In the wake of the recent Windrush scandal, many people have been discussing what it means to be British in the post-Imperial era.

When that famous ship dropped anchor at Tilbury Docks in 1948 it heralded a new era for both the UK and the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, as the Corporation rose to the challenge of representing a new and unfamiliar audience.

Now, seven decades on, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ History has launched the fourth release from its Oral History Collection, showing the way staff at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ created programmes for a diverse and multi-cultural audience following World War II. The results are interesting and often surprising.

Created in partnership with the University of Sussex, 100 Voices that Made the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ: People, Nation, Empire looks to shed new light on what is a complex and sometimes highly contentious subject.

John Escolme, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ History Manager, explains: "What we're doing is bringing some of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's hidden treasures into the public realm, including some of the 600 interviews with former members of staff, few of which have been available until recently."

Dual-identity

The records provide a fascinating insight into decision making at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ from that time, including minutes showing the initial reluctance of the Corporation to speed-up integration, and a recording of the first episode of Make Yourself at ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ from October 1965, the first ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ programme for the Asian community.

Speaking about the programme, guest reviewer and Newswatch presenter Samira Ahmed comments: "I have a special affection for Make Yourself at ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ…That whole idea of spoken Hindustani being broadcast on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was really significant, it was addressing a minority in their own language but it also made me aware for the first time that there was this dual-identity."

There are a number of fascinating case studies looking at this concept of dual-identity, including Una Marson. Una was the first black producer at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, way back in 1941. The prejudices she faced at that time are examined in a number of her documents and interviews, as well as comments showing the high esteem she was held in by some of her superiors.

Reflecting the LGBTQ+ audience

As well as the subject of race, 100 Voices looks at the efforts made by the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ to engage with people from the LGBTQ+ community: from the initial, church-dominated discussions on radio in the 1950s, to tentative efforts to document the lives of gay men on TV in the 1960s, right up to the bold lifestyle programming of the 1990s.

John explains: "The language used in many of these early programmes is often blunt and reflects the attitudes of the time. The seven ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ programmes covered really exemplify the change in the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's understanding of its LGBTQ+ audience from 1957 until the present day."

Confidential letters

Some of the look at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's first efforts to engage with minority communities. The letters reveal that many ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ journalists initially found it difficult to fully reflect and report on the lives of Britain's black communities and had to work hard to earn the trust of people in many UK cities.

from the 1970s also show that the Corporation often struggled with the balance between increasing representation for minorities and a journalistic duty to report on prejudice and conflict.

While the debate around representation continues to be a challenging subject, one thing the documents make clear is the number of people at the Corporation who lobbied for change and pushed for greater equality in ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ content.

This cause is best summed up in a number of newly-released accounts detailing the behind-the-scenes decision to hand over editorial control to outside interest groups for a pioneering series called Open Door in 1973. 

These include a from Sir David Attenborough, then Director of Programmes in TV, making the case for the series and advocating representation of minority voices on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ.

You can find out more about 100 Voices on the History of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ website.

This article originally appeared in Ariel, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's in-house digital platform. 

If you are feeling nostalgic for Jackanory why not check out CBeebies Bedtime Stories which features a host celebrities reading stories. 

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, 7 April 1941 - 23 January 2017

, 22 January 1940 - 25 January 2017

, May 23 1926 - February 1 2017

, 27 November 1929 - 8 February 2017

, 30 January 1948 - 12 February 2017

, 8 August 1958 - 20 February 2017

, 13 May 1946 - 7 April 2017

, 17 September 1928 - 8 April 2017

, 6 March 1934 - 28 May 2017

, 1 February 1921 - 2 June 2017

, 13 May 1950 - 5 June 2017

, 12 July 1933 - 19 June 2017

, 21 August 1933 - 30 June 2017

, 2 January 1948 - 21 July 2017

, April 8 1944 - July 25 2017

, October 29, 1925 - 3 August 2017

, 22 February 1928 - 18 August 2017

, 10 November 1965 – 16 October 2017

, 18 December 1935 - 21 October 2017

19 April 1937 - 8 November 2017

, 8 August 1934 - 15 November 2017

, 27 November 1937 – 21 November 2017

, 17 January 1957- 11 December 2017

Today, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ releases another decade of Radio Times magazines as part of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Genome Project, ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Genome Producer Andrew Martin introduces the collection. 

Programme information from Radio Times listings between 1923 – 2009 is already available on the Genome website, but this new release allows readers to see the actual magazines from the 1930s. The 1920s magazines were made available earlier in 2017.

You can now see regular columns giving news about programmes, articles about various aspects of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ output and policy, and the events that influenced and informed broadcasting in this important decade in world history, all complemented by illustrations, photographs, listeners’ letters and cartoons.

