Wartime British writers took to the airwaves to reshape the nation and the Empire
Writing the Radio War merges the fields of sound studies, radio studies, and Second World War literary studies through considerations of both major and marginalized figures of wartime broadcasting.
Wartime British writers took to the airwaves to reshape the nation and the Empire
Writing the Radio War positions the Second World War as a critical moment in the history of cultural mediation in Britain. Through chapters focusing on the middlebrow radicalism of J.B. Priestley, ground-breaking works by Louis MacNeice and James Hanley at the BBC Features Department, frontline reporting by Denis Johnston, and the emergence of a West Indian literary identity in the broadcasts of Una Marson, Writing the Radio War explores how these writers capitalised on the particularities of the sonic medium to communicate their visions of wartime and postwar Britain and its empire. By combining literary aesthetics with the acoustics of space, accent, and dialect, writers created aural communities that at times converged, and at times contended, with official wartime versions of Britain and Britishness.
Key Features
Merges the fields of sound studies, radio studies, and Second World War literary studies through considerations of both major and marginalized figures of wartime broadcastingBrings substantial but underused archival material (from the BBC Written Archives Centre, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, the British Library, and other archives) to bear on the cultural importance of radio during the warForegrounds the role of radio in bridging literary movements from the highbrow to the middlebrow, and from the regional to the imperialDraws on Listener Research Reports, listener correspondence, newspaper coverage, and surveys by Mass Observation and the Wartime Social Survey in order to capture listeners' responses to wartime broadcasting in general as well as specific programsFills a gap in accounts of literary radio broadcasting, between Todd Avery's Radio Modernism (which ends at 1939) and postwar accounts of the Third Programme (by Humphrey Carpenter and Kate Whitehead) and individual writer-broadcasters
“Whittington intricately explores the way his key figures negotiate their own political beliefs within the wartime exigencies of the BBC... As well as being a fascinating study in the processes behind artistic endeavour these tensions also expose wider discomfort with certain parts of the war, and its meanings, for the British establishment. ---Linsey Robb, Cercles”
Gracefully written and unfailingly astute, attuned to the nuances of text, sound and institution, Writing the Radio War illuminates the complexly mediated construction of British nationhood during wartime, and in the process makes a compelling case for the vitality and durability of literary radio studies.-- "Debra Rae Cohen, University of South Carolina"
Ian Whittington is Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of Writing the Radio War: Literature, Politics and the BBC, 1939-1945 (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) as well as a number of essays on radio studies and twentieth-century British, Irish, and Anglophone literature.
'Gracefully written and unfailingly astute, attuned to the nuances of text, sound and institution, Writing the Radio War illuminates the complexly mediated construction of British nationhood during wartime, and in the process makes a compelling case for the vitality and durability of literary radio studies.'Debra Rae Cohen, University of South CarolinaWartime British writers took to the airwaves to reshape the nation and the EmpireWriting the Radio War positions the Second World War as a critical moment in the history of cultural mediation in Britain. Through chapters focusing on the middlebrow radicalism of J. B. Priestley, ground-breaking works by Louis MacNeice and James Hanley at the BBC Features Department, frontline reporting by Denis Johnston, and the emergence of a West Indian literary identity in the broadcasts of Una Marson, Writing the Radio War explores how these writers capitalised on the particularities of the sonic medium to communicate their visions of wartime and postwar Britain and its empire. By combining literary aesthetics with the acoustics of space, accent and dialect, writers created aural communities that at times converged, and at times contended, with official wartime versions of Britain and Britishness. Ian Whittington is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where his research and teaching focus on twentieth-century British and Anglophone literature, media and culture.Cover image: BBC War Correspondent Robin Duff records an American serviceman's impressions of bomb damage near St Paul's Cathedral, London, in 1942. Copyright
This item is eligible for simple returns within 30 days of delivery. Return shipping is the responsibility of the customer. See our returns policy for further details.
