Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age

by Adrian Johns

Overview

“A superb account of the rise of modern broadcasting.” —Financial Times

When the pirate operator Oliver Smedley shot and killed his rival Reg Calvert in Smedley’s country cottage on June 21, 1966, it was a turning point for the outlaw radio stations dotting the coastal waters of England. Situated on ships and offshore forts like Shivering Sands, these stations blasted away at the high-minded BBC’s broadcast monopoly with the new beats of the Stones and DJs like Screaming Lord Sutch. For free-market ideologues like Smedley, the pirate stations were entrepreneurial efforts to undermine the growing British welfare state as embodied by the BBC. The worlds of high table and underground collide in this riveting history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393080308
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/09/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	911 KB

About the Author

Adrian Johns is a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Educated at Cambridge, England, Johns is a specialist on intellectual property and piracy.

Editorial Reviews

A well-written tale about those buccaneers of the high C’s.

The Economist

A treasure. . . . [Adrian] Johns portrays the British radio pirates not in the warm glow of sentimental memory that the period usually enjoys but in the historian’s cold bright light.

Randall Bloomquist - Wall Street Journal

A treasure. . . . [Adrian] Johns portrays the British radio pirates not in the warm glow of sentimental memory that the period usually enjoys but in the historian’s cold bright light.— Randall Bloomquist

Wall Street Journal

Johns (history, Univ. of Chicago), an expert on intellectual property and piracy, presents a history of the underground shipboard radio phenomenon in Great Britain in the 1960s. He uses the murder of illegal radio operator Reg Calvert by fellow pirate Oliver Smedley as a backdrop to the story of how a group of people fought the BBC's exclusive rights, granted in the 1920s, to transmit radio programming. Johns assesses these pirates' contributions to British culture, especially in view of the BBC's unwillingness to play rock music during the period. He uses a variety of secondary sources along with newspapers from the period, trial records from the Smedley murder case, and BBC documentation. VERDICT While presented as a scholarly historical study, the book also ties in modern issues of copyright and intellectual property. The Smedley murder gives it a more popular slant as well for those who enjoyed Steve Conway's memoir of life on a pirate radio boat in the 1980s, ShipRocked.—Joel W Tscherne, Bryant & Stratton Coll., OH

Library Journal

A historical retelling of the pirate-radio revolution that swept throughout 1960s England.

In June 1966, pirate-radio rivals Reg Calvert and Oliver Smedley faced off in Smedley's home, leaving Calvert dead. After chronicling the encounter, Johns (History/Univ. of Chicago;Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates, 2010, etc.) takes a leap backward to the '20s and England's initial steps to introduce the nation to radio. After the British Broadcasting Corporation monopolized the airwaves, several music lovers and businessmen set out to win them back, oftentimes employing guerrilla tactics to offer free music to the people. These so-called pirates of radio began assembling their operations beyond territorial waters—most notably, Shivering Sands, an abandoned, high-rise military fort in an estuary of the Thames. Described as "sinister-looking boxes perched on steel legs," the abandoned structure was occupied by Calvert and his colleagues, who imbued it with new life. What began as an enterprise of free-spirited entrepreneurs transmitting music from off-shore ships soon morphed into something else. "Floating DJs were one thing," writes the author. "Squatters on military installations was quite another." The stakes continued to rise, eventually leading to an actual invasion of the fort by Smedley's men. It was, quite literally, piratical behavior on the high seas, eventually leading Calvert to Smedley's home to settle the matter. Yet Calvert's murder functions solely as a convenient focal point for the larger implications that arose during the movement. The pirate-radio revolution spurred a debate that would have long-lasting implications. While Americans celebrated peace and love at Woodstock, the British pirates pushed the boundaries of copyright and information sharing well into the 21st century. Smedley called Calvert's murder "a joke gone sour," yet the lasting effects of their revolution is no laughing matter.

A powerful yet understated history of pirate radio and its impact in the Internet age.

Kirkus Reviews