Page A
PR
JAK
and
GEORGE
(yes,
Whiting)
go
star-gazing
London.
1.
ERSONALLY, I always
thought Baker Street was place where you changed for Waterloo and where Sherlock Holmes used to play the violin when he wasn't writing mono- graphs or unmasking murderers.
But Jak, who is a very erudite sort of artist once you get past the duffle cont, said I was dwelling in n thick fog of ignorance and why didn't I open my eyes to the romance and the majesty and the wonders of the world that were within my orbit that very minute?
Nor was he put off when I replied with
iruth, that all
I could see
was a No. 13
bus and the blant end of
the Maryle-
bone Road,
"Do you not realise." hu
THE CHINA MALL, FRIDAY, JANUARY 22, 1960.
VENUS OBSERVED (and that girl
next door wasn't so bad, either...)
said "that for a few measly shillings we can both be trans- ported to the heavens uni embrace Beauty, not to mention an entrancing loveliness 21 which drama, mystery, and yx- eitement have been blender into the eighth world?"
wonder of The
The footman
1 said was all for heavenly bodles and had no idea Diana
Dors lived round those parts.
" was referring to Venus, beauteous slar of the morning," replied Jack. And that is how 1a visil the Lendon we cane Planetarium for a few meusly shillings. My shillings.
44
Nice place, 铝 you like aluminium A blue-cunted fool- man bowed us in and they had mood music cozing out of the walls, but it struck my as peculiar sort of love-nest this Venus number was running. All over shiny gadgets. Nor was it too encouraging to learn that The lady was: (a) on the chilly side; and (b) low on the uptake.
Jak said any sensible would be that way with Whiting around. Also that any fool knew Venus lived 67 million
anlies from the sun, took 225 1731). And that is really all days to go round 1, and only that need be said. occasionally cate within 25 million miles of Baker Street. One of those Blatant dames.
366 days
Venus, he added, was a planet, nut a popey How, if I would pay attention to the wonders of the universe for threequarters of an hour, he really would intro duce me to Diana Dors with Marilyn Monroe thrown in for good measure.
Or do I have to emphosise that an orrery is a contrivance lustrating the motions, magni- Lhe tudes,
of and positione planetary system?. Fellow called Cassell has quite a plece about it in his dictionary page 1013.
Silhouettes
of the London
£26
and a day into 48 palpitating miunies, orbited 000 million miles round the sun. watched planets whisz lice crazy, got acquainted with Cassiopeia, and saw Cygnus the Swan fly race- fully down the Milky Way.
O
My estimate of the top-selling British novelist of our time
A
By GEORGE MILLAR
NEVIL SHUTE
.... his glory and his gloom
L'
IFE will seem poorer to millions of us because an ugly, tweedy Englishman, aged 60, with spectacles and a stutter has died in Australia.
Ugly on the surface perhaps code of decency. Hence Skuto's but what an adventurer, what fury over the film yersion of his a buman dynamo was Nevil penultimate book "O the Shule Norway, to give him his Boach” "when tho full name.
At least we know, and ho know, that in the Windmill Frost not In its gardens south of London, 160,000 books—the first huge run at Shute's last novel-are. now being printod and bound..
His titles
'It is be called "Trustee from the Toolroom," and will be on sale in March,
**
nym
J+WAS
phomaniac character allowed to get into bed. Nothing like that in the book.
