This evening Geoffrey Boumphrey is to give the second of his three talks in the present series. He motored about 5,500 miles on the Continent in search of material and brought back over 350 photographs of interesting examples of town-planning, new streets, buildings, and so forth, four of which are reproduced on page 29. He found Vienna very disappointing, but then he says that the standard of life there is lower than anything we have here. The modem Vienna flats that have been so much talked about are not representative, he says, of the best modem work. Rome he was much struck with. Slum clearing going on round the historic portions of the city. Every beautiful vista preserved. Magnificent new streets.
Boumphrey spends five months of the year in his caravan on the Thames in Oxfordshire, and thus, as he remarks, keeps the balance between town life and country life. He designed the interior of his caravan himself; is an expert on cooking, and once wrote a cookery book. His ' Roman Roads ' has just gone into a third edition. He is starting work on his next book 'Town and Country Planning' for publication in the spring.