sharp and brilliant enough to make the BBC's Empire Service look for more and yet more, were put out to distant Anglophiles homesick for the green land, on the series 'Green Fields and Pavements', in 1938 and '39. At this time Henry was looking for ways to help pay for the Norfolk farm. Radio talks were useful extra income. First listeners, and now after half a century, readers, are led on the familiar old Pied Piper path across the Forests of Exmoor and the fields of a Norfolk farm. The pictures he makes with his sometimes inventive vocabulary, idiosyncratic thoughts, and sharp eye for speech and colour, are compelling. Devon lanes, Norfolk farm workers, and then, even Marilyn Monroe in an Ilfracombe cinema, are with us as we listened once, or read now.

 

Then came the literary broadcasts of the 1960s and '70s. One, 'On Writing a Novel Series' in 1961 was re-broadcast on 'Pick of the Week' as I remember. It was beautiful – the simple magic of that first walk down to Putsborough beach in 1916, the crucible from which fifty books poured. Henry wrote as he talked – the final discussions of Blake, Lawrence of Arabia, Conrad, Scott Fitzgerald, bring back such memories of the Old Man as I remember him, off duty and in the home, that reading his words now brings him alive into the room.

 

 

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Book covers:

 

 

 

The photograph on the cover of the e-book edition was taken by the late John Fursdon on a visit to the Norfolk farm. Fursdon was the son of HW's first platoon commander in the London Rifle Brigade in 1914, and a Devon friend. He later married Christine, HW's second wife, after their divorce.

 

 

 

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Appendix:

 

Radio Broadcasts by Henry Williamson

 

This list is as comprehensive as BBC archives allow. However, it is known that some other talks and interviews were broadcast; should further details of these come to light, they will be published here.

 

