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Radio was the original home-based mass entertainment, but what did the first listeners make of it? Two notebooks uncovered in the Bodleian Library provide some surprising answers.

Radio was the first-ever form of home-based mass entertainment. Plenty has been written about its history from the broadcasters' point of view, but what did the first listeners make of the newcomer? First-person testimony from the 'Golden Age of Radio' is scant but a recent discovery in the Bodleian Library in Oxford is now providing far more detail and colour - all of it very lively and some of it rather unexpected.

In 1938, the 麻豆官网首页入口 commissioned two Bristol-based women called Hilda Jennings and Winifred Gill to conduct a grassroots survey on the impact of broadcasting on everyday life. They published a useful pamphlet on their findings. Winifred Gill left her archive to the Bodleian Library in Oxford where producer Beaty Rubens recently uncovered the two hand-written exercise books in which she had kept her research material, much of which didn't make the final cut.

Recorded in front of an audience and to accompany a major exhibition at the Bodleian Library, actors have brought this material to life, while an archive-based musical soundtrack by composer Emily Levy gives an impression of the impact of radio on British homes.

Actors: Alison Reid, Alice Lamb, Andrew McGillan, Zara Ramm

Musicians: Matthew Bourne, Richard Ormrod

Producer for Just Radio: Beaty Rubens

Release date:

30 minutes

On radio

Sun 2 Mar 2025 19:15

Broadcast

  • Sun 2 Mar 2025 19:15

Binaural sound

What is it and why does it matter?

Podcast