Mr. Priestley comes better than the B.B.C. out of the
affair of the lost manuscript and the consequently cancelled talk, but even Mr. Priestley, I should have thought, would have taken the precaution of going to the studio with a spare copy of his talk in his pocket, even though he relied, as he was entitled to, on the copy he had submitted earlier (as all broadcasters must) to the B.B.C. authorities in advance. One reason for that arrangement, it vas once explained to me, was that if ever the speaker failed to turn up—and such things have happened—the talk could be read for him in the absence. The alternative contingency of the presence of the speaker and the absence of the speech had apparently not been considered. However, the B.B.C. found the missing manuscript half an hour later (in some dangerous corner ?), and we are to hear the lost talk on Monday.
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