Mimeographed Typescript of 'Stanley Morison: 1889-1967. A Radio Portrait. Compiled by Nicholas [sic] Barker and Douglas Cleverdon.' Transmitted on the BBC Third Programme.

Author: 
Nicolas Barker and Douglas Cleverdon [Stanley Morison; Tom Burns, John Carter, Arthur Crook, Brooke Crutchley, Sir Francis Meynell, Graham Pollard, Janet & Reynolds Stone, Beatrice Warde]
Publication details: 
[BBC Third Programme, London.] Recorded on 24 January 1969. Transmitted on 2 February and 6 March 1969.
£280.00
SKU: 13556

[1] + 23pp., foolscap 8vo. On 24 leaves attached in one corner by a metal stud. The title page carries the reference TM144D, and states that the producer was Cleverdon, and gives times of transmission, rehearsal and recording, with 'R.P. REF. NO.' and the details of the secretary who typed out the document. The piece was narrated by Barker, with the 'Speakers' are named as Burns, Carter, Crook, Crutchley, Meynell, Pollard, the Stones and Warde. This document, apparently unpublished, is the official transcript of an extremely entertaining and reavealing programme, filled with valuable reminiscences, of which the following gives a taster: '14. JANET STONE: (TAPE) | He used to talk about his extraordinary youth, his upbringing - that was fantastic. His mother must have been remarkable, becauses there he was, totally working class youth, with a father who, I think, physically resembled him, but he despised from the very bottom of his heart, who was a drunk, gin drunk. And the stories of how he used to come home dead drunk and how Morison put him to bed - the anguish of it all, and then finally how he had the gruelling business of going round to identify him in the Salvation Army home when he died. And how his mtoher kept this little shop, and how she held them together, kept them going. | 15. BARKER: | Morison also talked to Graham Pollard, the bibliographer, who shared his early political views. | 16. GRAHAM POLLARD: (TAPE) | He told me over many dinner tables, and over the first opening of oysters on every 1st of September at Whitstable, a great deal of the history of his life. Mrs. Morison, his mother, was a great adherent of Thomas Paine, and the young Morison was brought up very much in a dogmatic free thought atmosphere. After he left school, he went to work for the British and Foreign Bible Society as a clerk. In his spare time he, to use his own phrase, hung round the Jesuits in Farm Street, and they taught him Latin, and in due course he joined the Roman Church.'