100 Years of Radio Times (Part 2)

 

This week the UK’s oldest listings magazine celebrates its centenary. The Radio Times –‘the official organ of the BBC’ – hit the newsstands on 28 September 1923 listing the programmes for the radio stations in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, Newcastle and Glasgow. 

The centenary issue – which now carries listings for 86 TV channels and 63 radio stations -  includes an article looking at significant events or personalities in the last century linked to some of the more memorable Radio Times covers. Here are Melvyn Bragg on the birth of television, Dan Snow on WWII, Jonathan Dimbleby on the Coronation, David Hepworth on The Beatles, Professor Brain Cox on moon landings, Angela Rippon on Eric & Ernie, Tony Jordan on the shared experience of watching TV, David Dimbleby on the 97 General Election, Mike Gunton on The Blue Planet, Seb Coe on the 2012 Olympics and Simon Schama on the Covid pandemic.   

Following the disagreement with the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of the printing of radio schedules (see previous post) Reith and the BBC were determined to take matters into their own hands. In May 2023 the Board of the BBC minuted that “it was resolved that the General Manager make the appointment of an individual to deal with propaganda publicity and the production of a magazine. ”

John Reith sought a deal with a publisher on the basis of a share of profits and a minimum annual sum guaranteed to the BBC. That deal was with George Newnes Ltd who already published Tit-Bits and it was that magazine’s editor, Leonard Croscombe, who became the first editor of the Radio Times. More accurately he was the first joint editor as an article recently added to the Radio Times Archive website notes the BBC also made their own internal appointment for editor in the person of Herbert Parker.   

Croscombe’s grandson, journalist and broadcaster Justin Webb, writes about him There’s also a nod to the magazine’s colourful third editor, “songwriter, spy, Hollywood screenwriter and more” Eric Maschwitz in an article by Paul Hayes (aka Radio Norfolk’s Questmaster).

Finally Caroline Frost recounts how the Radio Times stills proves indispensible to the National Grid, the police and continuity announcers.   

100 Years of Radio Times (Part 1)

The Radio Times was “launched in a fit of pique”. So says Joe Moran writing for the listing magazine’s 90^th anniversary edition. This week the Radio Times celebrates a full century on the nation’s newsstands. In this post I am dipping into the magazine’s history to look how it marked its 90^th.

In his article Moran continues: “In January 1923, the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association announced that it would be charging the three-month old British Broadcasting Company the standard advertising rates for publishing its radio listings in newspapers. Although the newspapers capitulated the following month, realising that not including broadcasting schedules would affect their circulations, the BBC’s general manager, John Reith, was irritated by their attitude and it gave him an idea.  On 10 September he wrote in his diary: ‘Everything is now in shape for a BBC magazine, and from various alternatives I chose Radio Times for the title.’”

From the 28 September 2013 edition here’s a look at some classic Radio Times covers over the decades.

I’ve written about the Radio Times before back in 2013 considering my own archive of back issues and looking at the first issue in The Bradshaw of Broadcasting.

In the next post a look at some of the pages of the centenary edition. 

Newsbeat

 

Fifty years ago the UK had joined the EEC, the IRA was bombing London, a Cod War with raging with Iceland and mortgage rates were running at 10%. In the midst of this, on 10 September 1973, BBC Radio 1 launched its extended news programme, Newsbeat.   

Newsbeat was, according to network controller Douglas Muggeridge "something I wanted to bring in for some time. We shall not flinch from covering any sort of news story." A cynic will also spot that the BBC’s timing may have also been influenced by other events, the start of independent local radio just a month later.

Airing for 15 minutes twice a day on weekdays at 12.30 pm, during Johnnie Walker’s show, and at 5.30 pm during Radio 1 Club (Rosko’s Round Table on Fridays) Newsbeat extended Radio 1’s news coverage beyond the existing 1 or 2 minute bulletins on the half-hour.      

Mike Chaney, who’d been with the Corporation for 14 years, was drafted in as the programme’s first editor. (1)  He told the press that Newsbeat “will be a new sound on Radio 1 - and, we hope, a fresh approach to radio journalism. Newsbeat will be direct, outspoken, un-solemn and always ready for a laugh!" Mike’s deputy was Colin Adams who’d been at Radio Sheffield and then news editor at Radio Humberside. Both would go onto work on Radio 4’s Today programme, Mike as editor and Colin as deputy editor. (2)  

Newsbeat’s first presenters were Ed Stewart and Laurie Mayer (ex. Radio London) with Ed initially doing four days a week and Laurie one day. Although Ed didn’t have a journalism background he was chosen to make the programme seem part of the network and less of an intrusion.  

