IN 1922, just 150,000 people listened to radio broadcasts. By 1939, that number had exploded to 34 million, making it one of the most rapid technological shifts in modern history — on a par with the internet revolution of the 21st century.
In the genial tones of the accomplished storyteller, Beaty Rubens, a BBC producer for 35 years, explores the effect radio had on every facet of British life before the Second World War. In the early 1920s, the crystal set was a schoolboy hobby, but in 1924 King George V spoke on air from the British Empire Exhibition. Eight years later came the first Christmas Broadcast, and, with the seal of royal approval, radio sets were bought by many families. The iconic designs became part of the furniture.
One of the most remarkable aspects was the effect that the radio had on the lives of ordinary people. Women listened to talks on books and bee-keeping as they did the housework. Drawing on a box of testimonies from 1938 found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Rubens gives us working-class people who learned to love classical music and a woman whose husband, hitherto a drunkard, stopped going out at night.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, John Johnson Collection, Ballam Collection: Games 1920sRadio: The Wireless Game, a board game from late 1924 or later, depicts 2LO in London and relay stations across the country. From the book
Radio bound the nation together in a shared culture. Spurred on by the success of Radio Luxembourg, the BBC started to entertain as well as educate. Twenty million people knew the comic catchphrases from Band Wagon and gathered at 7.30 on Saturdays for In Town Tonight. Then there was Children’s Hour six days a week, and Luxemburg’s Ovaltiney’s Concert Party on Sunday, both with their own club and badge.
It is a fascinating and attractive book, enriched with a multitude of photos and cartoons. A lovely 1923 one of a dinner-party table full of people in headphones, each lost in their own little world. Technology changes; people don’t.
Fiona Hook is a writer and EFL teacher.
Listen In: How radio changed the home
Beaty Rubens
Bodleian Library Publishing £30
(978-1-851-24-631-1)
Church Times Bookshop £27