Radio Earl

Since 1923 Government House, Capetown, comfortable home of the Governor General of the Union of South Africa, has been occupied by Queen Mary's amiable younger brother. Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George Cambridge, Earl of Athlone. In 1928 at the earnest request of Prime Minister James Barry Munnik Hertzog, alive to the advantage of near royalty in Capetown, his term was extended for another three years. Last week His Majesty the King-Emperor was graciously pleased to appoint as his brother-in-law's successor George Herbert Hyde Villiers, Earl of Clarendon, his appointment to become effective in 1931.

Unlike royal Brother-in-law Athlone, whose only occupation has been military (in the Boer War he won the D. S. O.; in the World War was twice mentioned in despatches), the Earl of Clarendon is "in trade." As Chairman of the government-owned British Broadcasting Co.* he has a salary of $14,580 a year, four times that of sharp-tongued Mrs. Philip Snowden, one of the B. B. C.'s three governors. Among his Lordship's not inconsiderable possessions are 500 acres of good Hertfordshire and Warwickshire land, an extensive collection of Old Masters (Van Dyck, Sir Peter Lely) and the romantic ruins of Kenilworth Castle, which any U. S. tourist is at liberty to visit on payment of I s.

The Earl of Clarendon is serious in his radio interest. Interviewed last week on his appointment as Governor-General he much preferred to talk about television:

"When it is possible to present a stage play or a national event, such as the Derby, which a family or a small audience in a hall can see, then television will absolutely go like wildfire. The possibilities of the thing are enormous.''

*''The British Broadcasting Company,'' said the B. B. C.'s Director-General, Sir John Reith, recently, "has never attempted to give the public what it wants. It gives the public what it ought to have." What the public "ought to have" on Tuesday, Feb. 4 included: How the Welfare Centres Can Help You, by Dr. Stella Churchill; Leonardo Kemp and his Piccadilly Hotel Orchestra; Modern Poetry, by Victoria Sackville-West; Child Impersonations, by Harry Hemsley; Oxford in the Seventies, by Mrs. Margaret L. Woods; Scientific Research and Clothes, by Professor Leonard Hill.

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