Drafted in as news producers were Karolyn Shindler and Roger Gale. Gale had also been at Radio London with Laurie Mayer and had spent some time in the mid sixties bobbing up and down in the Irish Sea working for Radio Caroline North and then Radio Scotland. Was it coincidence that Radio Caroline had also billed its news bulletins as ‘Caroline Newsbeat’?    

Ed continued on Newsbeat until January 1974 by which time Richard Skinner had joined from Radio Solent. Together with John Walmsley (from Radio Brighton) who joined in February 1974, Laurie and Richard presented Newsbeat for the most of the remainder of the decade.

The Newsbeat format remained unchanged for six years by still using Radio 2 announcer/newsreaders to do a straight read of the headlines. That ended in November 1978 just before the wavelength changes and a planned extension to Radio 1’s hours. (3) In the event, due to industrial action, the schedule didn’t change until late January 1979 when an extra 10 minute Newsbeat was added at 9.50 pm. (4) By this time, though still mostly reliant on Radio 2 newsreaders, Newsbeat was providing some Radio 1 bulletins throughout the day and the early evening. (5)  It wasn’t until September 1980 that Radio 1 had totally separate news bulletins read by the Newsbeat team on weekdays. (6) They still shared on weekends until 1984 (anyone have an idea of the exact date?).  

Other voices you’ll have heard presenting Newsbeat or reading bulletins during its first decade include Peter Mayne (from 1978), Stephen Cape (1979),Neil Bennett (1979), John Andrew (1980), Bill Bingham (1980), Andrew Turner (1980),Ian Parkinson (1981), Janet Trewin (1981) and Frank Partridge (1981).

So back to the start on 10 September 1973. The first edition came during Johnnie Walker’s lunchtime show so he, for one, wasn’t happy with having to stop the music for 15 minutes. “Just as I got the rhythm and atmosphere going, it would all stop”. The schedule at that time had Johnnie start at 12 noon, then Newsbeat at 12. 30 followed by another hour and fifteen minutes of Johnnie. At 2 pm it was over to David Hamilton. The BBC seemingly didn’t retain the first edition in their archives. Fortunately the teatime edition on day two, during Radio 1 Club with Alan Freeman did make it into Sound Archives.   

This edition shows the light and shade, the mix of serious and lighter items, that the team was aiming for. So we get the financial pressures on mortgages, the aftermath of the Pisces mini submarine rescue mixed with a lad who got into trouble for having a David Bowie haircut and a champion butty maker. The reporters include Steve Bradshaw (another ex-Radio London recruit), Nick Ross (at the time also reporting for The World at One) and Mike McKay. Newsbeat also relied on reports from BBC local stations so there are contributions by Tony Cartledge (Newcastle), Ernie Brown (Cleveland) and Dennis McCarthy (Nottingham). The newsreader is Peter Latham.

From Radio 1 Vintage here the story of Newsbeat. 

(1) BBC publicity of the time of his appointment to Newsbeat seemed obsessed with Mike Chaney’s offspring stating “he is married with 12 children whose ages range between 20 and 4”. Similarly when he joined Today in 1976 the press release read: “Mike Chaney is married and lives in Dulwich. They have 12 children, 3 from his previous marriage, four by his wife and another 5 by his wife’s previous marriage”.

(2) Another Radio Humberside staff member, Paul Heiney, would also move down to join Newsbeat as a reporter. He too moved onto Today when Mike Chaney left.  

(3) Sheila Tracy was the last Radio 2 newsreader to read the headlines on Newsbeat on Friday 10 November 1978.

(4) The first 9.50 pm edition was Monday 29 January 1979 read by Peter Mayne.

(5) The Newsbeat bulletins at 11.30 am and 4.30 pm allowed whoever was presenting that day to plug the main programme the following hour.

(6) The first separate news bulletin was at 7.30 am on Monday 1 September 1980 read by Andrew Turner. 