The 1930s was a turbulent decade, as the country tried to cope with the worldwide depression and mass unemployment that followed the 1929 Wall Street Crash. In 1936, King George V died, but his successor Edward VIII abdicated at the end of the year and was replaced by his brother, George VI. Internationally, the decade was marked by the rise of the Nazis in Germany, culminating in the outbreak of war in September 1939.

It was a time of change in broadcasting too. In 1932, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ moved from its old headquarters at Savoy Hill to the purpose-built Broadcasting House, still its headquarters today. The old individual stations identified by their call signs – such as 2LO, 5IT and 6LV – changed to more centralised National and Regional Programmes, and the Empire Service (now the World Service) was launched, relaying the first Royal Christmas broadcast, in which King George V’s voice was heard around the world at the end of an international link-up.

Radio Times shines a light on the programmes that became popular during the decade. Variety programmes were revitalised by a new generation of performers who were attuned to broadcasting. Radio drama was also developing fast, and technical advances allowed far greater flexibility in play production. Radio Times was full of articles about the growth of broadcasting techniques in all fields, including documentaries and music.

During the 1930s, Radio Times’ visual style broke free from the more restrained look of the 1920s, with increased use of artwork and photographs both on the cover and internally. Prestigious artists such as John Gilroy, Heath Robinson and Eric Fraser were regular contributors, and the magazines are full of visual treasures: from the smallest listings illustrations to full front cover art that helped bring the pages of Radio Times to life.

The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Television Service also first emerged in this decade. In 1930, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ had only recently allowed John Logie Baird to use its transmitters for experimental television, and with only one transmitter available, his first broadcasts had to alternate sound and vision. The launch of the Regional Programme early in 1930 allowed these to be broadcast simultaneously, but the low-definition (30 lines) service was still very basic. In 1932, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ assumed responsibility for making television programmes: "Television makes its bow from Broadcasting House," announced Radio Times in August 1932. 

High definition television began in 1936, from Alexandra Palace. At first there were two competing systems, Baird and Marconi-EMI, but after a few months the latter proved to be better, and was the basis of television in Britain thereafter. Radio Times included a glossy Television Supplement from January to July 1937, to publicise the new service. 

In May 1937 the first proper television outside broadcast was mounted, with scenes of the coronation procession of King George VI televised from Hyde Park Corner. Previous outside broadcasts had involved taking studio cameras into the grounds of Alexandra Palace, but now state occasions, public entertainments and sporting events could be covered – like Wimbledon and the FA Cup final. Though the television service was only on air for a few hours each day, plans were afoot to expand to the Midlands and the rest of the country.

All that came to an end on 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Although it was another two days until Britain declared war, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ put its emergency plans into operation: television closed down, and domestic radio services were conflated into a single ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Service. The issue of Radio Times for 3-9 September 1939 had been printed, but was now entirely redundant, and an emergency edition was published in its place on 4 September 1939. Now under wartime restrictions, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, and Radio Times, battled on.

We hope visitors to ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Genome will enjoy exploring this fascinating record of broadcasting and social history from one of the most important decades of the 20th Century.

Andrew Martin is ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Genome producer

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Local radio quickly found its place in a local emergency.

These days our listeners expect our stations to be there when there’s a local crisis - when the snow falls or the roads shut, people know local radio will have the info they need. Back in the 60s this was all new. Our first station on air was Radio Leicester and early on in its history it covered the great flood of 1968 when over 500 houses in the city were left underwater, the service was a new local lifeline from the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. Similarly a severe snowstorm in December 1967 forced the manager at Radio Brighton to put the station on air two months earlier than planned. 

Local radio pioneered the open plan radio office

Coming from commercial radio where programming, sales and news all tended to work in different offices I was struck by how ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Local Radio stations are usually situated in one large office with everyone from news to programmes and often (though not always) the editor all sat together. Of course open plan offices are standard these days across the industry but I discovered local radio was an early adopter. John Musgrave who opened Radio Blackburn in 1970 housed the station in a used car showroom. This meant the production area was a vast open plan space, so all the production teams had to talk to one another, and thus the idea of sharing content was born, moving towards sequence programmes. 

Local radio has always had to innovate

Our stations led the way in the use of radio cars across the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, although they were available to network and nations it was local stations that really discovered their value in getting us out of the studio and into the communities we serve.

The use of completely 'self-op' radio studios in the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was also largely driven through local radio and presenters have been battling with levels ever since.

Even the early local radio jingles were ground breaking. from the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radiophonic workshop, probably best known for creating the Doctor Who theme, was commissioned to create distinctively local sonic logos for our earliest stations. Steel knives and forks were used for Radio Sheffield’s music, pots and dishes for Radio Stoke and in an interesting digital reference to Robin Hood, an electronic bow and arrow featured on the station sound for Radio Nottingham. It certainly sounded different.   

Local radio has always had to improvise

Local radio marketing budgets have always been tight, so editors have often found creative ways to get noticed. My favourite example is from Phil Sidey, the first station manager at Radio Leeds, he had a feud with the Yorkshire Post, who refused to write about the station. So he bought a greyhound, called it Radio Leeds, and when it won at races, the papers had to print the name.

