Writing the Radio War: Literature, Politics, and the BBC, 1939-1945

by Ian Whittington

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474452540
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/07/2019
Series:	Edinburgh Critical Studies in War and Culture
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ian Whittington is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mississippi, where he researches and teaches British and Anglophone culture, with a focus on the intersection of radio and literature in the twentieth century.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vi

Series Editors' Preface viii

Introduction: Projecting Britain 1

1 Out of the People: J. B. Priestley's Broadbrow Radicalism 30

2 James Hanley and the Shape of the Wartime Features Department 65

3 To Build the Falling Castle: Louis MacNeice and the Drama of Form 83

4 Versions of Neutrality: Denis Johnston's War Reports 117

5 Calling the West Indies: Una Marson's Wireless Black Atlantic 153

Coda: Coronation 185

Bibliography 192

Index 211

What People are Saying About This

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.

University of South Carolina Debra Rae Cohen

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

University of South Carolina Debra Rae Cohen

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

From the Publisher

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.

Cercles - Linsey Robb