Fantastic
He is the biggest-soiling British novelist of lde generation. It is said that when he left England for incomo Australly in 1990 his was £70,000 a year. The following year it was probably £80,000, and soon it may have top pod the £100,000-a-year mark.
earned Look at his Hi-
Fantastic, yes, but absolutely
Erough, began to feel in need
A typical, stir Shute 11tic. of friendliness and warmth. So Titles never camne sally to tim Jak introduced me to a cheerful and sometimes, in his 24 novels, little lady named Irene Webber.lue turned out horrors like "In Mr Webber, i right to the Wet." Would he change
After Shrewsbury and Balliol, raplain, is the last human be- them? Never. The pubilabera he served in the First World ing you see before you dis-had to lump them,
War as a private in the Suffolk appear Into
of the Chamber of
Regiment, Then a succession Horrors, and die bucks you up said, did writing come easily to de Havilland, then on the great Nor, whatever may have been engineering jote, big ones. With
nu end.
him
His other boks were airships, R.100 and R.101. Hệ Yes, she said, she Uked her plugged out, 1,500 words A flew the Aliandle twice in 100 job on the turnstile. Much bet-morning, by Shute on his own in 1928. When the R.101 disaster ter than when she was just one typewriter." Any page might be
came affectod Shulo deeply Juk, I regret to report, took of the cleaners dusting of the rewritten five to eight. umes,
and permanently. a five-minute nap between the medieval tortures, doing vernal equinox and Michaelmas, Adolf Hitler (No. 50), but he explained that the moon picking the cigarette ends out of had the same effort on him as it the Actual Bath in which tid on the tides, Made him ebb George Smith (No. 12) polished occasionally.
of Three Brides.
However, I reminded him that we still had a little more pure science to pursue and what about our date with Diana Dors down the road?
A hard look
for
and
From then on he loathed Action, always omdals and civil servants of the kind who put jobs before What was the socret of the duty," and the strong mystical Shute novel? Brains and story, tinge, evident in his inter novels, Always active always on the deepened, move, often, since the war, in He joined the RNVR as a his private aircraft, ideas came scientific "backroom boy," and You sit in the bottom half of
readily to him.
a superb one,, in the Second this dome, see, with silhouettes
His Inventions War, skyline atting
Many of them were astound World you off from the top half, which
ing forecasts, as, for example, were many sad fantasties herri- a hefty great is really
in his novel "No Highway," flame-throwers, remote control which foretold alreret disasters urrerat, a terrible rocket spear spherical screen where in a
Funny man. This 229 turned this minute o chap riding a giant informed among us what was
metal fatigue, He fred from the air that whom it into So we popped
will show Jou а
out to be Miss Dars's number in
took an idea, mada a bluo, há a submarine thrashed about aluminium
to pass the glad the waxworks next door. dome for 306 days, projecior
I told the bright little print, realistic and accurate repro- going on and
fitted to it his rather laside. and I must say it was all justly duction of the star-studded sky
word now and again to another After this, with Venus out of lad he had made a mistake, stock characters, brave men, chap sitting at what looks like town and exciting. Good for the educa- of the night. And the day na
Diane Dors being My friend'a real name, usually engineers or pilots like an organ console. I think his closely cavaliered by a well it it comes to that.
Mr said, was Jak the Ripper, himself, and strong, decent nome was Charlie, or maybe Kenneth More and a Mr Peter was Bert.
tion too.
I sat next to a 12-year-old expert named Brien Peters, on holiday from school at Epsom and he helped me no end when the official narrator got to the tricky blts about light-years and galaxies. As Brian pointed out. it was all rather simple, once you got the hang of li
"He thought Dr. Crippan was a much bigger man."
Into orbit
Stars mil over the place, millions of 'em, The cosmos. The lot. And this £70,000 projec- for which looks like a cross be- iween an outer-space
monster
Anyway and a mechanical ereb with the mentioned that
when Mr Clarke eramp never misses a trick.
he wonted the mou to slip round the earth. bullon ond that Young Brian told me it had Bert pressed a
its stuff. 29,000
230 crazy old moon did individual parts, However for those who may ball bearings, and nearly
the neighbourhood of 200 rising in
Marble Arch and last seen. 645- overlooked optical, projectors. Inadvertently, have these matters. perhaps I should
appearing over Lols Road power mention that a planetarium is a They had a bearded mathe- station.
