Armchair Nation

by Joe Moran

  48. ‘Television boys show off their new lift’, Daily Express, 18 February 1937; Jonah Barrington, ‘Readers travel from as far as Land’s End to see television’, Daily Express, 17 August 1937; Jonah Barrington, And Master of None (London: W. Edwards, 1948), pp. 189–90.

  49. ‘Two years of television’, The Times, 23 December 1938.

  50. P. H., ‘And this is how two reporters saw it’, Daily Express, 24 February 1939.

  51. Alan Hunter, ‘Television is for the home’, Radio Times, 10 February 1939, 10.

  52. ‘Phone “sees” man 106 miles away’, Daily Express, 24 December 1938.

  53. Morley interviewed in Imagine: And Then There Was Television, BBC1, 21 December 2006; Kate Dunn, Do Not Adjust Your Set: The Early Days of Live Television (London: John Murray, 2003), p. 27.

  54. ‘In praise of television’, Journal of the Television Society, 3, 2 (1939), 49–50.

  55. Bruce Forsyth, Bruce: The Autobiography (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 2001), p. 3; Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf (London: Vintage, 1997), p. 667.

  56. Nigel Nicolson (ed.), The Harold Nicolson Diaries 1907–1963 (London: Phoenix, 2005), pp. 182–3.

  57. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England, 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 15; ‘Individual approach’, Listener, 11 May 1939, 1015.

  58. The Scanner, ‘Club for television viewers?’, Radio Times, 3 February 1939, 13; The Scanner, ‘Au revoir to the king’, Radio Times, 28 April 1939, 13.

  59. ‘Mr. Boar goes in for television’, Radio Times, 24 February 1939, 6.

  60. Baily, Here’s Television, p. 18; The Scanner, ‘Television is grand!’, Radio Times, 7 July 1939, 18.

  61. ‘Views of viewers heard by the BBC’, The Times, 27 June 1939.

  62. Paddy Scannell, ‘Public service broadcasting and modern life’, in Culture and Power: A Media, Culture & Society Reader, eds Paddy Scannell, Philip Schlesinger and Colin Sparks (London: Sage, 1992), p. 330; Grace Wyndham Goldie, ‘Television tea-party’, Listener, 29 June 1939, 1368.

  63. Ernest C. Thomson, ‘Au revoir, television’, in BBC Handbook, 1940 (London: BBC, 1940), p. 53.

  64. The Scanner, ‘Television can take it!’, Radio Times, 1 September 1939, 15.

  65. ‘Electrical and Musical Industries: television progress’, Observer, 10 December 1939.

  66. Thomson, ‘Au revoir, television’, p. 58.

  3. A straight pencil-mark up the sky

  1. Graham Payn and Sheridan Morley (eds), The Noel Coward Diaries (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 77.

  2. Patricia and Robert Malcolmson (eds), Nella Last’s Peace: The Postwar Diaries of Housewife, 49 (London: Profile, 2008), p. 31; ‘Television service’, BBC Yearbook, 1947 (London: BBC, 1947), p. 77.

  3. Imagine: And Then There Was Television, BBC1, 21 December 2006; Peter Sallis, Fading into the Limelight (London: Orion, 2006), p. 14.

  4. Fay Schlesinger, ‘Still in good working order, the television set made in 1936’, Daily Mail, 20 July 2009; Anthony Kamm and Malcolm Baird, John Logie Baird: A Life (Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 2002), pp. 363–4.

  5. ‘Case for television’, The Times, 6 March 1947; Simon Garfield, Our Hidden Lives: The Everyday Diaries of a Forgotten Britain 1945–1948 (London: Ebury Press, 2004), p. 477.

  6. Richard Haynes, ‘The BBC, austerity and broadcasting the 1948 Olympic Games’, International Journal of the History of Sport, 27, 6 (April 2010), 1042–3.

  7. Listener Research Department, ‘Television: the “Viewers’ Vote” scheme’, 17 June 1948, BBC WAC, LT/48/1047; ‘Television tastes’, Manchester Guardian, 14 December 1950; Listener Research Department, ‘Television: some points about the audience’, BBC WAC, LT/48/1219.