Gareth Roberts is Editor ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Coventry and Warwickshire and Head of Local Radio Development.

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There could not be a more appropriate time to erect a statue of George Orwell in central London. An ethical and intellectual hero, he anatomised totalitarianism and the misuse of language for political ends with unequalled precision. In our own febrile times he illuminates the path for those who seek clarity, decency and honesty in public discourse.

By nature he was ill-disposed towards received wisdom and could almost be described as the patron saint of independent thought, particularly in the realm of political journalism. So there could be no better site for his statue than ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ New Broadcasting House. He worked for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ himself for two years during World War Two before resigning – he was never a man moulded for employment.

The statue needed to express both his mental and physical angularity. Orwell was forever a member of the awkward squad and his tall bony frame was almost purpose-built to express this. Several inches over six feet tall, with cabbage-patch hair and a lamentable moustache, consumptive, built like a scarecrow and with a potting-shed wardrobe to match, his physical appearance stands as a joyful counterpoint to a monumental intellectual acuity.

He was disparaging about statues in his writing: “That seems to be a fixed rule in London: whenever you do by some chance have a decent vista, block it up with the ugliest statue you can find”. He would never have been one to occupy a plinth with ease. I’ve represented him leaning perilously forward from his own as if from an orator’s soap-box. 

Orwell was so dedicated a smoker that he even continued the practice when TB presaged an early death. Smoking was so much a part of his identity that it would have been unthinkable not to represent him with a roll-up between his fingers. Nowadays smokers are ‘outsiders’ both figuratively and literally. I like to think that had Orwell still been working for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ today, he would have cemented this outsider status with repeated retreats for a quick gasper at the windy corner of the building where his statue will now be found.

With one pugilistic fist on his hip and the other hand jabbing his cigarette at us as we pass by, he demands that we direct our thoughts to the quotation inscribed in the wall next to him: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”. These words from his proposed preface to Animal Farm are a rallying cry for the idea of free speech in an open society.

I’ve wanted to express Orwell as candid and forthright, a pointed and interrogative figure forcefully enquiring of each of us whether we too will take his stand on behalf of intellectual liberty and truth.

Martin Jennings is a sculptor and creator of the George Orwell statue.

• .

In Goldie’s election night programme, she relied on maps stuck to walls and lists of which politician was up or down. Of course what Goldie did then was cutting edge however old fashioned it seems now when we have touchscreens and virtual reality graphics. Where there are comparisons to my world 67 years on are the judgements made about what news lines to run, the accuracy over policy details, the overwhelming importance of impartiality throughout all of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s coverage. The difference now is the speed of the news. The advent of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for example mean the story can change in a second. The parties’ spinners are ever present, ready to push a line, pull a story. The leaders may seem calm but behind the scenes they are learning their words, anticipating the questions. And if a story breaks while they’re on stage – well they just have to roll with it – but the press knows it and they know that too.

Despite the second female Prime Minister taking office last year, politics remains an area dominated by men. Although there’s been a big growth in recent years, still only 30% of MPs in the last parliament were women. Political broadcasting is changing too. Laura Kuenssberg is the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s first female Political Editor, and I’m proud to work alongside her as well as the other women who now report on politics for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. Though as we always say, and perhaps Goldie would too, it’s not about being a woman, it’s about getting it right.

Katy Searle is the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s Editor of Political Newsgathering.

• will air on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ One and the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ News Channel from 9.55pm on Thursday 8 June and will be available to watch on ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ iPlayer for 30 days after broadcast.

When it broadcast in November last year, Planet Earth II - Islands became the most-watched wildlife show for more than 15 years, attracting more than 12 million viewers, and was the most requested programme on iPlayer for the whole of 2016. Something many people commented on, was how “nice” it was that it was produced/directed by a woman.

I guess it’s easy to assume that natural history filmmaking is a very male-dominated world. Sir David Attenborough is the face of natural history broadcasting in Britain, and we get very used to seeing male cameramen struggling in filming hides as part of ‘making-of’ segments. But the story behind the scenes is a very different one, for wildlife filmmaking – and indeed documentary filmmaking in general – is an environment that is rich in women and has been for many years.

The first female television producer at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was Mary Adams who joined the corporation in 1936. She was a 30-year old former research scientist, married (at a time when most professions barred married women from work) and she had a rich and successful career as a documentary producer and commissioner in the field of science. It was Mary Adams who spotted a young David Attenborough in 1952, and later commissioned Zoo Quest, a series he proposed in conjunction with London Zoo, which first brought Attenborough to the television screens.

In my 13 years at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, there have been many highly talented female wildlife film producers to draw inspiration from, including Martha Holmes (The Blue Planet) and Vanessa Berlowitz (Frozen Planet, Planet Earth). Many among the commissioning team and controllers for science and natural history have been female – indeed the current head of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ content is a woman, Charlotte Moore.