1935
Monday, 16 December		Men Talking. National Programme. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Recipe for a Country Life’.
1936
Saturday, 21 March		Out of Doors, 1. West of England Home Service. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Spring Days in Devon’.
Friday, 3 April		Out of Doors, 2. West of England Home Service. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘The Headland’.
Thursday, 16 April		Out of Doors, 3. West of England Home Service. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘East Wind’.
Friday, 1 May		Out of Doors, 4. West of England Home Service. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Our Gulf Stream’.
Friday, 15 May		Out of Doors, 5. West of England Home Service. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘The Deserted Shore’.
Monday, 25 May		Out of Doors, 6. West of England Home Service. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Around Dartmoor’.
Friday, 12 June		Out of Doors, 7. West of England Home Service. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Diversions in a Garden’.
Monday, 29 June		Out of Doors, 8. West of England Home Service. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Country Mind and Town Mind’.
Monday, 13 July		Telling the Tale: A West Country Miscellany. West of England Home Service. With a contribution by H.W.; no further details known.
Saturday, 15 August		Books & Backgrounds, 2: Lorna Doone and the Doone Valley. West of England Home Service.
Monday, 28 September		Lives of English Animals, 1: 'Red Deer'. National Programme.
Wednesday, 21 October		Country Topics. West of England Home Service. With a contribution by H.W.; no further details known.
Friday, 23 October		Children’s Hour: 'Walks with my Children, 1'. West of England Home Service.
Wednesday, 28 October		Lives of English Animals, 2: 'The Otter'. National Programme. Reprinted in The Listener with the same title.
Friday, 13 November		Children’s Hour: 'Walks with my Children, 2'. West of England Home Service.
Friday, 20 November		Country Topics. West of England Home Service. With a contribution by H.W.; no further details known.
Friday, 27 November		For the Schools: 'The Biography of a Squirrel'. National Programme.
Friday, 11 December		Children’s Hour: 'Walks with my Children, 3'. West of England Home Service.
Monday, 14 December		Lives of English Animals, 3: 'The Stoat'. National Programme. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Tryst at the Gibbet’.
Friday, 18 December		Country Topics: 'The Barn Owl'. West of England Home Service.
1937
Friday, 1 January		Children’s Hour: 'Walks with my Children, 4'. West of England Home Service.
Saturday, 9 January		Children’s Hour: 'Walks with my Children, 5'. West of England Home Service.
Friday, 29 January		Children’s Hour: 'Walks with my Children, 6'. West of England Home Service.
Saturday, 6 February		Lives of English Animals, 4: 'The Badger'. National Programme. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘The Badger: England’s Oldest Inhabitant.’
Tuesday, 9 February		Children’s Hour: 'Walks with my Children, 7'. West of England Home Service.
Friday, 26 February		Children’s Hour: 'Walks with my Children, 8'. West of England Home Service.
1938
Thursday, 21 April		Green Fields and Pavements, 1. Empire Programme.
Thursday, 28 April		Green Fields and Pavements, 2. Empire Programme.
Thursday, 5 May		Green Fields and Pavements, 3. Empire Programme.
Thursday, 12 May		Green Fields and Pavements, 4. Empire Programme.
Thursday, 19 May		Green Fields and Pavements, 5. Empire Programme.
Thursday, 26 May		Green Fields and Pavements, 6. Empire Programme.
Monday, 22 August		Close to Earth, 1. Regional Programme. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Buying a Farm’.
Monday, 29 August		Close to Earth, 2. Regional Programme. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Getting to Work’.*
Monday 5 September		Close to Earth, 3. Regional Programme. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Building a Home’.
Monday, 12 September		Close to Earth, 4. Regional Programme. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘The Spirit of England’.
Tuesday, 13 September		Green Fields and Pavements, 1 (new series). Empire Programme.
Tuesday, 20 September		Green Fields and Pavements, 2. Empire Programme
Tuesday, 27 September		Green Fields and Pavements, 3. Empire Programme
Monday, 12 December		Men Talking. National Programme. A discussion on ‘Town and Country’, chaired by Valentine Williams and including H.W.
1939
Wednesday, 4 January		Still Close to Earth, 1. Regional Programme.
Saturday, 18 February		Still Close to Earth, 2. Regional Programme.
Saturday, 11 March		Still Close to Earth, 3. Regional Programme.
Thursday, 1 June		West Country Reminiscences. West of England Home Service.
Wednesday, 5 July		Green Fields and Pavements. Empire Programme.
Friday, 21 July		Tomorrow in the Country. National Programme. Reprinted in The Listener as ‘Atlantic Headland’.
Monday, 28 August		More West Country Reminiscences. West of England Home Service.
1947
Saturday, 29 November		Books and Authors. H.W. interviewed by Arthur Calder-Marshall. Light Programme.
1954
Wednesday 11 August		Forty Years in Wild Devon. West of England Home Service.
Tuesday, 24 August		Book Review. H.W. reviews The Home Letters of T.E. Lawrence and his Brothers. West of England Home Service.
1956		Signature. First Meetings. Including H.W. on Arnold Bennett. West of England Home Service.
1957
Sunday, 27 October		Just Published. H.W. interviewed by Kenneth Hudson on The Golden Virgin. West of England Home Service.
Saturday, 23 November		The World of Books. H.W. interviewed by Donald Boyd on The Golden Virgin. Home Service.
1958
Sunday, 6 July		The Adelphi: a literary magazine (1923-1955) recalled by four of its quondam editors: Sir Richard Rees, Jack Common, Henry Williamson and Sir Ifor Evans. Compiled and introduced by Rayner Heppenstall. Third Programme.
Sunday, 28 December		Faith in the West: 'Between the Moors'. West of England Home Service
1961
Sunday, 26 February		In Our Time: 'The Changing Village'. Home Service.
Monday, 10 April		I Remember. H.W. interviewed by Goronwy Rees; produced by Louis MacNeice. Home Service.
Wednesday, 3 May		On Seeing Marilyn Monroe. Home Service.
Saturday, 20 May		The River. Home Service.
Saturday, 7 October		The World of Books: 'On Writing a Novel Series'. Home Service.
1965
Friday, 14 May		Today in the South and West. H.W. interviewed by Robert Forbes about his gift of manuscripts to Exeter University. West of England Home Service.
1966
Sunday, 11 September		Siegried Sassoon. A composite picture of the man and his work contributed by some of his friends and fellow-poets on the occasion of his 80th birthday. With a contribution by H.W. Home Service.
1967
Tuesday, 28 March		The World of Books. H.W. reviews Morale by John Baynes, introduced by Kenneth Allsop. Home Service.
Saturday, 27 May		The World of Books. H.W. reviews The Sea Years of Joseph Conrad by Jerry Allen, introduced by Kenneth Allsop. Home Service.
1969
Tuesday, 14 October		Desert Islands Discs. H.W. with Roy Plomley. Home Service.
1970
Monday, 1 June		Books and Writers. H.W. interviewed by Clive Jordan. European Service.
1971
Thursday, 17 June		Something in Common: 'In Flanders Fields'. Robert Graves, Brigadier C. E. Lucas Phillips, Henry Williamson and Lord Chandos interviewed by Leslie Smith. Radio 4.

 

 

 

 

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