  8. Listener Research Department, ‘Television Enquiry 1948, part 4, viewing’, BBC WAC, LR/49/1260; Mass-Observation’s Panel on Television, April 1949, MOA, File Report 3106, p. 5.

  9. John Swift, Adventures in Vision: The First Twenty-Five Years of Television (London: John Lehmann, 1950), p. 132; Bob Phillips, The 1948 Olympics: How London Rescued the Games (Cheltenham: SportsBooks, 2007), p. xii.

  10. Harold Hobson, ‘The problem of personality’, Listener, 1 June 1950, 962.

  11. Leslie Hardern, TV Inventors’ Club (London: Rockcliff, 1954), pp. 156–8.

  12. ‘Something for everybody?’, Manchester Guardian, 17 September 1954; Joan Bush, ‘What’s your gadget?’, Picture Post, 5 September 1953, 33; Hardern, TV Inventors’ Club, p. 138.

  13. Mike Ashley, Starlight Man: The Extraordinary Life of Algernon Blackwood (London: Constable, 2001), pp. 324–6, 334.

  14. ‘The dandy comes back to W.1’, Picture Post, 7 June 1952, 28; Graham McCann, Bounder! The Biography of Terry-Thomas (London: Aurum, 2008), pp. 58, 60–62.

  15. Su Holmes, Entertaining Television: The BBC and Popular Television Culture in the 1950s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), p. 83.

  16. ‘Lord Reith in conversation with Malcolm Muggeridge – part two’, Listener, 7 December 1967, 744; C. A. Lejeune, ‘Television’, Observer, 31 December 1950.

  17. ‘“Television mast a hazard” to planes’, Manchester Guardian, 16 December 1949.

  18. ‘Television for 6,000,000 more’, Manchester Guardian, 14 December 1949; Norman Collins, ‘This thing called television’, Radio Times, 9 December 1949, 6.

  19. Kenneth Baily, Here’s Television (London: Vox Mundi, 1950), p. 67; Norman Collins, ‘Preface: Getting to know the place’, in London Belongs to Me (London: Collins, 1945), p. 8.

  20. Leonard Marsland Gander, Television for All (London: Alba Books, 1950), p. 39.

  21. Collins, ‘This thing called television’, 6.

  22. T. S. Eliot, ‘The television habit’, The Times, 20 December 1950; Norman Collins, ‘Anxiety typical of every age’, The Times, 23 December 1950.

  23. ‘Television’s new venture’, Manchester Guardian, 19 December 1949.

  24. ‘Wariness about television’, Manchester Guardian, 20 December 1949.

  25. ‘Television’s new station’, Manchester Guardian, 19 December 1949; ‘TV dealers brought from bed by rush to buy sets’, Daily Mirror, 19 December 1949.

  26. Steven Barnett, Games and Sets: The Changing Face of Sport on Television (London: BFI, 1990), p. 12; ‘The fans hunted TV aerials’, Daily Mirror, 26 September 1951.

  27. Fyfe Robertson, ‘We were wrong about television’, Picture Post, 10 February 1951, 24.

  28. ‘A Wellsian world in the heart of the hills’, Manchester Guardian, 11 October 1951.

  29. Leonard Mosley, ‘I’ve run into TV’s top fans’, Daily Express, 30 October 1951; Leonard Mosley, ‘A fig for crooning cockneys!’, Daily Express, 10 October 1951.

  30. ‘Professor and the “tangible terror”’, Daily Mirror, 26 January 1952; ‘“Tangible terror” of television: a warning to Scotland’, Manchester Guardian, 26 January 1952; Robert Armstrong, ‘Kirk O’Shotts’, TV Mirror, 1 May 1954, 21.

  31. Hansard, HC Deb, 30 July 1949, vol. 467, col. 2940.

  32. David Kynaston, Austerity Britain 1945–51 (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 585; ‘Fascinating possibilities of TV medium’, Glasgow Herald, 14 March 1952.

  33. ‘Television comes to Scotland’, Glasgow Herald, 15 March 1952; David Pat Walker, The BBC in Scotland: The First Fifty Years (Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2011), p. 188; ‘Excellent reception’, Glasgow Herald, 15 March 1952.