Granted, the presence of women on-screen in science and natural history seems somewhat less common than seeing male presenters but when they do appear, they can be hugely inspirational. Watching Martha Holmes don a bubble helmet for the series Sea Trek in the early 1990s was a major factor in me wanting to learn to scuba dive and ultimately do a PhD in fish biology.

On Planet Earth II, more than half the production team were female, including all the production co-ordinators and many of the researchers and directors on location. For our penguin filming on Zavodovksi Island (the most remote and ‘committed’ shoot of the series) it was a woman who advised on field/camp safety, and one of the three boat captains that sailed us 8 days through the volatile Southern Ocean, was a female. This is something that would have been incomprehensible 40 years ago, as women were actively discouraged from working in Antarctica - women didn’t over-winter on British science bases until the 1990s.

There are still areas where women are very under-represented in documentary filmmaking. For example, you see relatively few female wildlife camera operators in broadcasting, and there is no doubt in my mind women often have to work harder to ‘prove themselves’ in the field, compared with men. But women can be excellent team leaders, and highly creative storytellers. I’m hopeful that, one day, the stereotype of ‘producer/director’ may just as easily be female.

Elizabeth White is producer/director of 'Planet Earth II: Islands'.

All Star Record Breakers was an annual Christmas ‘extravaganza’ borne out of the weekly programme Record Breakers. It ran from 1974 to 1982.

I was never a big fan of Record Breakers. From an early age (soon after the thrill of seeing the tallest man in the world on TV wore off) I saw the programme for what it really was: a televised trot through the Guinness Book of Records, fronted by a trumpet-playing presenter whose cheeky smile, twinkling eyes made me, and breath-taking exuberance made him the equivalent of the kid at school everyone wanted to be a bit like. Let’s just call that jealousy on my part and be done with it.

All Stars was ‘event TV’. I remember that much.  My memory of its content is scant, but its effect was striking. Children’s TV personalities from across the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ join together in a glittering fun-filled extended edition – the TV equivalent of Whizzer and Chips Summer Special.

Festooned with big musical numbers, loads of energy  and very wide smiles, All Star Record Breakers was the moment when the artificial boundaries between TV programmes were temporarily dismantled. All of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s TV presenters now appeared themselves as friends of one another, creating a whole other imaginary world in my head. They probably gave each other cards and presents in the canteen. And like Bucks Fizz, they probably all lived in the same house together somewhere in the country, assuming they didn’t have an apartment they shared in Television Centre with Noel Edmonds, Keith Chegwin, John Craven and Maggie Philbin.

I’m also not entirely sure whether All Stars was my first TV Christmas extravaganza, or whether it was Blue Peter’s Christmas edition. After weeks of struggling to make and then subsequent light each candle on the Blue Peter Advent Crown, : presenters gathered around a Christmas tree, joined by a procession of local school children kitted out in scarves and thick bobble hats to sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing under hot studio lights. Presenters exchanged gifts on TV, seemingly allowed to open them before the big day. And they got real gifts too. Simon Groom once gave Lesley Judd a puppy.  I seem to recall Peter Duncan getting a tool kit.

If All Stars was the TV version of an end of term Christmas show, then Blue Peter’s Christmas edition (still running today) was the TV carol service.  These were the magical moments of television, when viewers marvelled at how the implicit barriers constructed by the grammar of television were broken down. Excitement and anticipation mixed with the tantalising sight of familiar faces participating in a show-home illustration of our own Christmas celebrations. Heady visual cues.

Strictly Come Dancing has a similar effect on the senses. After weeks of regular feel-good doses, we skid towards the end of term with a vast dance floor ahead of us, numerous lights bouncing off every available shiny surface, and the chance to do our own ‘sofa salsa’ along to the signature tune for one last time. There’s an unshakeable sense of camaraderie – we’re not just observing that but participating in it as viewers too.

There is a sense of occasion about the whole affair. Not just because it’s the final and we want to know who the winner is. Like All Stars, Blue Peter and school Christmas parties, us viewers get to treat ourselves with a lavish event none of us have had the inconvenience of having to stage, and from which we don’t need to get our parents to pick us up at the end.

My perception of Strictly behind the scenes triggers memories of the school Christmas show. Weeks of rehearsals culminating in the thrill of afternoons taken over by vaguely glamorous-sounding occasions like ‘dress rehearsals’ or ‘run-throughs’. School-children normally marooned by the protocols imposed by tyrannical contemporaries throughout the rest of the year, now bonded with kids they never dreamed they’d be ‘cool enough’ to get on with.  An eclectic mix of young performers convened in a way they knew all too well they wouldn’t once term started up again in a few weeks’ time. This unusual billing and the feelings which emerged from it was something to savour.

