Oddments

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 March 1948, Page 4

Oddments

* Chatting with Sir Thomas Beecham after a concert at Leeds, a reporter asked him if he knew that Gigli had entertained an audience of 2500 there the day before. “Really?” said Sir Thomas. “I’m surprised. I’m also very glad. He is the last singer left in the world, the end of a great line.” Prophesying, gloomily, that all great singing would have disappeared in 25 years’ time, Sir Thomas shook his head. “I hope you’re wrong,” said the reporter. With mock indignation the great conductor/ ‘Sir, I am never wrong!” # 1?: ❖ ❖ # The man at the helm in British Honduras, latest part of the Empire to have covetous eyes cast on it, is a 50-year-old ex-Guards officer, Mr Edward Gerald Hawkesworth, the Governor. Thick-set, precise, firm, he is unlikely—to use Mr Eden’s phrase to which Mr Attlee subscribed—to allow himself to be “cheeked or chivvied” out of Government House at Belize, the capital. He is a son of the vicarage. Before he was 20 he won the M.C. and after the 1914-18 war went to Nigeria. There he worked for 20 years, a wise patient Sanders of the River. s Then at a time when Britain needed every ounce of rubber he was made Chief Commissioner of Ashanti on the Gold Coast where has tactful handling of labour problems kept him on good terms with Africans and resulted in a big increase in the prodution of raw rubber.

—The Seeker