  34. Richard Whiteley, Himoff! The Memoirs of a TV Matinée Idle (London: Orion, 2000), p. 12.

  35. ‘Obituary: Gerald Campion’, Independent, 13 July 2002; Hansard, HC Deb, 15 May 1952, vol. 500, col. 1638.

  36. Audience Research Department, ‘Viewer research report: Café Continental – 28th February 1953’, 11 March 1953, BBC WAC, LE VR/53/100; ‘Hélène Cordet’, TV Mirror, 10 October 1953, 16.

  37. Whiteley, Himoff!, pp. 17, 12.

  38. Tony Currie, The Radio Times Story (Tiverton: Kelly Publications, 2001), pp. 77, 79.

  39.
John Davies, Broadcasting and the BBC in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1994), pp. 203–4.

  40. Norman Shacklady and Martin Ellen (eds), On Air: A History of BBC Transmission (Orpington: Wavechange Books, 2003), p. 123.

  41. Nick Clarke, The Shadow of a Nation: How Celebrity Destroyed Britain (London: Phoenix, 2004), pp. 24, 19, 30, 295.

  42. D. R. Thorpe, Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan (London: Chatto and Windus, 2010), p. 276; Reginald Pound, ‘The King’s funeral’, Listener, 21 February 1952, 318; Henrik Örnebring, ‘Writing the history of television audiences: the coronation in the Mass-Observation Archive’, in Helen Wheatley (ed.), Re-Viewing Television History: Critical Issues in Television Historiography (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007), p. 176.

  43. Cassandra, Daily Mirror, 22 October 1952, 7; ‘Archbishop does not like TV’, Irish Times, 12 September 1952.

  44. Ben Pimlott, The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II (London: HarperCollins, 1996), pp. 205, 190–91; Peter Hennessy, Having it So Good: Britain in the Fifties (London: Penguin, 2007), p. 242; Leonard Miall, Inside the BBC: British Broadcasting Characters (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), p. 162.

  45. Gillian McIntosh, The Force of Culture: Unionist Identities in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Cork: Cork University Press, 1999), pp. 120, 122.

  46. Natasha Vall, Cultural Region: North East England 1945–2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), p. 39.

  47. John Moynihan, The Soccer Syndrome: From the Primeval Forties (London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1966), pp. 75–9.

  48. Martin Johnes and Gavin Mellor, ‘The 1953 FA Cup Final: modernity and tradition in British culture’, Contemporary British History, 20, 2 (June 2006), 271.

  49. Clarke, Shadow of a Nation, p. 43.

  50. ‘Seven hours of comfort’, Manchester Guardian, 3 June 1953; ‘Our London correspondence’, Manchester Guardian, 3 June 1953.

  51. Kynaston, Family Britain, p. 299; Harry Hopkins, The New Look: A Social History of the Forties and Fifties in Britain (London: Secker and Warburg, 1963), p. 295; ‘20,000,000 saw Abbey service’, Manchester Guardian, 13 June 1953; Philip Ziegler, Crown and People (London: Collins, 1978), p. 115; ‘Television at Finsbury Drive, Bradford’, 2 June 1953, MOA, SxMOA1/2/69/6/C/8; ‘TV eyes and procession feet’, Daily Herald, 30 May 1953.

  52. Örnebring, ‘Writing the history’, pp. 177, 181–2.

  53. ‘Looks like a chair, actually it’s a lavatory’, A Night in with Alan Bennett, BBC2, 5 July 1992.

  54. ‘Coronation 1953 – children’s essays’, MOA, SxMOA1/2/69/3/D/8. The boy’s name has been changed in accordance with the MOA’s policy of protecting anonymity.

  55. Örnebring, ‘Writing the history’, p. 179; Ziegler, Crown and People, p. 118.

  56. Örnebring, ‘Writing the history’, pp. 178–9; Ziegler, Crown and People, p. 122; Joan Bakewell, The Centre of the Bed (London: Sceptre, 2004), p. 94; Joan Bakewell, ‘Diary’, New Statesman, 7 April 2003, 8.

