The invisible films of Alan Clarke

23rd January 2013

Why is the work of one of our greatest filmmakers - the director Alan Clarke - all but invisible? This is not a new question. Nor do I have anything original by way of an answer. But the issue is much more

Reprise: Art and artists on pre-war television

22nd January 2013

In another post from the blog's archive (previously published on 17 July 2010) I take a look at the visual arts on BBC Television between 1936 and 1939. I was reminded of this because I am teaching again at the more

From the archive: Il miglior fabbro

16th January 2013

As regulars will know, I occasionally highlight earlier blog posts when they feel newly relevant. My reason today for returning to a 2008 post about the influential documentary maker John Read who died in 2011 is that I am teaching more

#ROLive: our ‘House’

9th January 2013

Hard though it is to believe, it is nearly seventeen years since we went backstage at the Royal Opera House in the BBC fly-on-the-wall series The House. Michael Kaiser, who later became general director of Covent Garden, summed more

A pantomime of errors (in 1947)

21st December 2012

This seasonal post is an edited version of one that I wrote last year for the blog of the research project about theatre plays on British television, Screen Plays. I hope it is sufficiently entertaining to bear repeating here. What more

TVC, the BBC and me

18th December 2012

I was in a kingdom of dreams today - and for the very last time. It was a relatively prosaic - but I must stress most enjoyable - meeting of the Southern Broadcasting History Group that took me once more more

“Time is come round”

23rd November 2012

The Julius Caesar DVD has arrived! The disc includes a new 40-minute documentary Julius Caesar: Behind the Scenes with location footage and interviews with cast and crew. We will be presenting parts of that here over the next month. But more