The Story of Aintree and Putney
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Southern Edition, Radio ‘ T i m e s , , Marreh 23,1928; GRAND NATIONAL AND BOAT RACE NUMBER. a ae a Sree 2awlPirieeey pir “nig”eek HEFEIELO saa neeS atric eorTringHaM STOHE- OyTRET ans the. awl @ auespiiovenae 4 a pave eowelt} = LONDON ot ae Bias = ‘BOURNEAROUTE Eaa pert meEea"imam amin a a The besten of the British Broadcasting Corporation. = ————————— Vol.1. No 234.‘foPeaseXsere _MARCH|B 1928. Every Friday. Two Pence. | The Story of Aintree and Putney, of the Grand National Steeplechase and the University Boat Race, will be heard bylisteners a l l over the country on Friday and Saturday of this week, In 1927 these two broadcasts were among the most successful and popular of the year. This week's Radio Times deals specially with the two @a@€es, each a classic in its own category. Youwill find plans of the courses on page 593, and on the previous page articles by Geoffrey Gilbey and x. O. Nickalls, this year’s commentators. Te have their feet in. history—the Captain Hanssom's patent cabs (' the gondolas distinction, shall we say, save that Captain Boat. Race’ and " the: -Grand-|-of London a3 Disraeli was to call the am} were Becher, son of a Norfolk yeoman, anc first National,” We forget.it nowadays, still a novelty, of. the great cross-country riders (there's but we remember that they mark the turn of Down. at Westminster the. two. early still Becher’s Brook on your Aintree map) the year, Spring comes with them. anda.) University crews foregathered—young men| 8 among the threng. (TLESSé They are British things tirsute g i : : HE years roll on, You will temember theseeileentwain,aginandaefull of highoe,endeavour,1 eyand “itheirbeWwhiskered,broad sailorin theirhats.. broad.And boatssup- oe eeee eal: eadCERNE And the history.. We cannot .picture porters of the Light Blue and the Dark —_ ce “apes Sree a ee cee ‘ent ‘i 294° when the road stil had its glory and Blue followed behind in. cutters manned by =.’ saith dalyIranidelegateho 1639. whe re a See Tee es aes a ba Po Y | Putney for ther race. ‘The new steamers the iron horse was.still'a colt.; when-the Thames watermen. I could tell you the Bread mE oes RES ae ot oA ah : : ay ., | down Westminster way-had been nigh Thames was. still a great highway and story of how the Cambridge lightning Biden too ae crew Jed poor Oxford all the way up-siream poeta ok Metron 7. on that. day by Vauxhall's gay gardens, through Chelsea's choppyreach,.past Batter- Sea. village to the littl: town of Putney, but it would seem unkinel. Then. up at Aintree out by those same prand rolling acres a. concourse of North Country sportsmen—the roads-a-block with farmers’ gigs and gentlemen's drags and strings of saddle horses, Young bucks there are, resplendent in their satm. gold- epriceed waistcoats and their bright blue claw-hammer coats. But the old squire would. have none of this new sport. -He staved. at home nursing his conte! steeple- chasing,’ he would say,.° steeplechasing. Pray what's that, my boy ? _-Fox-huntin’ without the fox ; Hamlet without. the Prince—bah |! And_the riders across Aisivenss sticks and plough. were. a’ ‘motley .créew., Butchers, | publicans, horse-dealers, farmers—some in tall hats and. others. not. All’ without a — = a oe er 2 0 — RADIO TIMES —.- [aEatuter a; ee » The Fath of the Week, No. | I Remember J . M. Synge. One of the most amazing literary renaissances -ol modem days iea thattha which produced J. M. Syne, B. ¥ é@als, Jameg Stephens, and other’? notable figures which gathered around the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In this talk, givenye London on ‘Thursday, foren:cst March 15, James ‘Stephens, Treland’s novelist, contmbutes a delicate and gadentanding portrait ol i. M. Synge, her greatest p l a y w r i g h t , author of The Playbey of the Western World. T was tiot until Jate in his rather thort | hot for Synge -a place fronr which turf or continually to be found m it the wiry line, l i f e ‘that Synge discovered his true eatis cut.. A bore was an enchantment, as the rigour, the sharp and hare and bleak ability to lie neither in philosophy nor | Fisted it is to. everyone who has hecome that he imly loved. and which he would music but i n drama, and one may wonder acquainted with or has lived nigh to a bog. have farther striven to. how he came to make this discovery, for he To get well mto an extensive mooris to leave His knowledge