The world's first regular television service started 80 years ago today, when BBC Television began daily transmissions from Alexandra Palace (above is AP's blue plaque). To mark the date, at 9pm tonight BBC Four broadcast Television's Opening Night: How the Box more
Tonight RSC Live from Stratford-upon-Avon broadcasts Gregory Doran's production of King Lear with Antony Sher in the title role. If we can achieve something of what we got in the second camera rehearsal yesterday, then I think it will more
Tonight it's the Last Night of the Proms for me. I know most people celebrated this oddly English and - especially in the current climate - deeply contradictory occasion a month ago. But for me Saturday 8 October is the more
We're absolutely delighted that Robert Hanks has written a review for the October issue of Sight&Sound our DVD box set of 1965 BBC-RSC History plays cycle, The Wars of the Roses. More details of the set, as well as more
I was sorry to learn of the death at the weekend of Brian Rix, whose BBC obituary can be found here. His campaigning for Mencap and other charities has been rightly lauded in the press, and there has been a more
Links as usual to articles that I have found interesting or stimulating over the past seven days. Thanks as ever to those who have pointed me towards some of them, via Twitter and in other ways, and apologies for the absence of appropriate name-checks. • more
We are delighted that our DVD box set of the BBC-RSC co-production The Wars of the Roses has been reprinted and is back on sale both here and on Amazon. Among the dozen or more 5-star Amazon reviews is more
A nation split in two, bitter struggles over national identity and the country's relationship with Europe, factional fighting for control of the ruling party, roiling discontent barely suppressed in the streets... This is England in 2016, perhaps, and most certainly England more
Last week BBC Archive Tweeted a wonderful image (detail above, full picture below) of the mobile television van at Wimbledon in 1937, the first year that BBC Television covered the championships. Inspired by that, and driven by my more
With just over a week until our release of the 1965 BBC-Royal Shakespeare Company production The Wars of the Roses as a 3-disc DVD box set, we are delighted to present here The Making of The Wars of the Roses. more