The King and the Cotswold Shepherd

Ninety years ago on Christmas Day 1934, King George V was at Sandringham House preparing to make his broadcast to Britain and the Empire. Just before three o’clock his message was introduced not by a BBC announcer or the director-general Sir John Reith, but by a Cotswold shepherd by the name of Walton Handy.

The King had delivered his first Christmas Day message in 1932 in a broadcast heard not just in the UK on the National and Regional Programmes but around the world on the recently opened Empire Service (now the World Service). That Royal Message to the Empire was preceded by an hour of ‘greetings to and from British citizens wherever they may be’ in a feature called All the World Over. This format was repeated in 1933 in a programme titled Absent Friends, with listeners advised that ‘this broadcast will be considerably more interesting if they have an atlas ready before it begins.’ 

For Christmas Day 1935 producer Lawrence Gilliam devised Empire Exchange. But there was a radical departure from the previous round-ups  in which items from overseas were from ‘anonymous broadcasting or Government officials’, This time ‘the sound pictures or informal messages’ were from ‘ordinary individuals or commentaries describing events actually in progress at the time of the broadcast’.

The Ilmington locals that took part in the Christmas Day broadcast.
Walton Handy is pictured with his shepherd's crook and dog Sam.
Standing beside him is Spenser Flower.
(Credit: Ilmington Images)

For Empire Exchange the programme started at 1.55 with the bells of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, followed by bells from Bombay, Wellington, Ottawa, Armagh and then St Paul’s. At 2.00 after the Big Ben chimes there was the technical challenge of link-ups starting with Mr A Patterson, a superintendent of the milk supply in Wellington, New Zealand followed by Canada, Australia, India, some Chelsea pensioners, Ireland, South Africa, Glasgow, Southern Rhodesia and Liverpool. After a final port of call, to a Xhosa settlement in South Africa, attention swung to ‘a quiet village in the heart of England – to the Manor House of Ilmington, Warwickshire.

What was to happen next was previewed in the local Stratford-upon-Avon Herald (21 December 1934):

A great compliment has been paid to Ilmington—and Warwickshire—by reason of the fact that the village is to take part in the Empire broadcast on Christmas Day. It is the only English place to be so honoured in a broadcast which the BBC estimate will be heard by several hundred million people. The Ilmington programme is intended to provide a peaceful English background for the King's speech after the necessarily disjointed items from the various parts of the Empire. The arrangements have been entrusted to Mr. Spenser Flower, who, as our readers will recollect, scored an undoubted success on the occasion of Ilmington’s first broadcast in the early part of the year. The broadcast from Ilmington will open with some introductory remarks and messages to the Empire, after which an old Christmas carol will be sung. Mr. Spenser Flower will then introduce an old shepherd (Mr. Walton Handy), who will speak. Then will come an old harvest song, after which Ilmington, representing the Empire, will send a loyal message to the King. The King will then speak, and immediately afterwards Ilmington will sing the first three lines of an Empire National Anthem, which will be taken up in turn (three lines each) by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, &c., the finale being sung by a full choir in London. This is a wonderful technical feat which must be a source of great worry to the BBC engineers responsible for the timing. The Ilmington broadcast will occupy only six or seven minutes. Special lines have been laid and apparatus installed at the Old Tithe Barn at Ilmington Manor, from which the broadcast will be given.

Sure enough, just before 3pm Walton Handy’s voice was heard across the Empire as he proclaimed “in the name of Ilmington, Merry Christmas to you all. And in the name of the Empire, God bless our gracious King”’ The King’s broadcast followed immediately without a further announcement. Here's that part of Empire Exchange:

Major Spenser Flower (a member of the Stratford-based Flowers brewing family) was the Squire of Ilmington Manor. Writing to the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald he seemed well pleased with the day’s events:

May I ask you to extend to me the courtesy of your columns to express my gratitude to everyone of my Christmas Day Empire Broadcasting party for the wonderful help they gave me in a not too easy undertaking. To get simplicity into a programme is not necessarily simple. I could not have made a success of this item in the Empire broadcast without a good deal of rehearsal and the loyal co-operation of the party. Of many kind and congratulatory messages I have received is one from the London BBC, in which they ask me to convey ‘their heartfelt thanks to all for a truly magnificent programme.’ I have received a telegram from as far away as New Zealand, where we were apparently very clearly heard. Mr. Walton Handy has rightly and deservedly received widespread notice, and I am deeply grateful to him; but the minor members of the party, viz., the bell-ringers and the carol singers, also contributed to the success of the programme. The following are their names :— Mrs. Bessie Faulkner, Miss Gwennie Smith, Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Freeman, Mrs. Robotham, Mr. George Hands, Mr. Venables, Mr. Cook, Mr. Cook, Jr., Mr. Boswell, and Mr. Mayo. The actual arrangements were a little nerve racking, as, owing to the Empire programme running late, cuts had to be made up to the last moment, including a complete carol.— Yours, &c.,

Why was Ilmington chosen by the BBC for that Empire Exchange? As that first newspaper article says this wasn’t the first broadcast from the village that year, so it is possible that the technical issues of broadcasting from that location and the availability of the Manor House were addressed in that earlier transmission. It also seems likely that Flower himself may have been influential in negotiating the return visit. Aside from his brewing interests he was an amateur actor, public speaker, Rotarian, president of the local Conservative Association, governor of the Stratford-upon-Avon Memorial Theatre, an electrical engineer and member of the I.E.E.   