The Strictly series has at its heart a similar eclectic billing. The Final is the prize for our series-long commitment. It’s the first of the big Christmas ‘parties’ – self-contained on our screens and not needing us to tidy up afterwards - which eases us towards a more personal festive celebration. As much as I adore Christmas Eve and the big day itself, it is the end-of-term party which stokes the greatest excitement in me. And from someone who is renowned amongst his colleagues for not especially liking parties, that’s saying something. 

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Blog

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Jon Jacob praises the unsung hero of Christmas music who started his ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ career in 1926 as a piano accompanist and finished as ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Director of Music.

Composer Victor Hely-Hutchinson (above) has a deep, dark, perhaps even cold stare in our archive pictures. Underneath a bristling trimmed moustache is a mixture of a business-like pout and mischievous grin. Or am I projecting?

Suave, handsome, and maybe even a bit of a dandy? Maybe. In 1926 when he began his career at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ as a pianist and accompanist, wax secured a strong parting. By 1933, it was securing a windswept fringe. By 1936, the hair had thinned slightly, so too the budget for hair product. But there was still the playfulness in his eyes evident in his earlier shots. 

Born in Cape Town, he was educated in England, but returned to Cape Town as Lecturer in Music at the University from 1922 to 1925. He became a member of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ music staff the following year, went to Birmingham as Music Director of the Midland Region in 1933, and the next year resigned this position to succeed Sir Granville Bantock as Peyton Professor of Music at the University of Birmingham.

I know little about the man, other than the Christmas music – his Carol Symphony - which he composed in 1927.

The Carol Symphony – a series of four variations on Christmas carols – exudes playfulness. It takes familiar carol melodies – O Come All Ye Faithful, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Here We Go A-Wassailing – and applies all sorts of musical, textural and harmonic treatments to the melodies. As he does so – like any other composer using the variation form – he extends the blissful expectation of Christmas beyond the length of the carol we recognise.

During the third movement of the work, Hely-Hutchinson’s mastery is on potent display where he buries each of the carols’ melodies deep in the musical material, and makes recognising them part of the listener’s entertainment.  It’s not immediately obvious what we’re listening to at the beginning,  but a potent example occurs around 2 minutes into the introduction of this movement: one steady note in the strings hangs in the air; a harp creates an eerie music-box effect.  A counter-melody joins soon after. A vague sense of menace threatens to overpower the delicate beginning of life.

The unsettling feeling doesn’t last for long: it’s resolved with the quietest of bassoons playing one suspended note transforming the moment into a quiet triumph and, the introduction of a familiar carol – The First Noel. In that deft moment of musical transformation, Christmas is announced. 

Everything else that follows is a joyous orchestral celebration of the musical resolution we heard close to the beginning of the movement culminating in one of the most gloriously indulgent of chords in all of Christmas (beaten only by the final chords of the final verse of O Come All Ye Faithful).

In the case of Hely-Hutchinson’s masterful creation (musically orthodox and conservative given that it was written 14 years after Stravinsky's iconoclastic Rite of Spring), the music creates intense musical depictions of the Christmas story the carols themselves sought to celebrate in the first place. The symphony as a whole is a musical melange that sounds as though it could well have been created for TV. The fact it pre-dates the format’s prevalence by about forty years makes Hely-Hutchinson’s creation makes the work all the more an achievement.  

The third movement was used in a Children's Hour adaptation of John Masefield's Box of Delights broadcasting during the Second World War. When the series finally came to TV in the 1980s the music was used again for the opening and closing titles. That's where I first heard it. It still brings a tear to my eye now.

Hely-Hutchinson's other compositions – largely incidental music - are sprinkled throughout the , popping up in various plays, including an adaptation of CS Lewis’ , and Dumas’ . He performed in chamber music concerts as a pianist, conducted various ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ orchestra, and presented programmes ‘’.

Hely-Hutchinson left the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ in 1934 after set up the Midland Studio Orchestra and worked as the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s Midland Regional Director of Music. He returned to the corporation in 1944 to become Director of Music, and continued to broadcast on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Service right up until his death in 1947, at the age of 45. 

Jon Jacob is Editor, About the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Blog

As ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ History launches an archive to mark 80 years of Television, Dr Kate Murphy blogs about the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's first female producer, Mary Adams.

I don’t know whether you have seen the television screen or whether its problems interest you,  but I should very much like you to come up to Alexandra Palace and discuss with us the possibilities of this new medium”, so wrote Mary Adams to John Betjamen in May 1937.  The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ television service was then six months old, and Adams had been a television producer since January that year. In every way this was unprecedented. Not only was she a woman, but she was nearing 40 and married with a young baby. She also earned far more than most of the thrusting young male producers she worked alongside.  So how had this unlikely situation arisen?

