Radio
Profiles
Maureen Owen
Arthur Ransome was evidently one of ,, those writers who responded well to discouragement, if not to downright cruel- tY: 'it's no worse than one of your worst,' 111,s (second) wife would say after reading the manuscript of one of his children's adventure stories. Earlier in his career newspaper editors had used similar tactics Ransome with success. In The Adven- tures of Arthur Ransome (Radio 4, Wednesday 18 January), the centenary to the day of Ransome's birth, John Knight Produced a not unfamiliar picture of the beleagured hack journalist living from hand t° mouth who managed to break the Chain by finding his true metier, however unlikely.
Arthur Ransome was 46 when he publish-
ed best known book, Swallows and Amazons. There was no overnight success. In .1934 his books sold a thousand copies, rising modestly to two thousand in 1938. 'After this the 'life' was one of industrious, genteel boredom and the programme wisely Concentrated on the earlier Ransome, mak- ing the point that he seemed an unlikely Character to settle for an orderly life in the country, writing for children on the joys of fishing, sailing and camping. One can think of other writers who changed their ways, but not so radically as this. Before the first world war, Ransome liv- ed raffishly in London, sharing digs with hush' poet Edward Thomas, drinking 'opal gu.sh' (a mixture of claret and lemonade) with such as Hilaire Belloc and Augustus 'Om, hanging around Soho and waiting for cheques to arrive by the four o'clock post.
So far as all this goes, Ransome re- incarnations can still be seen today. The keen edge to the programme was given by the descriptions of Arthur Ransome's highly developed knack for embracing large- scale , complications. His book on Oscar Wilde, which described Lord Alfred Douglas as the architect of Wilde's destruc- tion, predictably led to legal action. To escape what was described as 'an ill-suited first marriage' Ransome fled to Russia where he became embroiled in the 1917 revolution. He incautiously urged the British government to co-operate with Trot- sky and Lenin in his dispatches to London newspapers, for which he was subsequently branded a fifth columnist. It will be in- teresting to see how close the radio documentary was to Hugh Brogan's biography, published on the same day.
I warmly praise Profile (Radio 4, Fridays, 8.10 p.m.) because the subject matter, never billed in advance for some reason, is always distinctive. The subject of a recent Profile was Ivor Cutler, poet, singer, performer, cartoonist (for Private Eye and the Observer) and man of many metiers. An Ivor Cutler evening where he performs on a wheezing harmonium is a 'totally bizarre and strange experience and an acquired taste', according to one follower. Others, including David Wade of the Times, spoke of him as 'a genius in a small way'. His gift is for the subtle and the brittle though nobody overpraised the Cutler cult. His 'foil and mentor', Mrs Phyllis King, thought that he sometimes pushed things too far. Mr Cutler himself said that he was a life member of 'Exit'; a Cutler joke. Things which give other people pleasure give him none, he announced. He is 'over 50', lives alone and his muse is that of the desperate man struggling against un- seen authority; courtesy of Kafka. Mean- while, let's have a joke, a tune or a poem.
Last week's Profile on Lord Gowrie, Minister for the Arts, followed a similar pattern, although where Ivor Cutler is not ambitious, Lord Gowrie is. Lord Gowrie was described as 'a former art dealer, a bit la-di-da, wonderfully eccentric, aspiring to the Home Secretaryship, one who always pays for dinner, never afraid to read a poem and the possessor of great personal charm'. The profiles on both men inspired one to book for their next performance.
I have hopes of the archly named Chip Shop (Radio 4, Saturdays, 5 p.m.) as it is the first computer magazine series of the air, enabling one `to come to grips with the new technology' — something which many of us may welcome. In fact what we heard about were 'infant' programmers such as 16-year-old Keith Mitchell who is already under contract to a computer firm, with his own legal advisers and an articulate grand- mother to see that he is not ripped off over his copyright. Perhaps this is to whet the appetite and we shall learn more about the basics in future, especially if we send off to the BBC for 'Factsheets' and listen to subliminal messages during the week after the late-night shipping forecast. Barry Nor-
man, presenting, does warn of incom- patibility problems.
A sickening start to the new Midweek series (Radio 4, Wednesdays, 9.05 a.m.) with Libby Purves replacing Henry Kelly. At first I thought I had tuned in to a take- off of a Woman's Own editorial conference of 20 years ago with everyone discussing who should change the nappies/wheel the pram/wash the dishes. Worse still, there was Tim Brooke-Taylor not allowed to be funny by chairwoman/man Purves. I don't think subsequent Midweek programmes have been as bad, but oddly enough, I can recall nothing of them.
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