Sam Bennett pictured in the Radio Times
for the Ilmington Meets the Microphone 
programme

That earlier broadcast was Ilmington Meets the Microphone heard on the Midland Regional Programme on 2 June. It was part of a series intended to give a glimpse into the life of villagers in various parts of the country. Acting as compère was the Squire himself Spenser Flower with ‘local colour’ provided by villagers. Those locals included Samuel Bennett – who performed in his attire of smock, bells, ribbon-trimmed hat and white breeches – who’s ‘fiddling, singing or recounting numerous anecdotes...provided rare entertainment”. There was singing from the duet of Mrs Bennett and Mrs Faulkner and the Terry family of hand-bell ringers.

The Radio Times billing set the scene: 

The village of Ilmington lies to the west of the Stratford-Oxford main road. Ilmington is in Warwickshire. An attempt was recently made to have it transferred from Warwickshire to Gloucestershire. The story goes that at the height of the controversy, a resident was asked which he preferred, and plumped for Warwickshire ' because it's so mortal cold on top of they Glahstersheer hills '. It has an interesting old church, and fine old manor-house. Simon de Montfort , who was killed at the Battle of Evesham, lived there; several of the de Montforts were Rectors. The manor-house is now the residence of Mr. Spenser Flower, who compères this village feature. Inhabitants will describe the life of the village, and the talk will be broken up with music and snatches of song.

Back to that 1934 Christmas Day transmission, for behind the picture of bucolic charm trouble was brewing (no pun intended). What the above reports don’t mention is that the handover to the King was originally supposed to have been performed by the village’s oldest inhabitant, 95 year old Richard Long. But, as the Daily Express reported three days after the broadcast, Long had been dropped because his photograph had appeared in the newspaper before Christmas (see article above). Spenser Flower is quoted as saying that the ban was imposed on the instructions of the BBC ‘as an undertaking was said to have been given on behalf of the villagers that no detail of the broadcast would be divulged.’ However, the BBC stated that Mr Long had been unable to broadcast as he was ‘bed-ridden’. There was further village unrest as Sam Bennett, already something of a local celebrity and described in the report as the local ‘fruiterer, bramble merchant and fiddler’ [Note 1] was also excluded and wrote to Flower “It was my broadcasting party, and you threw me out”, to which the Squire replied “If you want a fight, I can fight too”. There are no reports of aggro on the village green so presumably some kind of peace was restored.   

Walton Handy and Sam pictured in 1940

There is, however, a heart-warming postscript to this story. In his Christmas Day message Walton Handy had mentioned his brother Josh who’d emigrated to New Zealand in 1907. He asked that if his brother happened to be listening to write to him as he’d not heard from him for many years and had lost his address.  By the following February Walton had that letter from Josh in Papakura, Auckland. The Daily News reported: “We were sitting round the radio,” wrote Josh, “as we knew Ilmington was going to broadcast, but never dreamed it was you. When you began I said to my wife, ‘That’s our Walt,’ but she ridiculed me. As you went on it proved I was right. To hear you 12,000 miles away gave me the biggest thrill of my life.”

The story doesn’t end there. On Christmas Day 1939 Laurence Gilliam was yet again charged with producing the pre-Royal message programme The Empire’s Greeting and billed in the Radio Times under Christmas in the British Isles is ‘a Shepherd in the Cotswolds’. Yes, it’s our old friend Walton Handy who yet again took the honour of greeting the King, this time George VI. Such was Walton’s fame that theatre impresario George Black offered him an engagement to appear at a London music hall, an invitation that he declined. Walton Handy died in January 1951 aged 81.

The story of the 1934 broadcast from Ilmington was told in a 2020 drama Voices Out of the Air produced by the Stratford-based Run Home Productions and broadcast on BBC CWR on 23 December 2020. Written by Mark Carey it tells the story through the eyes of a young radio engineer and some of the scenes were recorded at Ilmington Manor and St Mary’s Church. You can read about this drama on Run Home website and hear the full recording here.

Note 1: Supposedly his notepaper was headed ‘Badger Killer and Bramble Merchant’. His expertise in folk music and dance meant he was already well known not just in the UK but also in the States. In 1928 he accepted an invitation from Henry Ford, no less, to visit the USA. Bennett was also a parish councillor.