Mary Adams had first come to the attention of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ 10 years earlier, in 1927, when she gave a radio talk on ‘Heredity’.  The fledgling ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was always on the lookout for potential speakers for its Talks programmes and Adams’ expertise and experience suggested she would be a good choice.  She was a biologist by training who, after four years of post-graduate research at Cambridge, had become an adult education tutor. Her broadcast was deemed such a success that she was invited back to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ the following year; her six-part series ‘The Problems of Heredity’ provoking much correspondence and debate. Two years later, in 1930, the now 32-year-old Adams applied for a full-time post with the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ as an Adult Education Officer for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Counties. 

Her appointment reflected the modernity of the Corporation. Not only was it unusual to recruit older women, 30 was then considered middle-aged, but she was married; her husband of five years was the maverick Conservative MP Vyvyan Adams.  At a time when many professions, such as teaching, banking and the Civil Service, enforced marriage bars, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ openly employed married women. In fact, one of its most senior women, Mary Somerville, who headed the School Broadcasting department was not only married but, in 1930, had a year-old son. The ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ also ostensibly offered equal pay and Adams negotiated a generous salary. The usual starting pay for salaried staff at the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was £260 a year, accepted as the basic rate for a middle-class lifestyle.  Adams agreed £650 (she had asked for £800), reflecting both her status and her verve.  By 1939, she would earn £900 a year.

Back in 1930, it had quickly become apparent that Adams was not cut out to be an Adult Education Officer. The job was heavily dependent on organisational skills whereas Mary Adams’ strength was her creativity.  She was an ideas person, with an impressive contacts book, so was far better suited to a production role.  Her manager, Charles Siepmann, was quick to realise this, and Adams was soon making programmes, mostly science programmes, in the form of talks.  This was in the days before recording, when all spoken-word output on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was live talks, a format championed and perfected by the brilliant Hilda Matheson, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s first Talks Director from January 1927 until early 1932.  Much of Matheson’s success lay in her ability to entice the great and the good to broadcast.  Adams was similarly adept, drawing on her a wide network of friends and acquaintances, from Beatrice Webb and John Hilton to Norman Angell and Margery Fry.

From the start Mary Adams had made the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ jittery. Her husband might be a Tory MP, but she was very left wing in her views. Her annual reports hint that she was also impulsive and difficult to control, with a tendency to act without reference to her seniors. As Siepmann noted in 1932, “her enthusiasm is apt to outrun her discretion”.  At a time when the Corporation was coming under increasing scrutiny for being ‘Red’, this was not a good combination.  Indeed, in March 1934 she took much of the blame for the notorious ‘Ferrie Incident’ when William Ferrie, a representative of the National Union of Vehicle Builders, claimed live on air that his script for the series ‘The National Character’ had been censored and abruptly walked out of the studio, to leave silence.  It may be no coincidence that at this point in her ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ career Adams, who had produced the talk, agreed to a part-time post although it is also certain that her health was poor, she was due for an operation and was undoubtedly over-worked.  But after almost two years of working virtually full-time for half-time pay, she became convinced that her continuing part-time status was because she was held to be “a wild, unruly, Bolshevik sort of person”.  In April 1936, having finally persuaded her ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ bosses otherwise, and just at the point that it was agreed she could return full-time, there was another twist; she announced that she was pregnant.

There is a remarkable letter amongst Mary Adams’ papers, written to Sir John Reith, the Director General of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, on 28 September 1936. Thanking him for the flowers and lovely welcome they gave to her daughter Sally (born four weeks earlier), she enthused about motherhood and the new sense of ardour and responsibility it had given her. It was for this reason, she informed him, that she wished to apply for the position of Director of Talks that has just been advertised. Although, in his response, Reith raised the question about whether Adam’s was “wise or right” in her wish to lead the “double life”, he agreed to her application going forward.  There was never any likelihood of Adams getting such a lofty promotion, her gender, the fact of her young child and her political views would have militated against her.  But the appointment of the right-wing Sir Richard Maconachie was possibly the reason why, in January 1937, Mary Adams returned to work not in the Talks Department for Radio, but to a new position, overseeing Talks for Television.

On 2 November 1936, when the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ began transmitting its television service from Alexandra Palace in North London, staff numbers would have been around 100, about half of whom were women. Most were employed in low-paid secretarial and clerical positions, but that didn’t necessarily mean that their work wasn’t highly calibre. Joan Gilbert, for instance, a clerk who worked on ‘Picture Page’, included amongst her duties researching guests, writing scripts, sub-editing, and working as a talent scout for the programme.  The Television Make-up and Wardrobe team was headed by Mary Allan, one of whose key roles was to ensure that Jasmine Bligh and Elizabeth Cowell, the two female announcers, always looked their best under the harsh studio conditions. It’s not clear how often Mary Adams appeared on camera. Although Radio Times lists her as responsible for the ‘presentation’ of more than 50 programmes in the years before television closed down in September 1939 for the duration of the Second World War, it is likely that it was her voice, rather than her face, that introduced her various contributors.