of the countryside was was a painfully slow writer, and his veryslow- ali* else behind, is to have left the world extensive and penetrating. He ‘knew the ness might-have led him to distrust an art- thind, is almost to have left one’s self afar call of every bird and the habit of most form, that was so difficult to handle: To the amd apart and forgotten, There is the bog creatures. that are to be found in our ways end writing was a toil to him. In this, how- and the clouds, and the rest merges to them, and pastures. His approach to knowledge ever, he was not exceptional ; for the majority Thé sea is desolate > but it is also, and un- was—to be silent; to look eagerly at all, of writers have assured us that writing i5-a forgivably, a desolation. But the bog is nota that came; and te listen intently to all labour from which one may really shrink a desolation ; it is desolate, but it is habitable that happened. And, in his approach to little. Synge occasionally got somereviewing and inhabited, Birds and rats and bees and a knowledge of the human imbhabitants to do for a literary weekly, but he had. t o rabbits are there, An odd donkey or a goat of the countryside, he used the same” ap- discontinue this because thearticle, for which is always, somewhere, ambling or frisking proach and attitude. As a boy he wan- he might receive two guineas, always cost dered the hills of Dublin and Wicklow, himsix weeks to write ; and these were six and’ he knew. these intimately. He could weeks of painful cogitation a s to how possibly assure a thirsty companion that behind one can. say anything whatever with a pen a cértam folding In next weeks issue of a certain hilly track that wall afterwards be readable, there was a well, And, if one was thirstier S t i l l Jater,; he confessed that if his day's LION FEUCHTWANGER, still, he would tell behind how many: hills- anc-a-half'a work had actually resulted i n the additionof author of ‘few Sita,’ and “The Ubly tavern lay; or that on Sixteen two words to his manuscript, although he rising tums to the left a slaty cottage was might not feel triumphant and inclined to Duchess,’ writes on ootched among slaty rocks, and that there celebrate the occasion, he did) yet consider “THE FUTURE OF BROAD- one could get-a glass of milk and a cake that the day had not been wasted, that his CASTING.’ from the griddle. And he knew that in all subject was not absolutely stationary. these places, ifone were well-bred—if, thatis, He'lived in Paris for some years at the Read what the leading Continental novelist were silent and ineonspicuous—there Rue d'Assas, and his apartment was ade- of the day has to say on a subject’ which ‘be heard a fashion of speech which quately furnished with a bed, an oilkstove, will interest every keen listener, was not conned fram books: which had a book-case, and a yard of French bread, no acquaintance with art or science oF and while in Paris he really needed whatever Pa scholarship, and ‘which was yet abundant scarce guineas might come his way. Pos- and racy and of a remarkable texture— sibly the philosophy he hadtoiled after was away from you, is always ‘cropping “an the exuberant speech of isolated people. ‘sufficienth robust at this time to tide him endless breakfast. Tor in a bog you could People who are always as tinnud in action ‘over the bad days, but, although he did not easily imagine that the breakfast of a donkey as they are bold in talk; being bold indeed. complain, he did consider that a meal which bean before time began, and that it will in the only thing they, have. practice of, est more than one franc twenty-five had contirme while time has yet a second to draw For from these perople every adventure but been extravagantly paid for. on. And over tt all there 15 wind and space the adventure of speech has been retired, He was somewhat negative to ordinary and cloud and silence; the wind always and they must seek in conversation all of human bemes (the dramatist tends to be so); different, the cloud never the sanie, the the change, all of the excitement that ethers not that he dishked people, but he did not silence never monotonous. All these seem win from travel, from theatres, from the dimire them, He certainly did not love his to live as it were one life, and one’s own life press of men and affairs, fellow human beings m themass. Withhim participates into that, or seems scarcely to More than six people could easily become a be sundered from it.