Note 2: There were three BBC broadcasts from Ilmington in 1934. With the equipment already in place for the Christmas Day programme The Burford-based Westhall Singers were on air from the Tithe Barn at the Manor House for part of Carol Contrasts on the Midland Regional service on Christmas Eve.    

Note 3: Richard Long died in October 1935 aged 97. Spenser Flower died just a week after the declaration of World War II on 12 September 1939, He was 62. Sam Bennett enjoyed considerable success as a fiddle player even appearing on In Town Tonight. He died in February 1951 aged 86. A programme about his life was broadcast in the Midland region on 15 February 1952. Ilmington Manor remains in the Flower family and the gardens are regularly open to the public. The bells of St Mary’s church can be heard on BBC Sounds if you search under Bells on Sunday. 

Coronation Day Across the World

The crowning of King Charles III and Queen Camilla this weekend will only be the third time that a Coronation has been broadcast.

The first, on 12 May 1937, was for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. It was, according to Engineer in Charge of Outside Broadcasts Robert Wood, “the most complicated broadcast the BBC had ever attempted”. Two control rooms were set up, one at Westminster Abbey for the National Programme and Empire Service, and one at Middlesex Guildhall for all the foreign commentators. The sound from 58 microphones – 11 along the route for commentators, crowd noises and music, 15 for overseas use and 32 in the Abbey. 

BBC radio commentary was provided for the procession to and from Westminster Abbey by the team of John Snagge, Howard Marshall, George Blake,  A.W. Dobbin, Michael Standing , Harold Abrahams and Thomas Woodrooffe. As Snagge would later recall: “All the commentators were as nervous as kittens, because there was no rehearsal, but we came away with a feeling the broadcast had been pretty well done, under the circumstances”. There was no commentary during the actual service though microphones were installed in the Abbey to pick up the speech and music. The BBC’s Director of Religion, the Rev Frederick Iremonger, was on hand to read and explain ‘the rubrics’. For the Empire Service broadcast additional shortwave transmitters were installed at Daventry to ensure coverage.

This was also the first televised Coronation so for any of the 10,000 or so people in the London area with access to one of the new-fangled television receivers three cameras were on hand to transmit pictures of the procession near Hyde Park Corner. Permission to install a further three cameras inside Westminster Abbey had been refused.  Providing the tv commentary was Freddie Grisewood.     

The BBC radio coverage of the 1937 Coronation was issued on 78 rpm discs and recordings of the ceremony are online. Shortwave recordings of the full day’s coverage as relayed by NBC in the States are also possibly online somewhere, though I’ve failed to locate them. So I’m grateful to Sandy Finlayson who kindly sent me some audio files five years ago. This sequence is what was broadcast before and during the procession to Westminster Abbey. Note that none of the ‘observers’ are actually named though John Snagge is immediately recognisable. Making the opening ‘This is London’ announcement is Stuart Hibberd. As the BBC was also sending sound output to the Office of Works loudspeakers along the processional route, listen out at 12 minutes for in instruction to turn down the loudspeakers near the Abbey annexe as “they’re causing some interference”.

For the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 the radio and television coverage was a major logistical exercise. In May 2013 I wrote about the domestic radio coverage so in this post I’m dipping into the pages of London Calling to see what listeners around the world heard.

Programmes for Coronation Day, 2 June 1953

Programmes for 3 June 1953

At this time the General Overseas Service relied quite heavily on rebroadcasting programmes already heard on the Home Service or Light Programme. So on Coronation Day we inevitably have the same coverage of the procession, the crowning service and the RAF fly past, the speeches by Winston Churchill and the Queen and the fireworks.  

The Director of External Broadcasting John Clark
had his own personal memories of the 1937 Coronation

London Calling provides a list of the large commentary team that includes sports commentators, former war correspondents and some Commonwealth radio guest broadcasters.  Whilst Richard Dimbleby was the senior television commentator, on the wireless it was John Snagge, by now a veteran of royal occasions. With John at Westminster Abbey were Howard Marshall, Audrey Russell and Ted Briggs. Near Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial were Jean Metcalfe, Wynford Vaughan Thomas, William Richardson and the splendidly-named Australian broadcaster Talbot Duckmanston. Others on team were Raymond Baxter, Rex Alston, David Lloyd James, Alun Williams, Frank Gillard, Tom Fleming, Charles Gardner, Henry Riddell and John Arlott.   

Aside from the coverage of the Coronation itself the Features Department, working with News and OB, made two major contributions. Long Live the Queen! was a ‘radio pageant’ linked by Robert Donat’s narration and the music of William Alwyn. The programme was “a series of close-ups of men and women of many lands, putting into words their feelings, and the feelings of those for whom they speak, about the Queen”.

Coronation Day Across the World was an ambitious live programme – with some pre-recorded elements – described as “using all the facilities of short-wave radio, (to) build up a living, instantaneous sound-picture of the world’s rejoicing on Coronation Day”.  It was similar in scope to the hour-long features that had preceded the King’s Christmas Day speech for the previous decade.

