Grace Abounding
I am delighted to see that Mrs. Grace Wynd- ham Goldie has been getting kudos for her share in the renovation of BBC television. Of all the new brooms sweeping out the fustiness, there is none brisker. She is a most formidable woman —an uncompromising perfectionist whose atten- tion to the facts of the matter in hand is rigorous far beyond the point of comfort for lazy minds; and the atmosphere she creates around her is one in which only the efficient, tough and for- ward-looking can survive. Hence the success of Messrs. Baverstock, Milne and other pupils- become-headmasters. To tell the truth, I'm not much given in the ordinary way to career-women of this extreme voltage, but Mrs. Goldie's con- versation is irresistible even to a mild anti- feminist (not, I hasten to add, misogynist) like myself. I admire three things about her, and I'm sure that they happen to be invaluable to the BBC in the course of its conversion to modernity. She is fundamentally a moralist; she is class-. less; and her fury is aroused by nothing so much as by condescension to (which equals contempt for) the audience. The public-service concept of broadcasting is very real to her, but in a wholly unstuffy way, and within the range of her authority (she is head of talks and current affairs) there is no danger of the revcan- tionary forces at work throughout the entire hierarchy petering out into mere triviality, flashi- ness, or fashion-mongering.
Previous page
