21st October I960.
Dear Victor:
You have been on my conscience as I have not replied to your
last very interesting letter. I have no excuse except that I have
been very busy with one thing and another. It’s good to hear that
you are enjoying yourself and doing all sorts of interesting work.
I wish I could tell you that things here are taking a turn for the
better and that we are leading this community back into sanity and
sound thinking, but I fear that we are trailing behind and playing
very safe indeed in all things, holy and profane. I have little
gossip for you except that most of the ‘sound' staff have been
switched to Clarence Street offices and I hear mingle with seedy
linen ex-tycoons who lament the death of their industry, and with
whom sound broadcasting producers feel a deep sympathy. Donnie
Mason has returned from London in an imaginatively lit-up frame of
mind. He is in Clarence Street, much to his chagrin, also Sam
Bell, John Body and Sam Denton and Uncle Tom Cobley and all...
The Talks Department, which as you know is part of the establishment
is still with the Establishment on a day to day basis. But any day
the axe may fall and my feet will roll along Bedford Street.
Headless and witless and deliriously happy.
To be serious: the kind of questions I want for the Common-
wealth edition of "Your Questions" are the kind of questions which
would interest listeners in Northern Ireland and also the country of
which the questioner is residing. In other words, these Ulster
people have had the advantage of a double social experience, that is,
living in Northern Ireland and also living in a country with a com-
pletely different social background; therefore they should be
conscious of social questions through a double vision as it were.
This may not be very clear, but I think you will get the general
hang of what I mean. Again, questions should be crisp, controversial
to the point, and up to the moment.
