John Wyver writes: In case any of the below is of interest, I thought it might be useful to detail the events I’m involved with over the coming months. It would be very good to see any of you present at any of them. The links in the titles of each element will take you to further details.
• Magic Rays of Light – A Talk for the Art Deco Society: In the evening of 17 March I am giving an online talk about British television of the 1920s and 1930s for the Art Deco Society. This will draw on my research for the recently published Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain, and I’m aiming to provide an accessible and enjoyable overview along with a host of rare illustrations. The header image, of course, is Starlight by Harry Rutherford, a detail of which graves the book’s cover.
• Robert Vas in Context: I am contributing a paper to a one-day symposium on Friday 27 March at Birkbeck, University of London about the great documentary filmmaker Robert Vas. My paper will look at Vas’s films and and the films of Humphrey Jennings, who Vas greatly admired.
More details about this event will go online next week, along with tickets for a rare screening that evening of Vas’s film Nine Days in ’26, about the 1926 General Strike, which Vas made to mark the fiftieth anniversary in 1976. I will also contribute an introduction to the screening, which we believe will be the first time in fifty years that this remarkable 95-minute film has been shown in its entirety.
• British Silent Film Festival Symposium: My paper ‘British television and the end times of silent cinema, 1928-1930’ will be the final offering to this day of exceptional presentations at The Cinema Museum on Friday 10 April. As usual, this annual one day event will feature a range of papers of original research on all areas of film culture in Britain and areas affected by British colonialism before 1930. Tickets are available now for £20, with some concessions.
• The Cultures of Early Television: Looking a little further ahead, I am organising this two-day international conference on 2 and 3 July at the University of Westminster. The event is intended to initiate a transnational dialogue about television in the years before World War Two.
Speakers from Britain, continental Europe and North America will explore the cultural ideas and achievements of the first years of the medium. Central to the programme of presentations and discussions addressed to aspects of television in the United States, France, Germany, Italy, central Europe and the Soviet Union, as well as to the screenings of rare archival material, is the development of intermedial understandings of early television’s close entanglements with the radio, cinema, theatre, dance and visual arts of the first half of the twentieth century.
Thursday 2 and Friday 3 July 2026, Portland Hall, 4-12 Little Titchfield Street, University of Westminster, London W1W 7BY; again, more details and registration will be available very soon, but if you are interested send me an e-mail at [email protected] and I’ll make sure to keep you informed.
John Wyver writes: In this week’s choice of links that have interested and engaged me across the past week I have resolutely set my face against explicit engagements with the hideous politics of the world, although of course they have crept back in in cultural forms. I hope you find something that is useful or diverting.
• Depicting Jesus: an absolutely fascinating History of the BBC web essay by Paul Hayes about the children’s serial Jesus of Nazareth broadcast 70 years ago; the header image shows Hugh Dickson as Nathaniel Bartholomew, Philip Guard as Philip, Michael Bryant as John, Richard Grant as James, Tom Fleming as Jesus and Anthony Jacobs as Judas in a scene from episode five, Jesus the King.
In a way, you’re spoiling us – and we’re grateful. ‘Us’ being the nerdy types fascinated by television’s deep archive. For so long, because of rights restrictions and a general lack of interest, television’s history, beyond select monetisable shows like Doctor Who and Dad’s Army, remained largely inaccessible. But now programmes that I had barely even heard of are popping up on BBC Four and, for shorter or longer periods, on BBC iPlayer.
John Wyver writes: In a previous post I sketched the backstory of the BBC-commissioned opera Mañana, composed by Arthur Benjamin and produced for television in February 1956. Thanks to the seventieth anniversary, a digitally restored version of this transmission was shown on BBC Four and is available on BBC iPlayer for a short time only. Here, I want to offer some thoughts on the production as television; I would love it if someone more qualified than me could write about the music and performances.
John Wyver writes: An inconsequential observation, and as such one that hardly warrants its own post. But I was at Tate Britain this morning, among crowds attracted by the final days of Lee Miller (until 15 February) and the blockbuster Turner& Constable: Rivals and Originals (all day tickets sold by 10.30 or so when I arrived). With such pleasures on offer the curatorial staff have clearly felt that, following a recent presentation of Tate’s major Epsteins, the lofty central Duveen galleries (that’s the south one, above) and central rotunda can be left empty for a while.
Although I have noticed this quirk before, I was especially taken today by the ‘ghost’ shadows on the stone (marble?) paving. Marks made by heavy sculptural installations from the past, these seem to inhabit the floor of the south Duveen gallery in a rather unique way. Something about the surface means that these traces of lost exhibitions persistently resist cleaning away.
John Wyver writes: Late on Sunday night, BBC Four brought to the screen the 1956 BBC production of Arthur Benjamin’s 75-minute opera Mañana. The transmission was 70 years to the day after its television premiere, and the recording is now available for the next 29 days on BBC iPlayer. The resurrection of this from the archives is remarkable, just as is the current availability of the 1953 The Lady from the Sea, and one can only hope it suggests that the schedulers will continue to burrow into the available riches.
Frustratingly (and I’m tempted to add, of course) there is no detailed information available on iPlayer, and not even a still, while on transmission there was only a spare line of presentation voice-over noting the anniversary.
So ahead of thoughts about the production in a post later this week, today I’m sharing something of the backstory to the opera’s production gleaned from Radio Times and other online sources. The drawing above accompanied a feature in the Radio Times issue of 27 January 1956, when the production graced the magazine’s cover.
John Wyver writes: Slightly late posting this today, but offered now in the hope you’ll find it interesting and useful. Asd ever, it’s a miscellany of stuff that I found valuable and engaging over the past seven days. The appropriately snowy image is Claude Monet’s Le train dans le neige. La locomotive, 1875, which I saw on a blisteringly hot day last summer at the Musée Monet Marmottan.
But there’s only one thing to start (and end) with this week:
John Wyver writes: The final screening in the BFI Southbank season linked to the publication of Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain is on Saturday afternoon at 15.00. The oddball programme pairs Elstree Calling, 1930, with the astonishingly eccentric and super-rare Television Follies, 1933. Tickets are still available, and you can book here. Below I’m reproducing the programme note that I have compiled for the event, which provides further details about both films.
