BRACERS Record Detail for 56063
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Australian Lecture Tour (1950)
Newsclips from Australian newspapers concern BR's row with the Catholic Bishop of Melbourne. Letterhead: Hotel Esplanade, Perth.
On Perth.
On Penralltgoch.
"I am very gloomy about the world. It seems Korea will not lead to a world war, but there remain Formosa, Indo-China, Hongkong, Persia, Turkey, and Finland, not to mention Tito. I don't see how, with America in its present mood, we are to get through the next two years without a clash."
London on the 27th, Wales soon after that.
BR TO ELIZABETH CRAWSHAY-WILLIAMS, 11 AUG. 1950
BRACERS 56063. ALS. McMaster. B&R Hh2020.01
Edited by A.G. Bone. Reviewed by S. Turcon
<letterhead>1
Hotel Esplanade
Perth W.A.
11 August 1950
Dearest Elizabeth2
Enclosed may amuse3 you and Rupert. I am sorry it got torn. Mannix is R.C. Archbishop of Melbourne. I have telegraphed to him4 demanding an apology. I have hopes of a good old row.
This is a pleasant smallish town on a broad estuary but the inhabitants are very Tory and Xtian. I long to be home.
I am most grateful to Rupert for the trouble he is taking about Penralltgoch. I hope it will be possible to buy it. It doesn’t matter much what it costs, as I can take the interest off what I pay Peter. But I must raise £2000 of the purchase price by loan or mortgage.
I am very gloomy about the world. It seems Korea will not lead to a world war, but there remain Formosa, Indo-China, Hongkong, Persia, Turkey, and Finland, not to mention Tito.5 I don’t see how, with America in its present mood, we are to get through the next two years without a clash.
I expect to be in London on the 27th, and I shall hope to come to Wales soon after that.6 Much love to you both.
Yrs aff
B.R
- 1
[document] The letter was edited from the signed original written in BR’s hand on the recto and verso of a single leaf of letterhead from the Hotel Esplanade, Perth.
- 2
[recipient] See BRACERS 56060, n. 2.
- 3
Enclosed may amuse “Reply to Dr. Mannix”, The News, 9 Aug. 1950, p. 2 (12a in Papers 26), in which the Adelaide evening paper quoted BR’s denial that he had been refused entry into the United States or that he had been “thought unworthy to lecture in US universities. On the contrary, I have lectured in about fifty of them. I was barred from only one, the College of the State [sic] of New York, and that is entirely dominated by Catholics. Nobody except Catholics has ever objected to me”. In a telegram received by Nance Dickins on 10 August (RA Rec. Acq. 291e), R.P. Greenish had asked the secretary of the AIIA’s Victoria branch for news clippings from the Melbourne papers about BR’s public spat with the city’s Catholic Archbishop.
- 4
I have telegraphed to him See BRACERS 2132.
- 5
not to mention Tito Acting from a conviction that socialist goals should reflect national characteristics as well as the needs of a global political movement centred in Moscow, Yugoslav Communist leader Josip Broz (alias Tito, 1892–1980) selectively revived his country’s private sector and moved towards a diplomatic posture of non-alignment. This defiance of Stalin, which resulted in Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Soviet-led Cominform in 1948, threatened international strife of a rather different order than any of the East–West flashpoints referenced here by BR.
- 6
I shall hope to come to Wales soon after that Although BR later expressed regret to Elizabeth that “a mass of work” would prevent him from travelling to North Wales before flying to the United States on 22 October (8 Sept. 1950, BRACERS 56066), he evidently relented and ended up spending a long weekend with his friends in Portmeirion from 6–9 October (see BRACERS 56070).