Off Finisterre - Horton Giddy

Reading in old copies of The Listener, the BBC wireless magazine, from the 1930s, I found, in the issue for 11 November 1936 (Vol XVI, No 409), a half-page review by Grace Wyndham Goldie, a regular columnist, of a radio play by the splendidly-named Horton Giddy. The drama was entitled ‘Off Finisterre’: and it was a ghost story.

The review begins by praising previous plays by Giddy, entitled ‘In the Shadow’, ‘Congo Landing’, and ‘Mary at Lochleven’. Goldie describes him as ‘that rare and valuable phenomenon, a genuine radio dramatist’, presumably as distinct from stage dramatists or short-story writers who adapted their works for the wireless. Each of the plays listed is good, she says, but more impressive is that each is a vast improvement on the one before, the sign of an increasing ‘mastery of radio technique’. But he is not solemn or pompous: ‘He is an entertainer, a teller of stories which have some thrill or excitement in them’. The first of those listed was about ‘ships waiting for a declaration of war’, the second about ‘an aeroplane crash in the jungle’ and the third about the escape of Mary, Queen of Scots, from a castle.

‘Off Finisterre’, however, is about the spirit of a young bride who died aboard ship as it was in the coastal waters of the title. Each time the vessel passes the same point, a fog seems to descend (not unusual in those parts) and her ghost is seen. Some misfortune always follows. She is seen in the play by ‘an impressionable young poet’. The story, says the reviewer, was ‘gripping and exciting’, and she praises too the production, by Peter Cresswell, which conveyed an ‘atmosphere of eeriness’, with a ‘very skilful handling of background noises, particularly . . . [the] balance of fog-horns and silences’, with the passengers wandering about the fog-bound ship, and their hushed conversations, fading in and out. Also impressive, she says, was the sparing use of the spirit’s voice, and the scene when her husband, returning from the East on the same ship, goes to meet her.

I do not think many radio plays from that period have survived as recordings or even as scripts, so this description of the spectral drama may well be all we have to remember it. Sometimes they might find published form, adapted as plays for amateur theatrical groups, but this does not seem to be the case for ‘Off Finisterre’ or indeed any other play by Giddy. His only publication in The British Library catalogue is a novel, Interval Ashore (1936), about a young naval officer rescuing White Russians from Odessa after the collapse of the Tsarist cause in the Russian Civil War.

Giddy was writing about what he knew because as a young officer, aged 19, he had taken part, as the second-in-command of a motor boat, in a daring raid of August 1919 to sink a Bolshevik battleship and other vessels off the coast of Finland. He was at first presumed killed in action, but had in fact been taken prisoner and was eventually released some months later. Probably therefore he also took part in the Black Sea episode described in his novel, or else knew officers who had.

Osman Cyril Horton Giddy was born on 24 April 1900 to Osman Horton Giddy (1867-1938) and Ruby Margaret Giddy (1876-1921) of Long Ditton, Surrey. His father was a solicitor. He attended Shrewsbury House Preparatory School, Surbiton, until 1912 and went from there to navy colleges until 1916, when he joined HMS Minotaur as a midshipman, and saw action at the Battle of Jutland. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his part in the 1919 action. He served in the navy in the Second World War too, and died on 7 January 1980, when he was living at The Esplanade, Worthing.

As well as his radio plays, Horton Giddy also wrote a few short stories and his stage play, Contraband, with a Ruritanian theme, was made into a 1934 Elstree Studios film, The Luck of A Sailor. Other radio plays, as well as those mentioned in the review, include a crime mystery, ‘My Life With Ernest Rule’, about a poisoner; and ‘Nobby Clark and the Parrot’ (1939), a nautical comedy. He was evidently a fairly prolific professional writer with a vivid imagination and a versatile pen.

‘Off Finisterre’ was first broadcast on 28 October 1936, with a cast of fifteen, and the programme note reads: ‘The entire action of the play takes place on board a liner crossing the Bay of Biscay, on the return voyage from the East.’ The characters include General Sir George Colley and his wife Lady Colley and son Derek, Dr Cameron, the ship’s doctor, a passenger called Ross (who may be the sensitive young poet mentioned), and various crew and stewards, plus a role simply described as ‘A Voice’, presumably the disembodied tones of the ghost. I‘m not sure how they got the sounds of fog-horns in the studio: they may have had recordings, but I like to think they rounded up a few itinerant tuba players to let loose at appropriate intervals.

There was a different performance of the play on Christmas Day 1948, in the Mystery Playhouse series, an interesting example of the association of ghost stories with the midwinter festival. Grace Wyndham Goldie’s keen description of the play and the production (she was not always so impressed by the radio dramas, and did not hesitate to say so) make it seem distinctly a loss if indeed nothing of the work has survived.

MV

Photograph of Horton Giddy: Shrewsbury House Roll of Service.