The range of Mary Adams output is astonishing.  As a producer of radio talks, Adams’ focus had predominantly been social affairs or science. In television, she learnt quickly that television talks worked best with a visual element.  Her first programmes differed little from her radio work: the intellectual giant Professor Walter Gropius in discussion with Maxwell Fry about ‘Architecture Today’ or the MP Robert Hudson, from the Ministry of Health, in conversation with John Hilton about ‘Food and Health’.  But soon fresh ideas were apparent. A talk on ‘Heraldry of Yesterday and Today’ included demonstrations. 

‘London Galleries: Young Artists and their Work’ saw John Piper in the studio with young art students, showing their work. ‘The World of Women: Illustrating Verse’ paired the spoken-out-loud writings of Olga Katzin with the illustrations of the artist Pearl Binder.  Adams also acquired some TV regulars producing, for instance,  the zoologist David Seth-Smith’s ‘Friends from the Zoo’; the gardening expert CH Middleton’s ‘In Your Garden’ and the chef Marcel Boulestin’s ‘Cook’s Night Out’.

Her approach to John Betjeman in May 1937 is typical of her dynamism. Betjeman was becoming well-known as the creator of the Shell Guides to Britain. Once his interest in appearing on television was substantiated she suggested a talk that included maps and photographs as well as objects - physical props that would bring the programme to life. When ‘How to Write a Guide Book’, was transmitted ‘live’ on 21 September 1937,  Betjeman arrived at the studio with a hotchpotch of items including a milking stool, a weathercock, wild flowers and a piece of Cotswold stone. The portrait painter Edward Halliday was similarly impressed by Adam’s production values.  They worked together on the short series ‘Masterpieces on your Walls’, broadcast in September 1938. This was about the easy availability of good quality reproductions for the home and provided an excuse to interject popular works of art by the likes of Paul Nash, Laura Knight and Eric Ravilious as well as Picasso, Van Gogh and Cezanne, into Halliday’s lively commentary.

Pearl Binder would become an Adams regular. Following her appearance on ‘The World of Women’, the two friends worked together on a number of programmes, with Binder contributing the ‘live’ illustrations. The six-part series’ Clothes-Line’, broadcast from October 1937, as well as using Binder’s drawings, utilised the versed commentary of James Laver of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the historic costume collection of Cecil Willett Cunnington and live mannequins to tell the story of fashion through the ages. Binder was heavily pregnant during the series, her daughter Josephine born within weeks of the final show. ‘Looking for a House’, in May 1939, was Binder’s illustrated take on the trials and tribulations of house-hunting while ‘Rough Island Stories’ broadcast from June 1939, was a history of the British Isles told through maps, pictures (provided by Binder) and film, presented by Harold Nicolson and James Horrabin. Adams developed a raft of other extravaganzas including ‘Guest Night’, which brought together an array of well-known contributors for topical chat; ‘Columnists and their Victims’  a sort of news quiz and ‘Salute to America’, which profiled the contemporary US scene in speech and images. 

These programmes would be Adams’ final pre-Second World War offerings. With television suspended for the duration of hostilities she was transferred, in December 1939, to the Ministry of Information as Director of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Intelligence, a post she would hold for two years. Returning to the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ in 1941, she worked for the North American service, producing programmes such as ‘Answering You’ and ‘Transatlantic Quiz’. When the television service reopened in 1946, Adams returned in a Senior Producer role.  One of the areas she pioneered was programming for children. In 1937, she had developed ‘For the Children’, the first such show.  In 1946, it was reintroduced, this time fronted by Annette Wells with her accomplice, Muffin the Mule. Adams was also intrinsic to the development of television programmes for women.  Following the success of Woman’s Hour, introduced onto the Light Service in October 1946, it was seen as judicious to do the same for the small screen.  ‘Designed for Women’, first broadcast in October 1947, was intended to be a “magazine programme of special interest to women”.  It would lead to a dedicated strand of women’s programming that endured until 1964.

Mary Adams versatility and creativity is evident in the vast array of output she continued to oversee. In 1952 she spotted the potential of a young David Attenborough and ‘Zoo Quest’; she introduced the science quiz ‘Animal Vegetable Mineral?’ and initiated the first highly controversial medical series ‘A Matter of Life and Death’ and ‘Your Life in their Hands’. She also nurtured the talents of another soon-to-be doyenne of television, Grace Wyndham Goldie. Mary Adams’ abilities did not go unrewarded. In 1948 she had been promoted to Head of Television Talks, and in 1952, gained autonomy from Mary Somerville, then Talks Controller, whose empire had encompassed both radio and TV. The following year, Adams was again promoted, this time to be Assistant to the Controller of TV, working to Cecil McGivern.  On her retirement in 1958, the now 60-year-old Mary Adams was feted by McGivern, his valediction, published in the staff journal Ariel, neatly summarising her achievements.

