A B.B.C. MAN

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30757, 22 May 1965, Page 4

A B.B.C. MAN

Years In A Mirror. Vai Giel-

gud. Bodley Head. 216 pp.

His brother John is assured of enduring fame: Vai Gielgud has also played a significant part in the history of drama —for about 30 years as Head of Drama (Sound) with the 8.8. C. Reading his autobiography, we are quickly infected with his enthusiasm for his special field, and begin to appreciate some of the problems as well as the challenging potentialities of radio, particularly when it was still a new medium.

The book is chiefly concerned with the author’s career. We read of the first frantic years when Gielgud had to devote all his time to the immediate problems of each play being produced, and of the sometimes chaotic conditions under which broadcasting continued during wartime. There was continual controversy over his choice of plays. He tells of his satisfaction with the many excellent productions, of knowledge gained through various failures, of his reluctant compromise over serials such as “The Archers.” He’also discusses the many books and plays he has written —with a wry commentary on the helpless dependence of a playwright bn a capricious Fate.

Over most of his private life a curtain is discreetly drawn. He reveals precisely as much as he wishes us to know, and explains his laudable motives for concealing the rest. He gives some details of his childhood, and includes brief essays on his travels, his cats, his enjoyment in watching polo and playing with toy soldiers.

The book is written in a style which gives pleasure by its clarity and cogency—the style of a man confidently in command of the English language. Despite deliberate reticence in many fields, a clear picture emerges of the whole man: a man with an undisguised nostalgia for the Edwardian world of nannies and lamplighters and hansomcabs; a man of dogmatic opinions, including a defiant faith in the intrinsic superiority of public schools and English clubs; a man who rejects today’s generation as being opinionated, vulgar and exhibitionists, yet who with no apparent sense of discrepancy points jauntily to his own youth as an opinionated, vulgar, exhibitionist rebel; a vigorous perfectionist; a gentleman, never quite taking himself seriously, but nevertheless wholly dedicated to his exciting profession.