Listen In

How Radio Changed the Home

Beaty Rubens, James Naughtie

$59.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Bodleian Library
07 February 2025

Film, TV & Radio; Social & cultural history

Listen In explores the sensational early history of radio from the perspective of listeners through previously unpublished testimonies. Packed with touching stories and anecdotes, illustrations and cartoons, it traces how radio transformed family life.

Radio today can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by what was known as the 'Radio Craze'.

This narrative history shows what the arrival of radio meant at a personal level through the voices and experiences of individuals as they adopted the then radical form of communication technology, invested in their first-ever gadgets and tuned in by their own firesides to outside voices and music, SOS calls, the Pips, the News, sport, royalty and innovative radiogenic comedy. It traces how radio affected family life, exploring whether it shifted dynamics between children and adults and between women and men, as well as its impact on class and a wider sense of nationhood.

Generously illustrated and drawing on contemporary journalism, fiction, diaries, cartoons and a remarkable cache of unpublished first-person testimonies discovered in the archives of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Listen In is packed with entertaining and thought-provoking stories. It comes at a timely moment when traditional linear radio is shifting in response to podcasting, and the entire experience of how we consume audio is once again undergoing transformation.

By: Beaty Rubens, James Naughtie
Imprint: Bodleian Library
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781851246311
ISBN 10: 1851246312
Pages: 272
Publication Date: 07 February 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Beaty Rubens was a BBC Radio producer for thirty-five years and is now a freelance producer, presenter and writer.

Reviews for Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home

Beaty Rubens’ hugely enjoyable book shows us why the medium of radio cast such a spell over those who suddenly found they could travel the world without leaving home. She weaves a compelling story of the radical changes the wireless brought to the way people lived. -- Rory Cellan-Jones For all of us who love radio and feel it is the essential companion in our lives, this book is a delightful and insightful read. It's both informative and entertaining as it takes the reader on a journey behind the scenes of a medium we have come to take for granted in its scope and ability. Lord Reith would be proud! -- Fi Glover