Here’s Coronation Day Across the World which was not without the odd technical hitch. Four minutes in commentary passes to Wynford Vaughan Thomas outside Buckingham Palace but evidently although he’d heard his cue at the time he was unable to secure his position on the Victoria Memorial so large was the crowd.

At intervals during the day on the General Overseas Service are extracts from the Commonwealth Gala which had been heard on the Light Programme on the Sunday evening and featured artists from Britain and the Commonwealth. Those on the bill included Elsie and Doris Waters, Dick Bentley, Bernard Braden, Hutch, Ted Kavanagh, Gladys Young and Cecily Courtneidge. Dick Bentley was also on Take It From Here which was also heard over on the Light Programme.

London Calling provided a couple of pages of wavelength information, one listing the usual wavelengths for the majority of the week’s programmes, the second showing all the details for the Coronation broadcasts on 2 June. These included all the wavelengths specifically directed the different regions or countries as well as those which may be heard under favourable conditions, designated ‘secondary coverage’. Listeners were also advised that many other organisations were planning to re-broadcast the BBC transmissions.      

Staying with royal events a little longer last year I posted pages from the June 1977 issue of London Calling to mark the Queen’s Silver Jubilee. Again thanks to Sandy Finlayson I now have copies of some of the World Service programmes featured in that month. One of the programmes comes from the Theatre of the Air drama stand and is a production of Laurence Housman’s 1934 play about Queen Victoria, Victoria Regina. The play, essentially as series of vignettes about the queen’s life over a sixty year period, had been performed on BBC radio before, but this was the first production in nearly thirty years. In this adaptation directed by John Pitman, Jane Wenham stars as Queen Victoria. The cast includes John Castle as Albert, Lockwood West as Gladstone, Betty Bascomb as Mrs Gladstone, Garard Green as Palmerston, Manning Wilson as Melbourne, Brian Haines as Russell and Denis McCarthy as Beaconsfield with Joan Hart as the Narrator.     

This recording of Victoria Regina was made in Canada and taken from a BBC World Service transmission via the now defunct relay station at Sackville, New Brunswick.       

For more on the 1937 Coronation this Transdiffusion articlehas extracts from the 1938 BBC handbook. And for an over view of Coronation broadcasts please listen to the latest podcast from Paul Kerensa’s British Broadcasting Century.     

The White Rose Wedding

In its 100 year history the BBC has provided live radio coverage of twelve British royal family weddings. All but one of those has been held in either London (Westminster Abbey or St Pauls Cathedral) or Windsor (Castle or Guildhall). That exception was the marriage of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Katharine Worsley, held in the summer of 1961 at York’s magnificent Minster.

There have been two royal weddings at York Minster, but you have to go back to ye olde medievale Englande and January 1328 for the first one when the new king Edward III married his young French bride Philippa of Hainault. There was more of a local connection for the 1961 ceremony as Katherine Worsley was born just 20 miles north in the picturesque North Yorkshire village of Hovingham.

The first radio royal wedding was in November 1934 this time for the previous Duke of Kent, Prince George, and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. That ceremony was described by Howard Marshall, one of the BBC’s main commentators on state occasions and sports events, principally cricket, who would go on to be one of the Corporation’s war correspondents.  And that’s where there is an overlap with the broadcaster in this recording as Audrey Russell also served in that wartime team of correspondents. 

So it’s back to the afternoon of Thursday 8 June 1961 on the BBC Light Programme.  A home recording of the radio commentary of the wedding of Prince Edward and Katharine Worsley made by Eric Bartington surfaced last year and was donated to me by Gerad de Roo . Unfortunately it was too late for the 60^th anniversary, but here’s an opportunity to hear it again as broadcast. Audrey Russell is on solo duty for this commentary. However, the old prejudices still persisted as a clergyman greeted her condescendingly with “Ah, Miss Russell, I suppose you’ve come to describe the hats.”  

Audrey Russell – Queen of the Commentators

Audrey Russell was born in Dublin in 1906 but would attend a boarding school near Harrow on the Hill. After going to a French finishing school she re-joined her parents, now living in Mortimer Street in central London, by coincidence just a 5 minute walk from where the new Broadcasting House would be built. With ambitions to join the theatre she took a number of small roles but increasingly found her organisational skills better suited to stage management and eventually worked for the theatre club Group Theatre founded by dancer Rupert Doone.

