SIR,—II is rash to quarrel with so expert a broadcaster
as Dr. Charles Hill, but his statement that, if a broadcast is "to bear a reasonable resemblance to the spoken word, the script must be dictated," seems to me absurdly dogmatic.
"There are nine and twenty ways Of constructing tribal lays, And every single one of them is right."
The problem is much the same as that of the " realistic" playwright— how to make his dialogue sound Like easy conversation, while it is of necessity " literary " compared with the ungrammatical asyntax of ordinary talk. The speech of the broadcaster must suggest, not the platform or the stage, but the study ; yet no one but the most devastating bore would talk in the study for twenty minutes without a word from anyone else. Yet the broadcaster must somehow commit that social crime without being detected. Like stage dialogue it is a matter of convention and of art, and Dr. Hill's prescription would cer- tainly not suit everybody.
The art of the broadcast is to strike the balance between the spoken and the written word, and, without any calculated tricks of delivery, to feel that you are talking to your friends in the study, who are listening (for twenty minutes) in silence and not yet asleep. For most of us that is a long stretch of the 'imagination !
At the end of his article Dr. Hill says that he always tries to be his own natural self. He must have two natural selves. The Radio Doctor is a genial counsellor with sympathy for the failings as well as the ailments of human beings. The sneering drawl of the Conservative Liberal (new preposterous oxymoron) seemed to me the nastiest thing on the air since those drawling sneers at Mr. P. G. Wodehouse by someone who vainly tried to imitate Quentin Reynolds' address to Mr. Schickelgriiber. If I hadn't, like other voters, already made my decision, Dr. Hill would have driven me to the verge of Communism, which only goes to show that in the art of broadcasting you never can tell, for Janus gave him a clear
alpha.—Yours truly, W. HAMILTON FYFE. 10 St. German's Place, Blackheath, S.E.3.
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