A Spectator's Notebook
NOTHING better became King George at the micro_ phone last Sunday than his single little cough, that went radiating through the air to the farthest antipodes—an involuntary touch of nature, making the whole world of listeners kin. A King who reads a message into a microphone from a manuscript may be just a King. A King who coughs is a fellow human being. As a matter of fact, the King is an excellent broadcaster. He seemed to me a little hoarse on Sunday, but his enunciation was deliberate and admirably clear. And the human note was there throughout. " I speak now from my home " meant at Sandringham—the simplest of all the royal residences —what it could never mean at Buckingham Palace or Windsor or Balmoral, and the reference to hearers " celebrating this day with their children and their grand- children " came as an opportune reminder that it was a grandfather who was speaking. As for the rest of the Empire programme, it was an achievement for which the B.B.C. deserves unstinted praise. The voices from Halifax mentioning the light fall of snow, from Cape Town describing the blaze of sunlight on Table Mountain, from the Majestic ' in mid-Atlantic, from the Empress of Britain ' in harbour at Port Said, from Brisbane and Wellington and elsewhere, made up an Empire circuit profoundly impressive and profoundly inspiring.
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