Composer of the Week

There are, by my reckoning, eight BBC radio programmes that started in the 1940s that are still on air (see note 1). The second oldest of those Composer of the Week, which started life as This Week’s Composer, was first scheduled on the Home Service on Monday 2 August 1943. It was, according to the BBC “an innovation which proved that lovers of serious music are awake in large numbers as early in the morning as 7.30 a.m.” The first week’s programme featuring Mozart was just a short (only 25 minutes) morning musical interlude. It has now been running for 80 years.   

The running order for that first programme lists the two movements of Mozart’s Violin Sonata No. 27, his Violin Sonata in B flat major and ending with Violin Sonata No. 42 in A flat major. The two latter pieces feature the violin playing of Yehudi Menuhin. Subsequent week’s featured all the greats of classical musical (see note 2).

Like many of the gramophone programmes of that time there was no presenter as such and links were provided on scripts to be read by whichever continuity announcer was on duty that day. This was how the programme ran for the next half century. It was only when the role of the Radio 3 announcer was changed in 1992 that named presenters were associated with the programme.

Post-war, in September 1945, the start time was shifted on two hours to 9.30 am and it remained a mid-morning fixture in the schedules until 1995 when it was shifted to its current midday slot. The only exception to this was in the late 40s (September 1947 to April 1950) when it was “promoted” to an evening slot after the six o’clock news “a much more convenient time for most people than the early morning”.

In the early 1960s the BBC was seeking to utilise the daytime frequencies of the Third Programme for “programmes of serious music” in a service that would be called the Music Programme (note 3). It was also a case of use it or lose it with a BBC committee concluding that “the unused time on the Third Network was a standing invitation for as take-over bid by commercial operators”.

 The Music Programme was phased in during 1964 after much discussion with the Musician’s Union, who objected to an increase in needletime to play more gramophone records, and the rejuvenation of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.  Amongst the programmes transferred over from the Home Service to the Music Programme in December 1964 was This Week’s Composer (note 4). The Music Programme title lingered even when it became Radio 3 in 1967 and was finally dropped in April 1970 but The Week’s Composer had found its new 9 am home that it would occupy for the next 31 years.  

In January 1988 the title of This Week’s Composer was flipped over to Composer of the Week. Then four years later changes were afoot at Radio 3 as a third of the continuity announcing team were made redundant (Malcolm Ruthven, Tony Scotland and Peter Barker) with the remaining staff taking on new presenter/producer roles (Andrew Lyle, Piers Burton-Page, Chris de Souza, Paul Guinery, Penny Gore and Susan Sharpe). 

The impact on Composer of the Week was that as well as some of the presentation team presenting the programme a number of voices, many new to the Radio 3 audience, would present a week’s worth of programme depending on their specialist knowledge and interests. So we hear composers, musicians, music critics and musicologists including (in the year 1992/93): Lindsay Kemp, Richard Alston, Stephen Johnson, Adrian Thomas, John Thornley (later one of the producers of the programme),  Richard Wigmore, Michael Oliver, Richard Langham Smith, Jeremy Siepmann, William Mival, David Fanning, John Warrack and Roxanna Panufnik.

In the BBC’s Sound Archives there’s nothing of the 45 year run of This Week’s Composer, probably because it was just seen as part of the daily continuity announcement duties rather than a built or pre-recorded programme. One of the earliest recordings of Composer of the Week dates from 1988 and features Mozart. This clip is one the BBC website but is vague as to exact date and who the announcer is. It appears to be the evening repeat on 27 January 1988 (mention of Mozart’s birthday on that date confirms this) of the previous week’s morning broadcast from 20 January 1988. The announcer sounds like Susan Sharpe.

Another 1988 clip here features Donald Macleod presenting the music of three Hollywood greats, Max Steiner, Miklos Rozsa and Erich Korngold.  At the time Donald was part of the announcing team, having joined in 1982. This one is easier to date and comes from Monday 12 December. By co-incidence I recorded much of that week’s programmes but sadly, in retrospect, cut out Donald’s introductions.    

In 1999 Radio 3 decided to give Composer of the Week a dedicated presenter. By now Donald Macleod had left his post as Presentation Editor and was freelance. With the help of the production team he would be responsible for researching and writing his own scripts. Finding the “way in” to a composer’s life is his favourite part of the process. “It’s absolutely not my job to tell people what to think about the music. I’m there to paint pictures and I often start with a visual image”. His first composer, in September 1999, was Edvard Greig and for his script Macleod discovered that “he had a good luck charm that he carried around in his pocket, a little stone frog. I thought it was such a charming image. So I started from there. “  

For the programme’s 70^th anniversary in 2013 the team produced a list of the nearly four hundred individual composers and over a hundred groups or schools of composers featured since 1943. They also reached out to listeners to suggest any overlooked composers though, as Macleod explained “it’s often tricky because if a composer is obscure, there won’t be enough music in good performance to fill the best part of five hours.”   