  57. Miall, Inside the BBC, p. 190.

  58. Arthur Bryant, ‘Our notebook’, London Illustrated News, 29 May 1954, 898.

  59. ‘20,000,000 saw Abbey service’; ‘2 June 1953 – coronation day’, in Kenneth Baily (ed.), Television Annual for 1954 (London: Odhams, 1954), p. 68.

  60. ‘Viewers’ views’, Radio Times, 12 June 1953, 44; Ziegler, Crown and People, p. 104.

  61. ‘The year’s retail trade’, The Times, 29 December 1953.

  62. ‘“Sign” of the television age’, TV Mirror, 12 September 1953, 7.

  63. John Moore, ‘TV in our village’, TV Mirror, 12 September 1953, 7, 22.

  64. ‘Hessary Tor not the only site for Western TV mast’, Manchester Guardian, 1 October 1953; Dartmoor Preservation Association, ‘Preliminary memorandum on the proposal of the British Broadcasting Corporation to establish a 750-ft television mast and installations at North Hessary Tor, Dartmoor’, 10 December 1951, NA, COU 1/454; Mrs Sylvia Sayer to H. M. Abrahams, 25 November 1952, NA, COU 1/454.

  65. Mrs Aimee Havard to Sir David Maxwell Fife, 29 December 1953, NA, BD 24/200.

  66. ‘TV aerial put up in garden’, Manchester Guardian, 15 July 1952; ‘Booster sets today and tomorrow’, Isle of Man Examiner, 18 December 1953.

  67. Walker, The BBC in Scotland, p. 191.

  68. George Best, Blessed: The Autobiography (London: Ebury, 2002), pp. 24–6.

  69. Philip Norman, Babycham Night: A Boyhood at the end of the Pier (London: Pan, 2004), pp. 133, 148–9.

  70. Norman, Babycham Night, p. 263.

  71. David Bret, The Real Gracie Fields: The Authorised Biography (London: JR Books, 2010), p. 1; ‘Looking around, the Palace gets the new TV’, TV Times, 20 September 1955, 17; Roy Blackman, ‘Teletecs’, Daily Mirror, 11 April 1960.

  72. Jonathan Dimbleby, The Prince of Wales (London: Warner Books, 1995), p. 160.

  4. The pale flicker of the Lime Grove light

  1. J. B. Priestley, Thoughts in the Wilderness (London: Heinemann, 1957), pp. 194, 196.

  2. Gilbert Harding, Along My Line (London: Putnam, 1953), p. 191; Wallace Reyburn, Gilbert Harding: A Candid Portrayal (Brighton: Angus and Robertson, 1978), p. 55; Andy Medhurst, ‘Every wart and pustule: Gilbert Harding and television stardom’, in John Corner (ed.), Popular Television in Britain (London: BFI, 1991), p. 62.

  3. ‘Fascinating possibilities of TV medium’, Glasgow Herald, 14 March 1952; Isobel Barnett, ‘Life has many “lines”’, TV Mirror, 11 December 1954, 19; Peter Black, Mirror in the Corner: People’s Television (London: Hutchinson, 1972), p. 26; The Magic Rectangle, BBC1, 18 November 1986.

  4. ‘Mr Harding may have been over-fortified’, Manchester Guardian, 8 December 1952.

  5. Harding, Along My Line, p. 199.

  6. H. T. Himmelweit, A. N. Oppenheim and P. Vince, Television and the Child: An Empirical Study of the Effect of Television on the Young (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), p. 161.

  7. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England, 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 531; see also p. 98.

  8. TV Mirror, 5 December 1953, 3; A. J. P. Taylor, ‘Let’s be rude!’, Daily Herald, 30 May 1953.

  9. Stephen Grenfell (ed.), Gilbert Harding: By His Friends (London: André Deutsch, 1961), p. 121; Craig Raine, T. S. Eliot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. xiii; Gilbert Harding, Master of None (London: Putnam, 1958), p. 13; Reyburn, Gilbert Harding, p. 93; The Magic Rectangle, BBC1, 18 November 1986.

  10. ‘Gilbert Harding’s notebook’, Picture Post, 7 November 1953, 52.

