John Wyver writes: The range of plays produced at Alexandra Palace between 1936 and 1939 is truly remarkable. Of the 400 or so stagings, many were of popular potboilers, but there were also numerous classics from the tradition of English more
John Wyver writes: The evening schedule on Friday 10 February 1939 began with ten minutes of the closest that transmissions from Alexandra Palace got to breaking news. First, there was an unannounced 90 seconds of British Movietonenews footage reporting the more
John Wyver writes: Welcome to a new index of the earliest group of my daily posts about an aspect of British television before the Second World War. Listed below are the posts that ran from late November through December. As more
John Wyver writes: the evening of Thursday 9 February 1939 saw a 40-minute edition of Contrasts, which was a catch-all title for juxtapositions of variety artists from differing traditions. This was a particularly eclectic line-up featuring dancers from Java and more
John Wyver writes: The News on Friday 8 February 1935 carried the prediction by Captain A.G.D. West, who headed up the Baird company operations at Crystal Palace, that television would be 'in practically every home within three years.' The more
John Wyver writes: the afternoon of Monday 7 February saw the first presentation of The Three Bears, an original short ballet for the screen by choreographer Joy Newton. This was not, as the News Chronicle claimed, 'the first ballet more
John Wyver writes: The evening of Sunday 5 February 1939 was taken up with a 105-minute version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with John Abbott as Prospero and actor, writer and poet Stephen Haggard as Ariel. Playing Caliban was more
John Wyver writes: 'Oho! Here's another television experiment,' is how Grace Wyndham Goldie began her review of Death at Newtownstewart, first broadcast on the afternoon of Friday 3 February 1939. The critic's top line response was that, 'it failed.' Nonetheless, more
John Wyver writes: On Wednesday 2 February 1938 The Times reported that, 'A television set with a screen about twice the size of that in the standard home receiver was demonstrated by the Marconi-EMI company in London last night.' This more
John Wyver writes: In the depths of winter, on the afternoon of Wednesday 1 February 1939, one of the mobile outside broadcast units made a first visit to Bulls Cross Farm at Waltham Cross, just off the A10 10 miles more