' The Brave Tin Soldier'
A story by HANS ANDERSEN , adapted and told by NORAH HOLLOWAY
Songs by JAMES DOHERTY (baritone)
'Up the Caledonian Canal', a talk by DOUGLAS BERWICK
VICTOR Hely-Hutchinson (pianoforte)
PROBABLY no name is better known to children than that of Hans Andersen. His boyhood was no fairy tale. His father was a young shoemaker who struggled against ill-health at Odense, in Funen, over a hundred years ago, and the family lived and slept in one room. When Hans was eleven his father died and the imaginative little boy was left to his own devices. He built himself a toy theatre and made clothes for his puppets, and read all the plays that he could borrow. When he was only fourteen he went to Copen- hagen and tried to get a job as an opera singer. He nearly starved. He took to writing and for years had very little success. But his Fairy Tales made him famous in his lifetime and you are to hear one of the best of them this afternoon.