In the months leading up to the Second World War Audrey joined the Auxiliary Fire Service, a decision that was to change her life.  Following the declaration of war she was stationed at Chiltern Street. Its proximity to Broadcasting House meant that reporters often called in at the station to ask about the fire service’s response to the Blitz. The Station Superintendent was not averse to a little publicity and would welcome BBC staff with half pints of bitter from the nearby Wallace Head pub. On one occasion Audrey was on the beer run when news reporter Robin Duff and actor Terence de Marnay (at the time working on Radio Newsreel) were guests at the station. At Terence’s suggestion she was interviewed on her impressions as a woman in the fire service.  She then in effect became the BBC’s “tame firewoman...often called upon for a story”. One of her recordings heard by Air Commodore Harold Peake so impressed him that he requested she be seconded to the Air Ministry. The upshot was a series of six five-minute talks for the BBC on the work of the WAAF. Though Audrey returned to the fire service after the series it was only a matter of weeks before she was offered a job as a news reporter in the Overseas Service but without the ordeal of facing an Appointments Board.

Working for the Overseas Service from June 1942 she was based at 200 Oxford Street and assigned to Radio Newsreel under its first editor Peter Pooley. In readiness for D-Day  the War Reporting Unit was established  and she would eventually join the team as the first woman to be accredited as a war correspondent. In late 1944 and early 1945 Audrey would send dispatches from Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Norway.

After the war she accepted a post as a news reporter in the newly formed Home News Reporting Unit, again the only woman on the team (she was replaced by Sally Holloway in 1951). Somewhat frustrated by now just getting domestic stories to cover she made a number of unsuccessful  attempts to join the Outside Broadcast department as a commentator. Even Richard Dimbleby saw little chance of this happening – though he was later a great supporter – saying that “there will never be a successful women commentator. Why? Because they haven’t got the stamina”.   

Her break into commentating came about because of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Phillip in November 1947. The OB team thought it might be a good idea to have a woman commentator on the route, if only to describe the wedding dress, so she was loaned out by the News Division for the event.

For the next four years Audrey split her time between news reporting and occasional commentating gigs both at home and abroad. Eventually, encouraged by her fellow commentators, in particular Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, she left the BBC in April 1951 so go freelance and secured a contract with OB at almost double her old salary. Within a year she was covering King George VI’s funeral and a year later was on the team for the Coronation. From then on Audrey – whom colleagues affectionately nicknamed  ‘Tawdry Bustle’ – was one of the first people that BBC radio would call on to cover royal and state events such as royal tours aboard (the first being the long Commonwealth Tour in 1953/54), visits by foreign royalty and leaders and royal weddings. She was also a regular contributor to Woman’s Hour appeared on In Town Tonight and the panel games Twenty Questions  and Two in One.

Her last royal engagement was the coverage of Charles and Diana in 1981. In her 1984 autobiography A Certain Voice she wrote: “I hope I never know I have done my last broadcast. Inevitably remembrance will be poignant when such things are out of reach”. She died five years later in August 1989.

For more on Audrey Russell see the BBC 100 website.

For those readers familiar with Marylebone, the fire station on Chiltern Street is now the 3-star hotel Chiltern Firehouse whilst the Wallace Head is now The Flowerhouse Pub.   

British Royal Wedding Radio Coverage

Some of the post-war ceremonies were also covered live on the BBC General Overseas Service, later the World Service.

29 November 1934 Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark at Westminster Abbey. National Programme.

20 November 1947 Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten at Westminster Abbey. Home Service.

6 May 1960 Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey. Home Service.

8 June 1961 Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, and Katharine Worsley at York Minster. Light Programme.

24 April 1963 Princess Alexandra and Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey. Home Service.

14 November 1973 Princess Anne and Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey. Radio 2 & Radio 4.

29 July 1981 Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral. Radio 2 & Radio 4.

23 July 1986 Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey. Radio 2 & Radio 4.

19 June 1999 Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones at Windsor Castle. Radio 2.

9 April 2005 Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles at Windsor Guildhall. Radio 4 FM.

29 April 2011 Prince William and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. Radio 4 & Radio 5 live.

19 May 2018 Prince Harry and Meghan Markle at Windsor Castle. Radio 4 & Radio 5 live.

Trooping the Colour

 

The annual Trooping of the Colour has been a part of British life for a little over 260 years and from the accession of King George in 1820 it’s been an annual event to mark the Official Birthday of the Sovereign. Radio coverage of the ceremony dates back 95 years to 1927 and it resumed again in 1930 continuing until 1994. Only the war years and cancellations for bad weather (1948) and a national rail strike (1955) stopped the Trooping.

That first broadcast was on 4 June 1927 with the ceremony narrated for BBC radio by the wonderfully named Major James Bourne Seaburne Bourne-May, late of the Coldstream Guards where he saw 20 years service and took part in the ceremony himself on five occasions. Bourne-May continued to commentate on the event for the BBC when it returned to the airwaves in  1930 and throughout the thirties. In fact the BBC had intended to broadcast the 1926 Trooping but it was cancelled due to the General Strike.    

When it returned after the war in 1947 Wynford Vaughan-Thomas commentated. In 1949 and 1950 Brian Johnston was at the microphone and from 1951 to 1960 the master himself Richard Dimbleby. The post-war radio coverage, usually midweek or on Saturdays – it didn’t become a Saturday only fixture until 1966 – was on the Light Programme, shifting to the Home Service (later Radio 4) in 1959.