 Marking the 70th anniversary of COTW
Radio Times 27 July 2013 

Here’s a clip of Donald introducing Composer of the Week on the 70^th anniversary which featured the music of Robert Schumann.

In a Radio Times feature for the programme’s 80^th anniversary a number of programme landmarks were listed:

Composers featured to date Around 1,400

First female composers featured Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann in August 1988

First black composer Duke Ellington in May 1985

First non-European Four Americans: John Alden Carpenter, Samuel Barber, Roy harris and Edward MacDowell in May 1945

First South American Heitor Villa-Lobos in April 1977

First Australian Percy Grainger in November 1996

First Asian Toru Takemitsu in February 2018

This year Donald Macleod, aged 70, has decided to ease off a little and Kate Molleson has joined the programme. For her first Composer of the Week in May the subject was Gyorgy Ligeti. “We decided we weren’t just going to tell the story straight. I had pianist Danny Driver with me, sitting at the piano, opening the music up in a really unintimidating way”.

Radio Times 29 July 2023

For the programme’s 80^th anniversary, last week, Donald Macleod recalled some of the composers he’s interviewed during his 24 year tenure. This is a short clip from the first programme.      

(1) When I write about this I always seem to miss out one programme or another. However, I reckon the other programmes from the 1940s are: Desert Island Discs (1942), Today in Parliament (1945), Woman’s Hour (1946), How Does Your Garden Grow? (1947) which became Gardener’s Question Time in 1951, Round Britain Quiz (1947), Sports Report (1948) and Any Questions? (1948).  

(2) August 1943- February 1944: Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, Haydn, Schumann, Handel, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Brahms, Elgar, Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Liszt, Verdi, Chopin, Ravel, Cesar Franck, Rossini, Rimsky-Korsakov, Saint-Saens, Berlioz, Puccini, Mussorgsky, Delius, Bizet, Vaughan-Williams,

(3) At the time the Third Programme only broadcast in the evening. In the daytime and early evening, under the umbrella title of Network Three, the BBC also offered the Study Session, the Sports Service (on Saturday afternoons) and Test Match Special. 

(4) Other transferred programmes included Music Magazine, Talking About Music, Your Midweek Choice and Midday Prom.

The Swingin’ London Scene

It’s time to fire up the Lunewyre technology once again.

Back in 2014 I dipped into the BBC Radio 1 version of Radio Tip Top that aired in 1995 and 1996. But in 1993 and 1994 the unlicensed Radio Tip Top could be heard across London on a Wednesday night beaming out in mono on 105.6 FM. Series one ran from sometime in May, or possibly April, 1993 through to October and was transmitted for three hours on a Wednesday evening (9 pm to midnight). It was also, at least for a while, also heard from noon to 3 pm on Sundays.  The second, delayed and shorter, season kicked off in October 1994 going out 10 pm to midnight on a Wednesday. In between times Radio Tip Top club members could send off for cassette compilation versions and attend live events. There were also occasional roadshow specials such as the one from the summer of 1993.

Needless to say recordings of the pirate Radio Tip Top shows – ‘free from the forces of law and order’ - are rare. At the time of writing there are recordings from September 1993, excerpts from two 1994 shows and two of the tape shows on Mixcloud.  

Fortunately due to the diligence of Mark O’Shea we can now enjoy a complete recording of Kid Tempo and The Ginger Prince hosting the Radio Tip Top Summertime Special Roadshow. This was broadcast at noon on Thursday 19 August 1993 (a date only established after a bit of detective work and digging out old TV schedules) from “a magnificent marquee in the glorious grounds of a Tip Top secret location, just outside the capital and beamed into London by the magic of Lunewyre technology”. Mark’s recording was rescued from an VHS tape, the soundtrack with a Tip Top recording whilst the picture was of Channel 4’s output that afternoon.   

