by Field-Marshal Earl Wavell, G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.I.E.

'Books,' said the seventeenth-century divine, Jeremy Collier , 'are a guide in youth and an entertainment in age.' That might be taken as the motto of this new series of Sunday-evening talks. Lord Wavell has been a lover of books throughout his life and has often found them a solace and distraction in moments of anxiety and danger. A few years ago he published an anthology of his favourite poems, Other Men's Flowers, in which he told how he had repeated the words of Francis Thompson's lyric, 'The Hound of Heaven,' on a rough Channel crossing, while under fire, and in pain of body or mind.
In this series it is hoped to present the opinions of a wide variety of speakers on the relationship between living and reading. Next week's speaker is the young author and critic P. H. Newby, and the third speaker will be F. Spencer Chapman, author of The Jungle is Neutral.