30th November 2024
John Wyver writes: on this St Andrew’s Day in 1932, the 30-line Television service, which for the three months past had been operated by the BBC, presented an ambitious Scotland-themed variety show. Woolwich-born Helen McKay (real name: Ruby Ellen Northover) sang Scottish songs, as did renowned actually Scottish opera singer William Heughan, and Ernest MacPherson contributed violin solos including ‘Loch Lomond’. But I suspect the highlight was an appearance by Pipers of the Scots Guards, although it’s not entirely clear quite how many turned up.
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29th November 2024
John Wyver writes: OTD, Monday 29 November 1937, from the BBC’s ‘high definition’ Television service… more Shakespeare. Scenes from Cymbeline, broadcast from 3.39pm to 4.24pm, and then again from 9.31pm to 9.55pm, was a presentation of minimally restaged elements of André van Gyseghem‘s production at London’s Embassy Theatre, which had opened 13 days previously. The image above, taken from The Sphere, 11 December 1937, shows Geoffrey Toone as Posthumus and Mario Francelli as Philario.
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28th November 2024
John Wyver writes: on the afternoon of this day in 1931, Saturday 28 November, the National Programme of the BBC’s Sound service broadcast a light music recital in a studio at Savoy Hill given by the Gershom Parkington Quintet and tenor Trevor Watkins. The concert on the radio, via the Daventry transmitter, ran from 3.30pm to 4.45pm, but from the start until 4.06pm it was also broadcast by the Baird company’s 30-line television service.
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27th November 2024
John Wyver writes: OTD in early British television, on 27 November 1938, the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company made its television debut with its production of The Wooing of Anne Hathaway. The tradition of a major drama production each Sunday evening was already well-established, with a mix of classics and respectable contemporary plays suitable for the Sabbath. Transmission was from 9.05pm to 10.45pm.
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26th November 2024
John Wyver writes: A blog post – many months after the last one, and with much to catch up on. I have been prompted to return, at least temporarily, by a kind suggestion from Lawrence Napper on Facebook. Over the past week and more I have been posting on Bluesky On this day (OTD) threads about pre-war television broadcasts which have been researched for my forthcoming book Magic Rays of Light: British Television Between the Wars.
Lawrence suggested that these short threads might work better, and remain accessible longer, as blog posts, and so here we are. I’ll reflect more on Bluesky vs blogging in future posts, but for the moment I’ll just say that these posts, to which I’ll link from social media, will likely often be brief and may seem insubstantial. I hope, however, that collectively they add up to something – and of course that they will prompt interest in the eventual publication in late 2025 of my book. That said, to mark the return here, today’s post is a kind of double-header.
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20th June 2024
John Wyver writes: welcome to the fifth Postcard (with two more scheduled) from my and my wife Clare Paterson’s recent mid-west road trip, in this case embracing our visits, for two nights in each city, to Indianapolis and St Louis. The first four Postcards are here, here, here and here.
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16th June 2024
John Wyver writes: with apologies for the hiatus in delivering these, welcome to the fourth Postcard from the American road trip that my wife Clare Paterson and I recently took across the mid-west. The first three Postcards are here, here and here.
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31st May 2024
John Wyver writes: We are on the road! Having left Chicago, we drove to Fort Wayne and Sidney, Ohio (day one), on to Columbus, Ohio (day two) and then to Columbus, Indiana (day three). Not that it’s been entirely great, although it very much mostly has. First off, we had such a struggle picking up our Avis rental Toyota Rav4 at O’Hare; then there were problems with the hired satnav, which failed to charge in-car. So by mid-afternoon, deep in rural Ohio, we were relying on a paper map that I’d brought with me as a kind of totemic throwback.
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26th May 2024
John Wyver writes: A second missive from the mid-West, following on from Postcard from Chicago, part one. And let me begin with a tale of two campuses (campi?). One morning this past I explored the low-level lay-out of the Illinois Institute of Technology, conceived and begun by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the immediate post-war years. It’s a seductive modern(ist) world distinguished by a number of Mies’ key buildings, including the hugely influential S.R. Crown Hall, 1956, above.
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26th May 2024
John Wyver writes: Although posts of this kind are not directly related to the company’s operations, I occasionally scratch out accounts of my travels and other doings. In this case, my wife Clare and I are now on a long-planned holiday, with first of all a week in Chicago and then a 10-day road trip through the mid-west searching out architecture and art. Were I only a touch more pretentious I might say that, with the song, we have gone “to look for America”. More on that to follow, as there are likely to be four or five Postcards of this kind over the next fortnight or so.
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