LISTEN IN: HOW RADIO CHANGED THE HOME by Beaty Rubens: When radio made staying in the new
LISTEN IN: HOW RADIO CHANGED THE HOME by Beaty Rubens (Bodleian Publishing £30, 272pp)
When the BBC was founded in 1922 it was not completely clear what it was for. ‘If there is any news’, explained an early edition of the Radio Times helpfully, ‘it will be broadcast at 9pm’.
And even if there did turn out to be some news, the announcer might read the bulletin twice. Once at normal speed and second more slowly, in case the audience at home wanted to take notes.
Revolution: Between 1922 and 1939 the amount of people with access to a radio grew from 150,000 to 34 million
In this brilliantly researched book, veteran BBC producer Beaty Rubens delves deep into the archive to produce the first-ever account of the wireless revolution from the listeners’ point of view. And it really was nothing short of a revolution.
In 1922, a little under 150,000 people had access to a radio; by 1939 the number had shot to almost 34 million. The results, suggests Rubens, impacted every aspect of daily life in Britain from family dynamics (who was in charge of the dial?) to party politics, interior design and the role of the Royal Family at the heart of our national life.
In the early days after the First World War, a wireless receiver set was something that men and schoolboys tinkered with in the garden shed: ‘Uncle Bill made our first set from a kit,’ recalled one interviewee at the time. Gradually, though, what you could hear became more important than the gadget on which you ‘listened in’. The tipping point came in 1924 when King George V spoke to the nation for the first time from the British Empire Exhibition.
Eight years later, he spoke again to the nation on Christmas Day and a bond was made between the BBC, the nation and the Royal Family which continues to this day.
Royal Radio: George V was the first British royal to be broadcast to the nation over the airwaves
Royal approval was the prompt for many households to go out to buy their first set. Middle-class families preferred models that were disguised as something else: a drinks cabinet, a bookshelf or even an armchair, until you opened it up to reveal the tuning dials, brass terminals and tangle of wires.
The King had a particularly magnificent ‘receiving set’, which was hidden behind wooden doors that blended seamlessly with the royal Chippendale.
Right from the start, radio was conceived of as having a particularly intimate relationship with middle-class women who were likely to spend their days at home. Listening to the radio allowed them to roam far and wide in their imaginations while still being able to get through the wash.
In the election week of 1929, women were invited to learn about bridge-playing and travel vicariously to French chateaux country.
There was guidance, too, on beekeeping as a profitable hobby and the best way to stay cool in a heatwave.
Cultural critics popped in to give their views on the latest plays and concerts. Books were covered by the poet Vita Sackville-West, who happened to be in a passionate love affair with Hilda Matheson, the first director of talks at the BBC.
It wasn’t all instructional. Prompted by the success of commercial stations including Radio Luxembourg in winning listeners with lighter fare, the BBC started to invest in entertainment. The hits of the pre-war period were ‘In Town Tonight’ and ‘Bandwagon’, which could count on a staggering 20 million listeners apiece.
On Wednesday nights, when In Town Tonight aired, high streets were deserted. Here was ‘appointment to listen’ radio that, as Rubens herself ruefully notes, today’s ‘audio’ producers can only dream about.
Fear of the Future: A satirical cartoon from 1923 titled ‘A Lost Art’ shows a dinner party guests wearing headphones listening to the radio rather than talking to each other.
There were, though, downsides to the ubiquitous presence of the wireless in daily life. A satirical cartoon from 1923 titled ‘A Lost Art’ shows a dinner party at which the guests wear headphones through which they are listening to the radio. Instead of talking to their neighbour, each diner is lost in a world of their own.
Fast forward a hundred years, and we have a very similiar bugbear in which family meals are conducted in silence as each member scrolls furiously on their phone.