Afterlives of BBC Radio features

BBC Radio feature programmes written by established literary figures in the mid-twentieth century enjoyed richly creative afterlives across many decades and in a variety of media—for example, in print, as commercial recordings, in theatre performance and on television—as well as in a succession of new productions on radio. This activity kept works alive in the public imagination beyond the ephemeral moment of first broadcast and, it is argued, contributed to the sense (for audiences past and scholars present) of an informal canon of literary radio features. This essay explores the intermedial afterlives of three such literary features—Sackville-West’s The Rescue (1943), MacNeice’s The Dark Tower (1946) and Thomas’ Under Milk Wood (1954)—in order to demonstrate the significance of the form as a site for exploration of social issues, politics and cultural life. The essay concludes with a call for more wide-ranging attention to the protean feature form, including work that may not have persisted in the schedules, or had rich, intermedial afterlives, but that may still offer significant insights into the history of social, political and cultural life in mid-twentieth-century Britain

Robert Bridges' Masque <i>Demeter</i> and Oxford's Persephones

This essay takes as its focus Robert Bridges’ masque Demeter and its first performance in 1904 by the women students of Somerville, Oxford as part of the official opening ceremony for their new Library. It considers how Bridges’ elegant retelling of the myth of Persephone— which draws on the Homeric Hymn to Demeter—provides an appropriate allegory of wisdom and maturation and a suggestive commentary on how the higher education of women at this time was understood to prepare them for their future roles in society. The paper also shows how the occasion as a whole raised the profile of this all-female hall amongst the overwhelmingly male colleges and University of Oxford. Women students were very far from being on an equal footing with their male coevals at this time, not only in terms of educational status but also in terms of recreational opportunities. The performance of Demeter, however, set a firm precedent for dramatic performance within women’s halls. The paper describes how, soon after the performance, women scholars of Somerville contributed to the more decorative aspects of the Oxford University Dramatic Society’s Greek play productions from 1905; and how the classicist Gilbert Murray—who was actively involved in the education of women at Oxford, enjoying a long and special relationship with Somerville in particular—vigorously and practically encouraged the performance of Greek plays in translation and adaptation in the women’s halls

'Countries in the Air': Travel and Geomodernism in Louis MacNeice's BBC Features

In the middle stretch of his twenty-two-year BBC career, the poet and producer Louis MacNeice earned a reputation as one of the ‘undisputed masters of creative sound broadcasting’, a reputation derived, in part, from a huge range of radio features that were founded upon his journeys abroad. Through close examination of some of his most significant overseas soundscapes – including Portrait of Rome (1947) and Portrait of Delhi (1948) – this article will consider the role and function of travel in shaping MacNeice’s engagement with the radio feature as a modernist form at a particular transcultural moment when Britain moved through the end of the Second World War and the eventual disintegration of its empire

Performing Greek drama in Oxford and on tour with the Balliol Players

Performing Greek Drama in Oxford traces enduring connections between antiquity and dramatic performance in modern Oxford, discussing landmark events from the 16th century to the 1970s. This performance history of classical texts, especially those by the Greek dramatists, illuminates contemporary responses to debates on such matters as the position of women students, the dangers perceived to be associated with undergraduate acting and the position of classics within the curriculum at the University of Oxford. The book consistently engages with the history of theatrical performance of ancient plays beyond Oxford, for example, John Masefield’s Boars Hill Players, Penelope Wheeler’s Greek plays at the Front, and the link with the London stage through companies touring to Oxford, such as that led by Sybil Thorndike. Many of these engagements with Greek drama were facilitated by the connection with the classical scholar Gilbert Murray, who plays a central part in the history. The final chapters tell the story of the Balliol Players, a group of students who, fired by the post-war missionary enthusiasm of the early 1920s and supported by the elderly Thomas Hardy, determined to take Greek plays in translation to school and public audiences in the south and west of England in their summer vacations. Born from a socially idealistic impulse, the tradition lasted for over five decades, during which time these summer tours evolved from earnest productions of tragedy to satirical and irreverent re-writings of Aristophanes, typical of the spirit of the 1960s

Practising classical reception studies 'in the round': mass media engagements with antiquity and the 'democratic turn' towards the audience

This chapter argues for a refinement of current methodological practice within classical reception studies founded on the existence in the archives of a substantial amount of evidence for historical audience opinions on BBC Radio and BBC Television engagements with ancient Greek and Roman culture. Specifically, the simplistic Jaussian equation of ‘production’ and ‘reception’ must be re-thought; an alternative model founded on the idea of ‘engagement’ is promoted. The existence of a rich mine of evidence for audience engagement for mass media opens up new possibilities for classical reception studies practice even in those few areas where genuinely no similar evidence exists. Furthermore, an ‘in the round’ study of engagements with antiquity is advocated—that is, from as many different perspectives and in as many contexts as the available evidence allows, rather than along the customary one- or two-track approach along well-trodden literary, aesthetic or political paths

The Anger of Achilles: a prize-winning 'epic for radio' by Robert Graves

This chapter explores the varied scholarly, critical, and public engagements with The Anger of Achilles, Robert Graves’s adaptation of Homer’s Iliad. It was a huge commercial success in book form, often reprinted following its first publication in 1959. In the 1960s Graves vigorously pursued stage and film performances of the text, but while these plans continually faltered, it was in repeated performances on BBC Radio’s Home Service and Third Programme that The Anger of Achilles reached its largest audiences and attained its greatest critical success, with the award in 1965 of the Prix Italia for an outstanding literary and dramatic work for radio. This study emphasizes the fact that Graves’ creative adaptations of antiquity held enormous popular appeal, not only for readers but also for hundreds of thousands of listeners who may not, in the main, have been schooled in Classics