  11. ‘Gilbert Harding’s notebook’, Picture Post, 9 January 1954, 37.

  12. John Humphrys, Devil’s Advocate (London: Hutchinson, 1999), p. 160.

  13. ‘Gilbert Harding’s notebook’, Picture Post, 19 December 1953, 52; ‘Gilbert Harding’s notebook’, Picture Post, 12 June 1954, 11.

  14. ‘Gilbert Harding’s notebook’, Picture Post, 27 February 1954, 54; ‘Gilbert Harding’s notebook’, Picture Post, 12 March 1955, 44; ‘Christian name complex’, Manchester Guardian, 23 January 1952; Brian Harrison, Seeking a Role: The United Kingdom, 1951–1970 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), p. 492.

  15. Mark Lewisohn, Funny Peculiar: The True Story of Benny Hill (London: Pan, 2003), pp. 174, 176, 178, 206.

  16. Su Holmes, Entertaining Television: The BBC and Popular Television Culture in the 1950s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008), pp. 84–5; Brian Tesler, ‘The things they “Ask Pickles”’, TV Mirror, 10 July 1954, 9.

  17. Himmelweit et al., Television and the Child, pp. 147, 149; ‘Gilbert Harding’s notebook’, Picture Post, 4 December 1954, 9; Hansard, HL Deb, 25 November 1953, vol. 184, col. 521; Brian Pullan with Michelle Abendstern, A History of the University of Manchester, 1951–1973 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 51.

  18. Peter Black, ‘A generation ago’, Listener, 4 September 1969, 308.

  19. Joan Gilbert, ‘Tele-Talk’, Picture Post, 17 October 1953, 36; David Attenborough, Life on Air:
Memoirs of a Broadcaster (London: BBC, 2002), p. 20; Jacquetta Hawkes, Adventurer in Archaeology: The Biography of Sir Mortimer Wheeler (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 299.

  20. Paul Johnstone, Buried Treasure (London: Phoenix House, 1957), p. 101.

  21. ‘Obituary: Mr Paul Johnstone’, The Times, 17 March 1976; Paul Jordan, ‘Archaeology and television’, in Antiquity and Man: Essays in Honour of Glyn Daniel, eds John D. Evans, Barry Cunliffe and Colin Renfrew (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981), p. 209; Glyn Daniel, Some Small Harvest: The Memoirs of Glyn Daniel (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), pp. 268, 365.

  22. Attenborough, Life on Air, p. 46; Audience Research Department, ‘Audience research report: Zoo Quest, Friday 9th November 1956’, 3 December 1956, BBC WAC, VR/56/587.

  23. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, pp. 410–11; Douglas Brent, ‘Dancing Club versus “The Creep”’, TV Mirror, 1 May 1954, 23.

  24. David Kynaston, Family Britain 1951–57 (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 198; ‘Saturday night at the Palais’, The Economist, 14 February 1953, 401; Elisabeth Maxwell, A Mind of My Own: My Life with Robert Maxwell (London: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 227.

  25. ‘1984: Wife dies as she watches’, Daily Express, 14 December 1954.

  26. Daniel Lea, ‘Horror comics and highbrow sadism: televising George Orwell in the 1950s’, Literature and History, 19, 1 (April 2010), 71; John Rodden, George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2002), p. 279.

  27. John Sutherland, Magic Moments (London: Profile, 2008), p. 118.

  28. Hansard, HC Deb, 20 January 1954, vol. 522, col. 987; Joanna Bornat, Oral History, Health and Welfare (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 59; Roger Storey, Gilbert Harding By His Private Secretary (London: Barrie and Rockcliff, 1961), p. 13.

  29. ‘Driver “forced from car”’, Manchester Guardian, 18 December 1954.

  30. Pam Ayres, The Necessary Aptitude: A Memoir (London: Ebury, 2011), pp. 113–14; ‘TV not as bad as it is painted’, Manchester Guardian, 1 September 1956.

  31. Himmelweit et al., Television and the Child, p. 202; Jean Baggott, The Girl on the Wall: One Life’s Rich Tapestry (London: Icon, 2009), pp. 267–8.