H. G. Wells and the BBC: A New Direction (original) (raw)
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Introduction: Radio Modernisms
Media History, 2018
This special issue arises from a one-day conference on the topic of 'Radio Modernisms: Features, Cultures and the BBC' that we held on 19 May 2016 at the British Library, with the support of the Communications and Media Research Institute at the University of Westminster. Almost all contributors to this issue gave papers at the conference; others who spoke or who had planned to speak (Hugh Chignell, Henry Mead, Kate Murphy and Paul Wilson) enriched the discussions in welcome ways, and we remain grateful for their contributions. The talk by Paul Wilson, Curator of Radio at the British Library, brought the significant issue of archives-and their preservation, curation and accessibility-centre stage; his championing of the series of public listening events ('Louis MacNeice: Radio Writer and Producer', curated by Amanda Wrigley) across May-June 2016 meant that the conference's papers and discussions were followed by an act of communal listening to, and discussion of, a little-known example of MacNeicean radio. The conference was attended by around fifty participants from richly diverse areas of expertise including practice-based research and the historical study of architecture, broadcasting, classics, drama, imperialism, literature, modernism, musicology, radio, sound, television and transnationalism. The enthusiastic engagement of participants across the day underscored the sense that 'radio modernisms' as an idea represented a productive meeting-point for the exploration of common questions from a broad range of perspectives. This not only indicated a hot interdisciplinary topic but it also mirrored distinctive aspects of the conference's particular focus-the programmes, aesthetics, personnel and creative practices of the BBC Features Department in the middle stretch of the twentieth century. In truth, we did not anticipate that this topic would resonate so widely. The idea for the conference had arisen from a specific desire to engage two scholarly constituencies more closely in dialogue with each other. We had observed with excitement the recent flowering of interest from scholars of English literature in 'literary radio' (for want of definitive terminology). The radio programmes of interest to these scholars either adapt and realise in sound modernist works in print, bring to light the radio writings of canonical and more marginal modernist authors, or are radiogenic creations (often feature programmes) that exploit radio technology in a way that engages with the concerns and aesthetics of literary modernism and modernity itself. But the focus is often concentrated on the text and the writer. The second constituency comprises broadcasting historians in the UK-especially those, like ourselves, who have literary backgrounds and are actively researching the literary cultures and modernist aesthetics of BBC radio in the middle decades of the twentieth century. This constituency is rather diffusely spread across a variety of institutions, research centres and departments (of, for example, communications, cultural studies, education, English literature, modern history, media history, media studies,
In this paper, E C Large’s 1956 novel Dawn in Andromeda is examined, using literary analysis, as a work of public history of science. The novel recounts how God places a pioneer population on a new planet, challenging them to work from nothing to the creation of a ‘seven-valve all-wave superhet wireless’ in a single generation. On a general level, this article presents Dawn in Andromeda as a history of science firmly rooted in the human and material efforts of engineering. As such, it is shown to chime more particularly with the hopeful definitions of science explored by wireless enthusiasts and the first generation of science fiction fans in Britain during the 1930s. However, the optimism of the 1930s is not borne out by the novel; ultimately, Dawn in Andromeda satirises the wireless as a form of corrupted science that did not deliver what the fans had hoped for.
Watson on the Wireless: Desmond MacCarthy and the BBC Radio's 'Miniature Biographies'
The Saturday Review of Literature, 2017, 5, 8-12.
In 1929, the BBC Radio broadcast "Miniature Biographies," a quirky series of six installments that was rooted in the experimental hybrids of fact and fiction associated with the New Biography. Not only did this series include contributions by modern biographers Virginia Woolf and Harold Nicolson, it also featured another member of the Bloomsbury Group, literary critic Desmond MacCarthy, who focused his essay on Dr. John Watson. MacCarthy was a key figure in developing a writing style that Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts later adopted as "The Game" or "Scholarship." These expository investigations treat Holmes and Watson as actual people rather than fictional characters. As a tribute to MacCarthy, I have adopted this style in my paper. MacCarthy's radio essay "Dr. Watson" demonstrates that modern biography was a vibrant topic within the popular culture of the late 1920s. This paper also explores connections between Sherlockian authors and modernist publications, revealing an intriguing intersection between modernist writing and the Sherlockian Game.
Neil Postman\u27s Missing Critique: A Media Ecology Analysis of Early Radio 1920-1935
2011
Radio’s first fifteen years were filled with experiment and innovation, as well as conflicting visions of what broadcasting’s role in society ought to be. But while there was an ongoing debate about radio’s mission (should it be mainly educational or mainly entertaining?), radio’s impact on daily life was undeniable. To cite a few examples, radio was the first mass medium to provide access to current events as they were happening. It allowed people of all races and social classes to hear great orators, newsmakers, and entertainers. Radio not only brought hit songs and famous singers directly into the listener’s home; it also created a new form of intimacy based on imagination -- although the listeners generally had never met the men and women they heard on the air, they felt close to these people and imagined what they must really be like. Radio was a medium that enhanced the importance of the human voice-- vii politicians, preachers, and performers were now judged by their ability ...
Modernism at the Microphone : Radio, Propaganda, and Literary Aesthetics During World War II
2015
Radio was an essential weapon in the war of words between the Allied and Axis powers during World War II; and yet, even if this fact has been firmly established, wartime broadcasting still remains poorly understood. Recently, scholars have taken up broadcasting as a subject of literary, rather than exclusively historical, analysis. Melissa Dinsman's Modernism at the Microphone: Radio, Propaganda, and Literary Aesthetics During World War II offers a recent example of such work, applying literary approaches to texts that have seemed fundamentally "unliterary"propaganda broadcasts. Although some propaganda broadcasts are explicit in their political content, extolling patriotism and national commitments and vilifying the enemy, others are subtler in their approach. Examples of this less overt propaganda include literary broadcasts by prominent writers; radio plays, literary reviews, and readings that seem distant from military struggle, and yet, represent another front in the battle for the hearts and minds of listeners. Dinsman agrees with George Orwell's claim that, "All writing nowadays is propaganda," but follows this insight with important questions about the relationship between propaganda and wartime aesthetics (qtd in 97). Surveying a range of writers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Bertolt