From 1961 to 1981 Robert Hudson (pictured above) was the radio commentator, also taking over the Remembrance Sunday service from the Cenotaph the following year. Preparations for the broadcast took Hudson two weeks and “included visits to the Regiment trooping the colour to the Household Cavalry at Knightsbridge Barracks and to the band rehearsals at Chelsea Barracks. In the course of these I would interview all the key figures in the parade and submit myself to the lavish hospitality of the Officers’ Mess. A Guard’s gin and tonic is quite unlike any other”.

For his final broadcast in 1981 he had amassed “sixteen pages of notes, pasted on cardboard” on an upturned box on the window ledge of his vantage point in the Horse Guards Building. “I plan to give fifty-two separate pieces of commentary during the ninety-minute broadcast. Each will be preceded by a cue-light signal to our engineers in a small room behind. Instantly they lower the volume of the sound behind my voice; a split-second operation”.

When Robert Hudson stepped down the commentary in 1982 and 1983 was provided by former cricketer turned commentator Neil Durden-Smith. The cricket connection was perhaps no coincidence as Hudson had been the producer of Test Match Special for many years. From 1984 to 1990 sports commentator (mainly golf, tennis and skiing) Julian Tutt covered the ceremony. He would go on to provide the Trooping the Colour commentary for BBC television. Finally between 1991 and 1994 it was the turn of Tom Fleming. BBC radio then dropped their coverage, but it continues as a tv event.

For this recording of Robert Hudson’s first commentary on the Trooping of the Colour we go back to 10.55 am on Saturday 10 June 1961 when listeners to the BBC Home Service heard this.

Once again this recording was made by the late Eric Bartington and I extend my thanks to Gerad de Roo who rescued it and passed it to me.    

Silver Jubilee – London Calling

 

In the week leading up to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations I’m taking a trip back to 1977 for the Silver anniversary to look inside the pages of London Calling, the programme magazine of the BBC World Service.

There are a number of special programmes to mark the Silver Jubilee: Orb and Sceptre, an anthology in words and music, Monarchy and the Media with long-time commentator Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, the cinema series Take One with a Jubilee Review hosted by Alexander Walker and a countdown of the Top Twenty of 25 Years with Paul Burnett.  Other programmes would also appear on the domestic services such as the BBC International Festival of Light Music on Radio 2 and My Music – Jubilee Edition on Radio 4.

On the drama pages there’s a lovely quote about the importance of the World Service from actor Richard Burton. Great to see that no matter how famous you are it’s still a thrill to hear your name on the radio, even if he seems to not know when his birthday is. During 1977 over on Radio 4 Burton was the narrator for the historic drama series Vivat Rex.

Wherever I go, I take with me a very powerful transistor radio. I carry it all over the world, and wherever I am, I listen to the BBC World Service. It’s the only truly reliable source of information one gets in the darker places of the world.

I remember once when I was in Marrakech. I tuned into the World Service and heard myself reciting a poem by Dylan Thomas. At the end the BBC announcer said: “That was Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas’s Poem in October about his birthday – and happy birthday to you, Richard Burton, if you’re listening.”

And that was how I discovered it was my own birthday. But I didn’t care about that, it was hearing my name mentioned on the World Service that really pleased me.

I think one of the greatest thrills you can have is to hear your own name on the BBC. And to hear it on the World Service, well, that’s like being knighted.

Arwisgiad Tywysog Cymru

With BBC Parliament re-showing the Investiture of The Prince of Wales from exactly 50 years ago I thought I'd look at how BBC radio covered the event.

Unlike today's royal event coverage we didn't have hours of build-up speculation and talking to the folk in the crowds in Caernarvon, at least not on the radio, BBC television started their programmes at 10.30 am. The afternoon ceremony, lasting a little over two hours, was, perhaps surprisingly, relayed on Radio 3 sandwiched between Test Match Special (with the fifth day of the second England v West Indies Test from Lord's). Commentating on the ceremony itself was the well-known broadcaster and entertainer Alun Williams, with Raymond Baxter describing events in Castle Square.   

Listeners to Radio 4 in Wales could hear commentary in both Welsh and English from Emyr Jenkins, John Darren and T. Glynne Davies. Elsewhere Radio 4 was providing coverage from Wimbledon (it would move over to Radio 2 the following year) as well as updates on the Test Match.

Radio 4 did, however, broadcast a 45-minute edited version of events that evening and, by a stroke of fortune, David Mann has contacted me to say that he still has his recording of that programme. So for those interested to hear the pomp, pageantry and Prince Charles's rather dodgy Welsh accent here it is. Recorded on long wave and missing the opening announcement I think I can safely say this hasn't been heard since.

The television coverage was in the safe hands of Cliff Michelmore. who'd taken over the mantle of these big events following the death of Richard Dimbleby. With Cliff were Richard Baker and Emlyn Williams. The BBC1 pictures were in black and white but if you could afford a colour set BBC2 offered a colour version.