Thanks to Mr Clarke and hin orrery matician from Brasenose named
1970- Leonard Clarke to tell the less projector, we crammed a year
girl
super-duper kind of (after the fourth earl,
I've changed-and so has Britain
London.
PETER USTINOV has changed gear. He is back in Britain for the first time in three years and while he has been away he has changed-and so, he finds, have we.
Since he was last in England he has starred on Broadway, acted in Hollywood, toured America from coast to coast ("more thoroughly than a commercial traveller"), been to Japan, and started making a film in Aus- tralia.
He is finishing that Alm, "The
Iark
By David
Lewin
"It would have been pretty tricky for me if I had been captured during the war. They ten would not only have shot me as You
traitor, but also charged me with failing to register with my call-up group."
Sundowners," In London, and caves little room for anything school, will stay hou until mili....."
and getting in February with his wife Suzanne. else. The same thing happens minutes after lights out.
in the theatre.
were always greeted by, 'Where His three children are at the I don't think I could face w have you been? Better be care ronted Ustinov vlla in Switzer- hang
No I don't ful. The head is prowling about run again. think I'll do very much stage and R's after Ughts out! Now acting the future.
things are much, much easter- What I want 10 do is to and people too.
hotel to talk about the way he new Idea about writing a play feels how.
Bave changed which I'm trying, but most of gear," he said. "Changed gear my writing will be short stories.
Control
I met him at his London write more and more. I've a A letter
all."
"Number 220. replied briefly.
We might have stayed longer, bat Jak got rather huffy when, Let's go," he standing by No. 26. a small boy
gave him
a long, hard look, consulted his catalogue, and told his mother he thought Dr Crip from pen was a much bigger man.
-London Express Service.
Inst Hung Ta
'1 smell decay'
women. Then be dipped into his mould
cold, almost But although a modest man inhumanly dry prove. It dripped the nover thought anything of rhythmically, like absinthe in a his own novels) he was not an Soho bar,
easy subordinate. I happen to It was never "yellow" like mow that many times during absinthe in the raw, or cloudy the war to rid of his valuable like absit in water, for de i mall boots plunging on Shule, so gladously venture. Mi-sub and anti-B bons patrols TOUR MINUTES after the start of a weekend Soccer some, to lusty under his pronte sheht: hit down is for ne
Beile Tale exterior, so Elizabethan,
in 1950 he was living on His women and men haa Hayling
Island, near Ports- blood in their veins, but they mouth, with his wife, a obver had to behave to a Calvinistle and practialtig doctor, and two young daughters, Heather and Shirley. Then Bhute who had. his OW preciso political
Foch borwoon Glamorgan teams Llwynpia and or truly izabe
Llanharan the ball landed on the spiko of a woman spec- No other ball was available tator's umbrella and burar.
so tho match was abandoned.
says
Peter Ustinov
Problemtis of nationality still tend to arise. "Just after I'd arrived in New York I had a letter from the mayor, welcom- "Thero Wes 0 love
sceno a phrase or two in English and beginning, my“ daughter ing me as a new citizen and between Kirk Douglas and Jean says as tho is walking up and porn, and now, seven, monika
and the falling dress.
#
No togas
"the
formula,
proportional vote according to individuaž achlovement-blew up.
Socialist Britain enraged him. Altirugh he was later to retract this hara) judgment most hand- samely, he declared; "I smell decay here, I'm clearing, out.” Of course there Was taxation too to worry about
potrol
!·
Petrol...a pig
The final straw came, núme may, over a row because his application as a dollar sztner for a measly 20 gallons of Was at first refused, Some way, however, that it was because Shota Had’kis private mpls sloughtered for the family and was then told' ho musb forgo the year's bacon ration,
Anyway, on he went in his private, single-engined Proctor to Australla, and the upshot was things always
·Indved fast with Shuto-that he has settled, his family, in ah agrccabio and fairly roomy house near · Melbourne, Boon too ho had a model 300-acro farm there, pigs as before and dairy.
inviting me in read the Oath of between your spine. Changcate He was great “Do you know," he said, "for Allegiance to a gathering of comes oft down to the walet. weather we're haying lately?"" and the film le still not fuisited.
