Royal54-04-1829The Snow Goose

The National Broadcasting Company presents Transcribe Solore and Salivier in Theatre Royal. Good evening. Today's play and our last in this series is based on a story which is forever haunting to me by Paul Gallico.

It's of the Second World War and I think it may already be familiar to you. I myself shall play the part of Philip Ryada and tell you Paul Gallico's story, the Snow Goose. The great marsh lies on the Essex coast between the village of Chelmborough and the ancient sex and oyster fishing hamlet of Wickeldro.

It is one of the last of the wild places of England. A low, far-reaching, expensive grass and reeds and half submerged meadowlands ending in the The great saltings and mud flats and tidal pools near the restless sea.

The marsh is desolate, utterly lonely, and made lonely by the calls and cries of the wild fowl that make their homes in the saltings. Wild geese and the gowl, the teal, the virgin, the red shanks and curlews that pick their ways through the tidal pool.

Like a lonely sentinel in the emptiness, there stands the squat white ruin of an abandoned lighthouse close by the mouth of the river Alder. Lately it is served again as an human habitation. It is the home of a man, the hunchback, but a man who creates great beauty, the painter Philip Ryada.

Just a touch more. Hang up with me. Perhaps one more silhouette to carry you over from one to the other like that. Yeah. Bloor. Company? Who the devil can that be? The first visit of another two years.

Wait a minute. Where's that right? Well, who's Heavens? What have you got there, child? Goose? I found it, sir. It's her too. Is it still alive? Yes. Yes, I think so. Come in, child. Come in.