Priest-workers• RADIO. An indication of the wide general interest in the French priest-workers is the fact that Pierre Emmanuel discussed them at length in his "Letter from Paris" (Third Programme, Sunday and Wednesday). He gave a very clear account of their history, of the problems they were intended to combat, and the causes and effects of the recent decisions about them. He also corrected some misstatements that have appeared in the Press. His talk was the most complete presentation of the subject that I have come across anywhere outside this paper, and it is good to know that a wider public has heard the truth about it. The Critics (Sunday, Home, 12.10 p.m.) once again-though even more indirectly than last time-were discussing a Catholic subject. This was the previous Monday's broadcast of "Frankly Speaking," in which Evelyn Waugh had a n sw er ed questions about himself.
I found that I had shared most of their reactions to the broadcast, particularly their view that many of the questions were simply too silly to put -not merely to an eminent
writer but to any person of reasonable intellect and education. For example, one could have nothing but sympathy for the exasperation in Waugh's voice when he replied to repeated idiotic references to "the man in the street" and insisted, of course, that there is no such person. found his elaborate vagueness about the size of his family amusing, but many will certainly have thought it affectation. I liked his being able to state readily that the feast day of his birth was SS. Simon and Jude, and his reply to the question as to how he would like people to remember him when he was dead "In their prayers." One thing sticks in my mind from the rest of the week's comfortable routine of winter programmes interspersed with the commentaries on the Queen's Dominions tour. This is a remark made by the woman announcer introducing the Study in E, Opus 10: No. 3, during the Chopin recital given by Wilhelm Backhaus. She mentioned that a popular sentimental song had been based on it, and, oh, the satisfying scorn she put into the word "sentimental."
Joan Newton