30th December 2024
John Wyver writes: The conventional forms of conventional politics on television are absent from the pre-war Alexandra Palace service. There was no television news, and Panorama, the first regular current affairs magazine show would not debut until 1953. But there were the newsreels, political figures gave bland interviews to appeared on Picture Page, and there were occasional state-of-the-nation talks, including The Pattern of 1936, given on Wednesday 30 December 1936 by Professor John Hilton.
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29th December 2024
John Wyver writes: ‘Are you wondering whether to get a television set or not?,’ critic Grace Wyndham Goldie (above, c. 1937) asked in her Listener review-of-the-year column dated Thursday 29 December 1938. ‘Then let me assure you,’ she continued, ‘that plays are staggeringly successful on the television.’ Taking off from Wyndham Goldie’s round-up, I intend with this post to (start to) celebrate her rich and remarkable writings about pre-war television. Towards the end, I also want to share a mystery and to ask for help in solving it.
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28th December 2024
John Wyver writes: the fourth reprise selection, presented in chronological order, for my blog posts over the past month highlighting some of the research for my forthcoming book about British television between the war, Magic Rays of Light. The first is here, the second here, and yesterday’s is here; normal service will be reszumed tomorrow.
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27th December 2024
John Wyver writes: here’s the third holiday round-up of blog posts from the past month that I have written as preparation for the publication of my book, Magic Rays of Light: British Television between the Wars. The first collection is here, the second here, and one more will follow on Saturday, before normal service is resumed on Sunday.
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26th December 2024
John Wyver writes: here’s a second holiday round-up of blog posts from the past month that I have written as preparation for the publication of my book, Magic Rays of Light: British Television between the Wars. The first collection is here, and two further ones will follow on Friday and Saturday, before normal service is resumed on Sunday.
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25th December 2024
John Wyver writes: for a month now, I have been writing more or less daily blog posts about pre-war British television, linking each one to a programme or event that took place on the same in one of the years between 1928 and 1938 (although we’ll get to 1939 soon).
These come from fragments of my research towards my forthcoming book, Magic Rays of Light: British Television between the Wars. For the next four holiday days, I thought we’d take a break and, for those who missed them, offer up the collected links again, this time in chronological order. On some of the posts I’ve also added additional information in the Comments.
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24th December 2024
John Wyver writes: for whatever reason, pre-war television on Christmas Eve was largely unremarkable, although the Baird Company’s 30-line broadcast on 24 December 1931 appears to have been the first to be described in the billings as ‘A Christmas programme’.
Frustratingly, the January 1932 issue of Television (the masthead of which is above) contains no mention of the transmission, and so we have no sense of the mixed bill delivered by Nat Lewis as Joey the Clown, pantomime cartoons drawn by Rupert Harvey (who would become a regular contributor), and Eve Fulton and Varna Glendstrom as Columbine and Harlequin.
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23rd December 2024
John Wyver writes: spoiled for the eve of Christmas Eve choice today, I think we might attempt a double-header, celebrating Polite Wine Drinking (above) on this day in 1937, and then The Director of Television in the Witness Box, shown on Friday 23 December 1938. The former was a component of Alexandra Palace’s aspirational lifestyle propgramming that also featured bridge, ballroom dancing and tennis lessons. The format was simplicity itself: sat at a dinner table chef Marcel Boulestin mansplained wine in an off-the-cuff manner to Nesta Sawyer.
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22nd December 2024
John Wyver writes: Welcome to a selection of articles and more that have especially engaged me over the past week and more. I hope the coming week is a good one for all – Happy Holidays!
• Sleeping women: because it is content is so graphic and disturbing, I hesitated, although only for a moment, over whether to include Sophie Smith’s LRB essay focussed on Gisèle Pelicot [£, limited free access]. Concerned with both the trial and its far wider resonances, this is easily among the most powerful and essential prose that I’ve read this year.
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22nd December 2024
John Wyver writes: the afternoon of Tuesday 22 December 1936 saw a 14-minute lecture by Yarrow Research Professor to the Royal Society G.I. Taylor (above) about the stabilisation of ships and why they roll in a rough sea. This was the first televised Royal Institution lecture for children, a television tradition that continues this year with three lectures by Chris van Tulleken on BBC Four and Youtube.
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