Mary Adams, one of its pioneers, is very jealous of the reputation of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Television Service and her standards are extraordinarily high.  She flayed lapses of taste, refused to allow television to become simply escapist, and her ideas were vivid, bold and far-sighted.  And while Mrs Adams could be brilliant she was at the same time completely determined to achieve her purpose. She has frequently left technical staff and programme staff exhausted, exasperated, but after the event, admiring.  I regard Mrs Adams as one of the few real architects of the television service and it owes a great deal to her… Her breadth of mind, her vision, her ideas have been a constant education.  Her range of friends, acquaintances and contacts in the intelligent world is also extraordinarily large and is itself a tribute to her great ability”.  

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• Read more about ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ TV's 80th Birthday Anniversary on on the

Seventy years ago today a great British institution was established. At 2pm on 7 October 1946 the first edition of graced the airwaves on the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s Light Programme, 2pm being the hour it was deemed women would have finished the majority of their housework, and therefore have a moment for a cuppa before the kids got home.

The originally-billed programme "that offers a female perspective on the world” was originally presented by a man - Alan Ivimey - listed in the Radio Times as a specialist "in writing for and talking to women." 

Early segments like "how to hang your husband’s suit" didn't go down well with listeners who found the programme at times patronising. But, the programme still addressed serious issues. When the word “vagina” was used in the programme's first year in a talk about women’s health there was an outcry from the public. Birth canal was the favoured term for a number of years afterwards.

The programme became part of the Radio 4 schedule in 1973. Following Ivimey’s tenure as presented, the programme has been fronted by women including Violet Carson, Olive Sharpley, Jean Metcalfe and Marjorie Anderson. In 1990 the time slot was changed to its current morning slot (10-11am on weekdays) and the feature was added. 

The 'magazine' format of Woman's Hour has, right from the outset, featured cooking segments. Currently titled “ chefs including Gordon Ramsay, Angela Hartnett and Rick Stein have featured. Political guests have also been a staple part of the line-up including Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Astor, Vera Brittain, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, Cherie Blair, Tony Blair, Michael Howard, Gordon Brown and David Cameron.

The  which started in 2013 as a list of the 100 most powerful women in the UK - has since evolved into a list of in 2014 and in 2015.

The show’s current presenters are Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey. Today the programme has six shows a week, Monday to Friday from 10-11am and Saturdays from 5-5pm, and attracts 3.7m listeners weekly. And it's not just men listening either. Many of the subjects featured on the programme have universal appeal. Currently, the gender split of listeners is 40/60 male/female.  What’s more, 25% under the age of 35, which is higher than average for Radio 4.

The Woman's Hour podcast has 1m downloads per month making it the second most popular daily podcast across all ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ radio after The Archers.

We spoke to presenter Jenni Murray for a blog last year. In it she revealed what keeps her excited about the show – which she has been presenting for 29 years:

"I grew up with Woman’s Hour. My mother used to have very strict feeding routines for me, and they coincided with Woman’s Hour. So we would listen to it together. If there were any parts that included a health warning she’d send me into the kitchen – to put on the kettle or get something. So it’s always been a part of my life.

"My first time in the studio presenting it was incredible because I’d heard over the years 'Woman’s Hour presented by Sue MacGregor'. So the first time they said 'Woman’s Hour presented by Jenni Murray' I got very excited. And people will think I’m silly but I still get that same excited feeling every time I hear those words. It’s a wonderful job, I’ve always loved broadcasting, I’ve presented some TV programmes and written books, but I feel most at home in a radio studio so I feel very, very lucky.”

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A memorial service was held yesterday (Tuesday 4 October) at All Souls Church, Langham Place, London to celebrate the life of Lord Asa Briggs.

For 37 years Briggs was regarded as the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ’s first official historian, once referring to his endeavours by saying, 'to write the history of broadcasting in the 20th century is to write the history of everything else.'

Briggs first became involved in broadcasting in 1958 when he was asked by Sir Ian Jacob, then Director-General of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, to write a history of British broadcasting, focusing in particular the role of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. The first volume of Briggs’s five-volume history, Birth of Broadcasting was published in 1961; he completed the fifth volume in 1995. The books are seen by some as an extant source.

Historians and academics paid tribute to Briggs at his memorial today. Professor Jean Seaton from the University of Westminster, the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ's current historian, spoke of Briggs' contribution to the organisation. 

The memorial also celebrated Asa Briggs’ contribution to The Open University. The institution announced yesterday the creation of a new Professorial Chair in History – the Asa Briggs Chair. Its first incumbent will be Paul Lawrence from the OU's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, who has made a significant scholarly contribution to British social history. Additionally there will be a funded PhD studentship in a related area of research. 

"Asa Briggs was the first real historian to take the media seriously," said Tony Hall at the service, "His five-volume history of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ was a foundation, paving the way to media history as we know it today. He was also an inspirational guide to the Corporation, illuminating not only its past and present, but its future too.”

Briggs’ role as a public historian is to be celebrated in a special Radio 4 Archive Hour, scheduled for broadcast in 2017.

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