As the recording starts we can just about hear the sound of Jazz FM on 102.2 before the Tip Top transmission begins. The show kicks off with San Tropez, better known as the theme to Channel 4’s Eurotrash which started this year. Can this be a co-incidence? The first track is The Swingin’ London Scene by First Impression, a Tip Top favourite.

Over at the Radio Tip Top tent with The Ginger Prince we hear performances that range from the kitsch to the obscene with Mae West (check out her Way Out West album if you really want to hear more) and Ice T’s Ice M.F.T. The Peter Lorenzo Dancers strut their stuff to Glamour Bubble by Keith Andrew Roberts.   

All the show regulars are here including Rev. Ray Floods, Norman Barrington, Penny Rider, Mitch Michelmore, Veronica Valentine, Warren Smooth, the classic jingles, the Tip Top members request line and the Tip Top Ten “as voted by the readers of Corsair magazine”. In case you’re thinking of joining “London’s fastest growing club” by sending off for your Radio Tip Top club members pack to The Back Building, 150 Curtain Road, London, please don’t. It’s now an architect’s office.   

Listen out also for the Moog Interlude with Perry and Kingsley’s Toy Balloons. That’s preceded by a version of I Think I’m Going Out of My Head by Spanish pop star Raphael.

The following year Radio Tip Top would go ‘legit’ with a pilot show, Tip Top TV, airing on some ITV regions on 30 September 1994. In February 1995, just before joining Radio 1, they presented the NME Brat Awards. In late 1997 Kid Tempo and The Ginger Prince were hosting Tip Top on the Paramount Comedy Channel, essentially providing some quirky links between some of the evening comedy shows. The same year there was talk of a It’s A Tip Top World feature film but it failed to get off the ground. And that, after just five years, was it for the Tip Top Organisation.  

I’ve posted several show of the Radio 1 show on YouTube and Mixcloud. Tip Top club members can also seek out the Facebook page dedicated to the programme.

Not the A to Z of Radio Comedy: L is for Long Hot Satsuma

 

The Long Hot Satsuma was a short-lived sketch comedy series that combined the talents of Clue chums Graeme Garden and Barry Cryer. Just eight episodes aired on BBC Radio 2 in the summer of 1989 in the Thursday night 10 pm comedy slot that was most often occupied by The News Huddlines.

Garden and Cryer were of course on the writing team along with fellow cast member Paul B. Davies, Dan Patterson (who produced the pilot episode) and Martin Booth (the comedy writer who later became a parish priest). Also taking part were Alison Steadman and Julia Hills.  

Although Alison Steadman is fixed in the public imagination as Beverly in Abigail’s Party or Pam in Gavin & Stacey but she had a long stretch in radio sketch comedy. Her credits included Eddie Braben’s The Worst Show on the Wireless, The Show with Ten Legs and The Show with No Name, The News Huddlines and Three Plus One, which I wrote about last October.  

Julia Hills had, at this point, been in the Channel 4 sketch show Who Dares Wins and would go on to play Bill Porter’s best friend Rona in 2point4 Children.

Paul B. Davies was a comedy writer and actor much in evidence in the 1980s. He wrote for dozens of episodes of Week Ending and The News Huddlines, as well as Don’t Stop Now It’s Fundation, In One Ear and The Good Human Guide. He appeared in The Fosdyke Saga and co-wrote and starred alongside Jeremy Hardy in Unnatural Acts, At Home with the Hardys and Jeremy Hardy Speaks to the Nation.

The series is previewed by David Gillard for the Radio Times

The Long Hot Satsuma was broadcast on Radio 2 between 25 May and 13 July 1989. It seems that the BBC only kept a couple of episodes and these would appear to be the ones issued by the BBC Transcription Service (no. CN5425S1) comprising the first pilot episode and (I think) the second episode. The two episodes finally got a repeat on BBC7 in 2006 and again in 2007 and 2008. By 2009 the ‘missing’ episodes came back to the BBC from home recordings and the full series was heard once again that year and in 2011 and 2012. Back in 1989 I recorded just a couple episodes, the first and third.

So here’s how The Long Hot Satsuma sounded in the third episodes from 8 June 1989 complete with opening Radio 2 jingle and some post show continuity with Tim Gudgin.      

In this episode the inspiration for the skits come from the Orson Welles radio production of The War of the Worlds, Radio 4’s In the Psychiatrist’s Chair, Antiques Roadshow and a sketch about déjà-vu that you may have heard before. The producer is Dirk Maggs.    

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.