ITV were also in Caernarvon that day with renowned broadcaster Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, who'd joined HTV a couple of years before. Wynford, a former BBC commentator and war correspondent, had covered royal events since 1937 when he provided the Welsh commentary of the Coronation of King George VI. Also heard that day were Brian Connell and Richard Burton. Burton was to return to royal duties 12 years later for BBC radio's coverage of the marriage of Charles and Diana.    

With thanks to David Mann.

Coronation Day Radio

It was the first major television event in Britain and changed our viewing habits forever but what of the radio coverage of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II back in the summer of 1953.

“The ceremonial pomp and pageantry of June 2 will furnish a theme for storytellers and balladmakers who are not yet born”, proclaimed the special edition of the Radio Times. “How lucky are we who will be able to tell our children’s children that we had a part in the events of the great day. Thanks to broadcasting, none of us need be denied the opportunity of sharing in them”.

The TV audience was almost double that for radio: of the adult population about 56%, or 20,400,000, peered at those small TV screens whilst 11,700,000 followed the events on the wireless.

In 1953 the BBC offered three radio services: the Home Service, the Light Programme and the Third Programme (though this only broadcast in the evenings). On Coronation Day the Home and Light joined forces from 5.30 a.m. to 5.20 p.m. Before the main event listeners were offered sequences of light music with Music While You Wait, the BBC Scottish Variety Orchestra, Victor Silvester, the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra and Commonwealth Melodies from Peter Yorke and his Orchestra.

Covering the procession and the ceremony were a group of commentators, many of whom would continue to work for the BBC over the next couple of decades or so. At Buckingham Palace was Jean Metcalfe of Family Favourites fame. At the Victoria Memorial were Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, from Australia Talbot Duckmanton and from Trinidad William Richardson. Stationed at Trafalgar Square was Raymond (Tomorrow’s World) Baxter and at Victoria Embankment Rex Alston, best known as a cricket commentator. At Middlesex Guildhall were former wartime reporter and future BBC manager Frank Gillard alongside Tom Fleming who would go on to describe numerous state events for BBC television.  BBC commentator Henry Riddell was positioned at St James’s Palace and Alun Williams at Stanhope Gate.  Announcer David Lloyd James was at Marble Arch and cricket commentator John Arlott at Piccadilly Circus. In the Annexe to Westminster Abbey were Audrey Russell and Canadian Ted Briggs. The service itself was described by Howard Marshall and John Snagge, both of whom had also covered the Coronation of King George VI in 1937.

Following the Coronation the Home Service offered Children’s Hour with David Davis, Henry Hall’s Guest Night, the guest being ‘Our Gracie’, Gillie Potter (with tales of Hogsnorton) and The Kingdom Dances. Over on the Light more music from the Majestic Orchestra, Rhythm is Our Business and the hit comedy Take It From Here.

The Home and Light combined again at 8 p.m. for Long live the Queen narrated by actor Robert Donat with music by William Alwyn. Just before 9 p.m. Sir Winston Churchill spoke to the nation and on the hour the BBC television service joined, in sound only, for the Queen’s message.

Events on the Home Service continued at 9.15 p.m. with Coronation Day Across the World narrated by Leo Genn, John Snagge and David Lloyd James. This programme is being repeated this weekend on BBC Radio 4 Extra.  A performance of resoundingly patriotic music followed in Land of Hope and Glory, Raymond Baxter described the firework display (yes, on the radio!), Rikki Fulton introduced the Show Band Show, a programme, incidentally, produced by Johnnie (Mr Top of the Pops) Stewart. Finally, in an extended day’s broadcasting through until 1 a.m. there was Let the People Dance featuring music from the likes of Geraldo and Jimmy Shand interspersed with commentary “on the street scenes of Coronation night”.

A programme described as “a living, instantaneous sound picture of rejoicings and

celebrations with song and dance, with ceremonial drums and loyal messages,

on a scale as great as anything attempted in the history of broadcasting”.

On the Light Programme there was a performance of the Basil Hood/Edward German comic opera Merrie England  before they re-joined the Home Service.   

Meanwhile over on the Third Programme from 6 p.m. there was music from Kirsten Flagstad, Solomon Cutner, a talk by Sir Llewellyn Woodward, concerts featuring works by Handel produced by the Canadian and Australian broadcasting services and rounding off with Esme Percy and Paul Scofield in Thomas Love Peacock’s Gryll Grange.

The Coronation issue of the Radio Times, with a circulation expected to exceed 9 million copies, made mention of its own special cover with its Eric Fraser illustration. “The coloured cover we have produced has been printed in a novel way: the yellow background was printed by a gravure process on 50-incg reels each of which had to be re-wound twice and cut into four 12 ¼-inch reels before being fed into our presses; the black design was printed over the background in the course of the run”. 

