John Wyver writes: Stage representations of the Great War were rare in the first decade after the Armistice, and it was R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End, which became a major hit after its premiere in late December 1928, that defined the more
John Wyver writes: For just over an hour on the afternoon of Sunday 2 July 1939 OB cameras from Scanner 2 (its counterpart was at Wimbledon) relayed the parade of National Service organisations in Hyde Park. Some 20,000 volunteers marched more
John Wyver writes: Lookers-in on the evening of Saturday 1 July 1939 were treated to a 50-minute anthology of scenes from literature about the law. Compiled by Barbara Nixon and produced by Desmond Davis, this followed on from a more
John Wyver writes: Today's post, as I also note below, is the 195th in this series which I is a kind of extended trail for my forthcoming book from Bloomsbury/BFI, Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in more
John Wyver writes: The magazine show Picture Page was the widely recognised 'hit' of the pre-war Television service from Alexandra Palace. By the summer of 1939 it was mounted twice on Thursdays, in the afternoon and evening, with often little more
John Wyver writes: The afternoon and evening of Monday 28 June 1937 saw one of pre-war television's most innovative performance programmes. Artists who worked regularly in the Alexandra Palace studios often found the resources of time and space frustrating, but more
John Wyver writes: The issue of trade paper Kinematograph Weekly (KW to its regular readers) on Thursday 27 June 1935 carried across two pages a report of an important speech made by Captain A.G.D. West about television to the Cinematograph more
John Wyver writes: At twenty-past-four on Monday 26 June 1939, just two months before war was declared, Grace Wyndham Goldie showed her green ticket to gain access to Broadcasting House’s Concert Hall (above, in 1932, soon after its opening). The more
John Wyver writes: At 11.30am on the morning of Friday 24 June 1938, television's cameras were at Lord's for an hour of the second Test Match between England and Australia. Coverage 'by kind permission of the MCC' featured commentary more
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