OUR LONDON LETTER.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 37, 13 February 1929, Page 17

OUR LONDON LETTER.

1 PUBLICITY ACTIVITIES. « STRIKING DISPLAYS. A PLAYWRIGHT'S SUCCESS. (From Onr Own Correspondent.) LONDON, January 8. The Christmas window display in the High Commissioner's office this year was one of the most striking and successful in the whole of London. Crowds at times flocked around it and repeatedly the police had to request people to "move on." The centre "motif" of the display was the "Sunshine" or rich vitamin quality of the New Zealand produce, and a large card in the centre foreground attested to this fact. The whole window was brilliantly lighted.

The attraction Jay in the mechanical movement in the window. On the left was a large '"imperial Bee Esq" figure which smiled at the public as it turned its head to the front and lifted up different cards acclaiming the virtues of Zealand honey. This figure stood 'Jpon the counter of a shop owned by John Bull, Zealand's largest customer. In the centre an unfolding panorama of New Zealand dairy scenes was continuous and in front of it a mechanical cow turned lazily to the people, opened its mouth and mooed and wagged its tail. On the right ships sailed round the world from New Zealand to Britain, and above their track was a band of words stating that 8,000,000 carcases of frew Zealand mutton and lamb came annually in this way to England. In front were wax replicas of New Zealand lamb carcases. Appropriate wording on neat cards was displayed in different places in the window, the idea being that the mechanical movement should attract, and people would then read the facts «et out regarding New Zealand produce.

The window was designed by the High Commissioner's Publicity Department. It caters specially for the hundreds of thousands of people who pass and repass in the Strand, London, and who come from all parts of the world. The High Commissioner received a number of encomiums upon his display. The small window in the Strand office tastefully and strikingly set out the tourist and sporting attractions of New Zealand, and .invited people to spend their next gloomy winter in sunny New Zealand.

One of the latest publicity activities of the High Commissioner for New Zealand has been to secure showings of New Zealand films regularly on all the vessels of the Koterdam Lloyd Royal Mail Line to Egypt, Ceylon, Singapore and Java. This line of steamers carries large numbers of tourists and others to the East, and this New Zealand enterprise instituted from London should be the means of bringing the films before a large number of potential tourists to the 'Dominion. A considerable quantity of publicity literature has also been placed on the ves&ela.

Mr. Reginald Berkeley has registered *'liat is his greatest literary success so f ar in his play, "The Lady With a Lamp." Mr. Ivor Brown, our iMdiU critic, says: '-.So Csfr a piece or WorK will surely be given its chance on the public stage—and take it. Mr. Berkeley has done more than raid history for » first-rate part: he has ltt himself oe

seized by that part and carried on its greatness to write the best piece of work that he given us. The chronicle play is he/e seen in its most, extensive form, since we follow the life of Florence Nightingale over more than 60 years, only one scene showing her at Scutari with lamp in hand and toiling amid the agony of a medical misrule. What is dramatised is not so much the lamp of the sister in the ward as the fire in the heart of a zealot; the play gathers its unity from the inspiration which falls upon Florence in her girlhood and never ceases to visit her with 'voices' until her work is over and England, suddenly remembering her afresh, sends cackling chamberlains to pin ths Order of Merit on a chair-bound invalid near to 90, failing in mind and robbed of hearing, but able to mutter "too kind' while she wonders what all the bother is about."

An esvening paper declares of it: "Captain Berkeley has done some excellent work before, but nothing quite in this class. He has made a magnificently stirring, but often gorgeously ironical, drama out of the life of Florence Nightingale, not the legendary ineffectual angel, but Mr. Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victori.in."

Miss Kosemary Rees' new novel which is appearing serially in the "Evening Standard" —this is the third of hers which has so appeared', a fact which is a tribute to their interest for a big public —starts excitingly with a scene in the dressing room of a London theatre, moves *to a night club, and has now reached the stage when the heroine hies her to Biarritz, the only woman passenger on a tramp steamer to Bordeaux—an experience which Miss Rees herself went through last year. Miss Rees, we understand, may visit the United States shortly with a view to interesting the public there in her work.