A N.Z. Family In Britain

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29336, 15 October 1960, Page 3

A N.Z. Family In Britain

AU This And The Family Too. By Betty Holt. Paul 213 pp.

To say that this book might have been written in her lighter moments by the late E.M. Delafield is by no means to disparage it, even if the telegraphic style with which the "Provincial Lady” was apt to jot down her thoughts is apt to be a trifle fatiguing. Sometime in the late 1940’s file author’s family—her self, her university don husband and their four children—had a year’s trip to England, and Mrs Holt’s daily recording of those eventful twelve months provide a witty commentary on the relations existing between Britain and New Zealand.

Even in these days of easy communications and fat paypackets it is doubtful whether the average Englishman has seen as much of his own country, not to mention the continent of Europe, as did those six indefatigable sight-seers, and as travelogue alone the book is quite impressive. But its real charm lies in Mrs Holt’s thumbnail sketches of people, both cultured and uncultered, and of her own family in particular. For Christine, aged fifteen, the main attraction of England was the possibility of seeing Laurence Olivier in the flesh, though her heart was large enough to include other personable males. Margaret, at. twelve, was made of sterner stuff, and gave her moral support to those Hyde Park orators who advocated the extermination of the rich and powerful, and indeed anyone who could conceivably constitute

authority. John, from being a typical New Zealand Schoolboy, began to master the technique of his temporarily adopted country, including the wearing of ever longer and longer "shorts”. The enchanting Bobby, in the absence of playmates of his tender age, soon created a shadowy alter ego, (first called Kim, and subsequently the Soldier) whb shared his every taste, including a marked dislike for having to toil round cathedrals. In between tours of Scotland (how delightfully right the author is in likening the Instructions for an AA. route to a knitting pattern!), Wales, the Continent, and the West Country, Mrs Holt found time to worry about the problem of Harry X’s love affairs, and with a remarkable economy of phrase she makes quiet fun of British oddities —Inability to think of New Zealanders as anything but Australians, absence of laundry facilities in London flats, the universal form of address by the proletariat to all and sundry as "dear”, the alarmingly unhygienic practices of a dog-loving nation in giving its pets the free run of food shops. This is certainly one of the brighter travel books, but for the accuracy of the author's records here are two minor corrections, (1) The ruins at Glastonbury are not those of a cathedral but of a large Abbey which was probably at one time an important administrative centre. (2) Minehead is on the coast of Somerset, and not Devon whose boundary line lies 10 miles further west.