16th December 2024
John Wyver writes: At 21.07 on Thursday 16 December 1937 the Television service from Alexandra Palace broadcast the sixth in the series Experiments in Science. This 16-minute edition had the subtitle Reconstructing the Past, and featured Margot Eates of the
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14th December 2024
John Wyver writes: Nothing. No television broadcasts from Alexandra Palace on Monday 14 December 1936, and only an apologetic mid-evening sound announcement. A fierce gale had damaged the transmission mast and taken the service off-air. A contributor to the
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13th December 2024
John Wyver writes: Presented on the afternoon of Monday 13 December 1937 was the most ambitious television ballet to date, act 2 of, as it was billed, Le lac des cygnes, or Swan Lake to the rest of us. The
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8th December 2024
John Wyver writes: We might celebrate the television of 8 December 1937 for the one and only appearance of the Trapp Family Singers led by George von Trapp. Formed after winning a singing competition in Salzburg the previous year,
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4th December 2024
John Wyver writes: One of the true eccentricities of performance presented from Alexandra Palace in the later 1930s was the cycle of masques staged by H.D.C. Pepler. On this day, 4 December 1937, mime and mask artist Pepler,
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3rd December 2024
John Wyver writes: on the afternoon of this day, Friday 3 December 1937, four members of The Irish Players came to Alexandra Palace at short notice to play Lady Gregory's one-act drama The Rising of the Moon. They were
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29th November 2024
John Wyver writes: OTD, Monday 29 November 1937, from the BBC's 'high definition' Television service... more Shakespeare. Scenes from Cymbeline, broadcast from 3.39pm to 4.24pm, and then again from 9.31pm to 9.55pm, was a presentation of minimally restaged elements
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14th April 2024
John Wyver writes: another gathering in of articles and other bits and pieces that have engaged me and enriched my thinking across the past week. The image is from the controversial, seemingly both complex and simplistic Civil War, released this
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20th April 2017
I am delighted that this week the new issue of the Historical Journal of Film, Television and Radio has published my article 'Exploring the lost television and technique of producer Fred O’Donovan'. The article is developed
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3rd November 2016
I was delighted last week to receive a copy of the new Shakespeare Survey volume, no 69, published by Cambridge University Press. This is an annual collection of Shakespeare scholarship edited by Peter Holland - and for this themed
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