Thumbing through the rest of the RT programme highlights include a new production of The Tempest with John Gielgud as Prospero; on The Forces Show alongside Ted Ray, Jimmy Jewel and Ben Warriss was Betty Driver (aka Corrie’s Betty Turpin)and a gala performance titled Light Up Again in which Brian Reece (PC 49) and Noel Johnson (Dick Barton) introduce the stars of Hi, Gang!, Waterlogged Spa, Riders of the Range, Ignorance is Bliss, Much-Binding-in-the Marsh and Variety Bandbox.  And finally I wonder if As Millions Cheer ever made it to the archives? This hour-long programme was set in a newspaper office on Coronation eve and featured Eric Barker, Peter Ustinov, Alfred Marks, Roy Plomley, Pearl Hackney, Maurice Denham, Stanley Unwin, Graham Startk and Herbert Mostyn (i.e. Frank Muir and Denis Norden).

This weekend there are a number of radio and TV programmes celebrating the 60^th anniversary of the Coronation:

1953: Those Radio Times on Radio 4 Extra (Saturday 9 a.m. and 7 p.m.)

A Royal Gala Programme of Radio Variety on Radio 4 Extra (Sunday 11 a.m. and 7 p.m.)

Coronation Day Across the World on Radio 4 Extra (Sunday 8 p.m.)

The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II a complete re-run of the TV coverage on BBC Parliament (Sunday from 10.10 a.m.)

Coronation Year in Colour on ITV1 (Sunday 5.30 p.m.)

State Opening of Parliament

 

Today’s State Opening of Parliament once again displays al the pomp and majesty in what is essentially a triumph of style over substance. The Queen’s Speech will, no doubt, have been well sign-posted in advance and is unlikely to contain any surprises.

Admittedly we can now be pretty blasé about the whole event but 55 years ago the State Opening was broadcast for the first time, on both radio and television.  The decision to cover the event was not taken lightly. During a Parliamentary debate in July of that year Prime Minister Harold MacMillan was adamant that it was not the start of regular coverage: “I should like to make it clear that the Government regard this ceremony as a State occasion, quite distinct from the day-to-day work of Parliament, and that they have no intention of proposing that facilities for the televising of those day-to-day proceedings should be allowed”.

The Government was also at pains to ensure that the public didn’t think that the Queen was sullying her hands with the dirty world of politics. The speech “is drafted by the cabinet and is a short, factual account of what the Government proposes to do during the coming session of Parliament”, wrote the BBC’s Parliamentary Correspondent Roland Fox. “The fear has often been expressed that this would not be realised by the viewing and listening millions if the speech were to be broadcast ‘live’. When the decision to allow the facilities for the first time was announced in the House of Commons, Mr Gaitskell said there was a possible danger that the sight of Her Majesty reading the speech might be misleading, and he emphasised how important it was that the Crown should not become involved in party politics”.  

That first broadcast of the Procession from Buckingham Palace and the State Opening was on Tuesday 28 October 1958. Explaining the proceedings to BBC viewers was, naturally enough for a Royal event, Richard Dimbleby. Meanwhile radio coverage on the Home Service was described by Audrey Russell from the Victoria Memorial, Wynford Vaughan-Thomas at Westminster Abbey, Raymond Baxter at the Entrance to the Palace of Westminster and David Lloyd James in the House of Lords.

That week’s Radio Times went into some detail not just about the ceremony itself but the engineering problems involved in bringing to the public, with the pictures also been fed to Independent Television.

 

As a broadcasting operation, the Opening of Parliament, for all its richness and splendour, does not compare with the Coronation in complexity and magnitude. It has its own problems, however. The engineers led by Alan Bray and his chief planner John Allport, have had to install and the test the equipment at odd moments when the Law lords were not sitting. Cameras have had to be conjured into positions where they don’t steal seating space for the distinguished gathering.

In the sound radio broadcast, the absence of music, except for fanfares, will thow a heavier load on the commentary.

Not to spoil the splendour and dignity of the Palace of Westminster, the three cameras covering the ceremony in the Upper House will be mounted inconspicuously on platforms built into doorways and galleries. Sound-proof cubicles have been set up for Richard Dimbleby and David Lloyd James, and for the Independent Television commentator.   (The ITA’s commentator was Robin Day).

Pictures are, of course, only half the story. The sound side, like television, will have its specially-built control panel in the Houses of Parliament. Charles Max-Muller, producing for sound, will have with him the veteran engineer R.H. Wood, for the past 22 years responsible for the Royal broadcasts from Sandringham on Christmas Day.

Microphones, though less eye-catching than television cameras, could still jar on the august Chamber. The engineers have tried their hands at camouflage. For instance, the tow microphones carrying the Queen’s Speech are hidden behind twin angels on either side of the Throne and gilded to match their wings.

The BBC TV coverage of the 1958 ceremony has cropped up on the BBC Parliament channel but here’s the Pathé Newsreel of the occasion.