Alm P'm new Americans In Central Park To get them into the right mood
Shule, adored the virity of AUSTRALIA: We went to "One other lesson I have Australia in my writing Bnd In what I You need dizelpline to write the first timu hr a
Engilahman-unless or somewhere.
they were playing a aliort story, and I'm fascinated playing an
Rach one small town way out in the leamed about myself is this: de Aubraila odred the modesty want to do.
and the space of it," you count George IV, but he "I replied, thanking him, but maninoy concerto on the sot. "I think I'm a 3ttle more by the problems.
bush where, there weto 3 never to wear a toga ngáin. Up to pointing out that I was Eritish "I like acting in films, because was German, really,
different nationalitics. I've learned to controlled now!
Have one in Spartacus, and 1 and of the first year, seeing his of Slute. At the bad vfrilly been asked to and was therefore hordly "My agent came in to see me be forthright as well as diplo then you can write as well. But now I've never
a set an Taglishman, and "Pm qualified. The letter I received and asked what was going on.
hazl one in 'Quo Vadis," matie. I used, I suppose, to be when I'm in a play, after
Wife and daughters washing up from the mayor was charming. I told him and he disappeared
"The trouble a toga can bring because bo servants were to be while my exhaustion is so great doing it for an American com- tou diplomatic. I'm down I can't write anything claw as pany In an Australian story He said: 'Ali, well, some other to have a look at Miss Simmons
you! To learn how to handle lite, sitater zig-zagging a
directed by a European,”
time perhaps,""
"It was like a frontier town in one you have to watch women had he offered to come back mountainside in the way I
A mixture of nationalities is nothing new to Ulinow. Be-
"He came back in a minute, the Balkans at the end of the and the way they walk and alt to haland They elected to
atay, bad:ho was happy, muttering, 'Can't think what First World War. waiting for the down, very closely.
This type of attention car Longue of Nation to turn up
He thought he would get Pater, Ustinov, paused for cause his father was a German
her agent was doing to allow and decide which side of the often be misunderstood. When three, nuvels out or Atatralla myselt: I'm now just as scared moment. 1 Raked him about until he beenthe Brillah, Usuney
The glory of Ustinov is his her to appear like that, Now,
You peer at a woman all the ne got six, and would, and of success on I was of fallure. Britain, which is still his home was titled to a German pass global conversation. His beard l'a never let you look ko frontlet they were on,"
timo the situation can grow If I'm acting in a play that has although he lives in Switzerland port until 1930.
Butted at me as be reamed that!?" HIV it up then," he said. around the world.
Sun- tricky.
But unless you were sure, havo, gut abveral more but Onlated here fortunate enough to have been for his overworked heart." You have changed here an "But of course by German law HOLLYWOOD "I war malte TOKYO: “It is disconcerting Ustinov reports for more work brought up to wear a kit there it was a gront hourt. Ha was "It is like two champions at well," he said. "More relaxed with a thing was not posetile. Ing a film, Apartacus with to be naked in a Turkish bath on "Spartacus" in, Hollywood. li nothing video to đơ, Bo, heb great man, whom miilipha of
Laurence Olivier, Jenn Simmons In Tokyo and be massaged By, a To think," he said, "whati, 1 more togas for me." and Kirk Douglas," he said, young girl who has picked up was making the Tiên ban the
talked. That could create wrong Mixture
impressions,
I've also learned this about
a long run I get incrossingly now. NETVOUE.
4
sentila. All their concentration now. When I was here last it for theen, obeh o German Always
Axed on the one match. · It was rather like being in a public a Chemaza.
Global
Now,
"The when
downers"
Our will, sorely mine.
sekvensen Expreza Bersilan),
ぶ