ODDS AND ENDS

Southland Times, Issue 23652, 29 October 1938, Page 14

ODDS AND ENDS

In one of the windows of New Zealand House in London, recently, there has been an exhibition of books by New Zealand writers: Miss Jean Batteii, Dr A. J. Harrop, “G. B. Lancaster,” Mr J, A. Lee, Miss Ngaio Marsh, Miss Nelle Scanlan, Mr C. A. Wilson, and Commander Frank Worsley. Commander Worsley’s book, “First Voyage in a Square-Rigged Ship,” has just been published by Geoffrey Bles.

Clemence Dane, says a columnist, lives in the depths of Devonshire and gives her guests cold ham for breakfast. Her ambition is to give an oldfashioned house party with Shakespeare, Baron Munchausen, Solomon and the Recording Angel all gathered at table.

Hugh Walpole, in a newspaper article on “Unjustly Forgotten Novelists,” mentions Miss Braddon, Maurice Hewlett, “Zack,” Arthur Morrison, John Oliver Hobbes, Israel Zangwill, George Gissing, Charles Marriott, Mrs Humphry Ward and F. Marion Crawford. It is perhaps a fair comment that the time test applied in this list is rather short and sharp.

John Pudney, the well-known British Broadcasting Corporation drama, and feature producer, poet and short-story writer, is to bring out his first novel shortly. Everyone will remember his short stories, particularly “Uncle Arthur” and “Ethel and her Engine”—also familiar features of radio programmes in many parts of the world. He has laid the plot of his first novel in Soho—the real Soho of street markets, Jew shop keepers and hard bargains. It is the story of Jacobson, a richly-drawn, lively, subtle Jewish character, keeper of a fancy-goods store, and Mark Bloom, a youpgster drawn by chance into thq highlycoloured fabric of Jacobson’s life. Mark is intelligent and sensitive and treasures a vague intellectual socialism. Mr Pudney tells with a quiet, wiselyhumorous detachment, the story of these two and their neighbours, their struggles and achievements, their successful bargain sales and unfortunate excursions into night-club life, their shabby loves, their tragedies and pleasures. Longmans will publish this book, and “Jacobson’s Ladder” is its name. Mr Pudney’s name is well known to radio listeners in the colonies, as for three years he wrove and produced frequent plays and feature programmes for Empire broadcasting.

Mazo de la Roche, author of the “Jalna” series, was recently awarded the Lome Pierce Medal for literature by the Royal Society of Canada. And Stephen Haggard who was acting in “Whiteoaks,” the “Jalna” play, on the American tour, went back to England to receive the congratulations due to his first novel, “N.Y.A.” He is a greatnephew of Rider Haggard.

John Dos Passos, cruising in the Mediterranean, has written a new novel, to be called “Adventures of a Young Man.” For more than 20 years Dos Passos has roamed around the world, and many of his books were wril*™ he travelled.