John Wyver writes: On Saturday 24 June 1939, following a day of visits to Lord's for the Test match against the West Indies, viewers could enjoy the evening's 70-minute staging of Edgar Wallace's play Smoky Cell. Producer Michael Barry was more
John Wyver writes: On the afternoon of Thursday 22 June 1939 one of the BBC's mobile control units was stationed at Waterloo while the other was by the Victoria Memorial close to Buckingham Palace. Six weeks or so before more
John Wyver writes: On Monday 21 June 1937, at 3.03pm for just 15 minutes, and then again at 3.42pm for a further 10 minutes, the Television service broadcast a live OB from the Wimbledon Championships for the very first time. more
John Wyver writes: Mid evening on Monday 19 June 1939 AP offered episode 3 of Rough Island Story, a six-part history of Britain with Harold Nicolson and J.F. Horrabin, who we have already encountered in these blog posts as more
John Wyver writes: The afternoon of Friday 18 June 1937 saw television's first incarnation of Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot when George More O'Farrell staged her short play The Wasp's Nest. Entrusted with the role of the Belgian sleuth was more
John Wyver writes: 'Hurrah for Big Bill Campbell!', wrote Listener critic Grace Wyndham Goldie after seeing the singer host the third edition of Western Cabaret on the afternoon of Saturday 17 June 1939. 'What speed! What verve! What vivacityI What more
John Wyver writes: There are notes about pre-war television broadcasts when a historian looking back can only respond with an exclamation of something like 'WTF'. One of those has to be a 12-minute studio talk on the evening of Tuesday more
John Wyver writes: Monday 14 June saw two studio performances of the second part of James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan, following on from the previous Tuesday's opener. The staging was the next recognised television drama landmark after the December 1936 more
John Wyver writes: For the best part of an hour on the afternoon of Monday 13 June 1938, Alexandra Palace offered an OB from Northolt, just over a dozen miles away. The occasion was the running of the Northolt Pony more
John Wyver writes: On the evening of Friday 10 June 1938, studio A at Alexandra Palace hosted artist couple John Piper and Myfanwy Evans presenting A Trip to the Seaside, a short talk about 'things seen during a more