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Advent Calendar Day 16: Christmas on Rations

2016-12-16T12:00:00+00:00

The ad by the Ministry of Food suggested various Christmas recipes using the available ingredients.

The 1944 Christmas edition of Radio Times magazine included the usual Food Facts ad by the Ministry of Food about how to make the best out of what was available at the time to make "Christmas Fancies."

More advice was available on radio thanks to The Kitchen Front, a daily programme devised by the �� and the Ministry of Food to "talk about what to eat and where to get it" - the idea was to give wartime housewives hints and tips on the best and most resourceful ways of using their rations.

Browsing through the episodes provides a good glimpse into wartime daily life - suggestions on how to make mincemeat without suet, talks from women writers, guest appearances by "men in the kitchen" and, of course, some comedy to take the mind away from it all.

Frederick Grisewood on The Kitchen Front, March 1941.

Meet Helen Clare, wartime �� star

2016-10-31T11:48:38+00:00

Of all the letters we get from people who have found themselves through the �� Genome listings, one of our favourites is the one that brought us to the attention of wartime �� star Helen Clare, who will be 100 in November and was a regular broadcaster with the �� through the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

You might have just seen her at the ��'s The One Show, as she was visited by Petula Clark.

Helen Clare on Calling Gibraltar

Her friend Simon Robinson wrote to tell us about her past, and she subsequently featured in a Radio Times article and was interviewed by the ��. We were also able to play her some of her old recordings we found in the �� archive.

She thinks efforts like �� Genome are vital to the history of broadcasting.

"We didn't think of a programme's significance at the time of making it, or that people would ask about it years after. Now there is a permanent and accessible online resource to benefit not only historians but the public in general. In my time with the �� from 1936-1960 the world changed a great deal and the �� programmes were part of that change and history."

"Now it is possible to see not only what was popular in a specific year but what was actually broadcast on a particular day. I could look and find out for instance what I was broadcasting on this day in 1938, 1944 or 1954, it's unbelievable", she added.

Helen Clare on the Radio Times cover, third from the right

One look at the �� Genome listings shows you the scope of her career. She is first listed in the 1930s making frequent appearances on radio singing with Jack Jackson and his Band at the Dorchester Hotel. Helen Clare was also one of the pioneers of early television broadcasts appearing in Cabaret Cartoons in 1937. During the Second World War, she made it to the cover of the Radio Times in September 1940 as one of the "three heroines of salvage".

She was a well-known voice on radio shows broadcast to the forces abroad. She sang and compered It's All Yours, a programme featuring children sending messages and songs to their fathers, uncles and brothers serving with the British Forces in remote areas around the world; she sang soldiers' requests on Calling Gibraltar.

Helen Clare was shown the more than 900 �� Genome listings that mentioned her and said it was a surprise to see just how many programmes she had been on.

"It really does bring back memories and recollections of all the people I have worked with in the past. So many wonderful performers and most of them are gone now, but they live on in this. I'm currently contributing to my biography due out in 2017 and it has been wonderful as an aid for checking details of key programmes I was involved in."

You can find out more information about Helen Clare on her website, helenclare.com

The recording of It's All Yours, 1944

70 years of Woman's Hour: the bouquets and brickbats

2016-10-07T06:00:00+00:00

The cover announcing the launch of Woman's Hour, October 1946

Woman's Hour first went on air in the Light Programme on October 7th 1946. It made it to the cover of the magazine, and a feature inside explained the programme would include "talks on household management, cookery, fashion, beauty culture, child care, housing, and pensions." The presenter was Alan Ivimey, a "London-born journalist who specialises in writing for and talking to women" - he was replaced three months later by Joan Griffiths.

The first week of programmes featured subjects such as "putting your best face forward', "how to take care of your feet", coupon savings and pensions. The listing for each day of that first week on air was highlighted in a beautifully illustrated box.

The listings for the first editions of Woman's Hour, October 1946

The first programme was followed by a special listeners' panel hearing the programme in Broadcasting House. The panel consisted of "Miss Margaret Bondfield, who was Minister of Labour from 1929-1931, Miss Deborah Kerr, the film star, and Mrs. Elsie May Crump, a butcher's wife from Chorlton-cum-Hardy."

Five years later, deputy programme editor Joanna Scott-Mancrief summed up some of the controversies stirred by the programme through their listeners' letters. She describes how an item in which Dr. Joad discussed English cooking "brought hundreds of brickbats and bouquets" including the letter from a listener at Gorleston-on-Sea: "Englishwomen cook what their menfolk want to eat. The average husband, faced by some delectable French concoction, will view it with grave suspicion and enquire: 'What's this?'"

She also highlights a letter asking Woman's Hour to start a "vigorous campaign". "We as women of the country are everlastingly referred to as 'housewives.' The Government, the newspapers, the ��, the shopkeepers, all and everyone call us housewives. Couldn't we find some more attractive noun for ourselves? Please talk it over and see what you can do."

T. Holland Bennett interviewing Miss Deborah Kerr, Mrs. Elsie May Crump and Miss Margaret Bondfield

The deputy editor wrote again in 1956 about how the programme had evolved in the first ten years of life: "In 1946 housewives' problems were so many and pressing that the stress in the first programmes was inevitably on practical matters. In ten years listeners have, however, shown us that their interests are as wide as the world itself: accordingly, the programme has travelled abroad and acquired its own correspondents in five different countries."

Fast-forward to 1967, when Woman's Hour decided to celebrate its 21st anniversary with a series of "birthday fortnight" special editions. "Although those of us who produce the programme had not planned any special celebration, listeners have been writing to us throughout the year to remind us of our birthday, sending greetings and suggesting items they would like to hear", wrote Monica Sims, editor of the programme at the time.

Items that week included a talk from Dr Benjamin Spock about parenting, a couple undecided about marriage, and being a grandmother.

She announced some favourite guests and broadcasters would be "looking ahead to life in 1988" and hoped that for the next 21 years listeners would "enjoy many happy returns of Woman's Hour."

Woman's Hour did indeed continue on air in 1986 and made it to the cover of Radio Times for its 40th anniversary. The main article described the programme as "the first to break the �� taboos surrounding such things as the Pill, homosexuality, impotence and frigidity". Programme editor Sandra Chalmers added that "we would never do something purely for the sake of shocking people, "but if it's in the interests of our listeners, there's nothing that can't be discussed."

The 50th anniversary was celebrated in 1996 with a cover featuring a semi-nude photograph of actor Helen Mirren, at "50 & Fabulous". Presenter Jenni Murray told how in 1992 "the programme came under threat. It was suggested that in a 'post-feminist' era its time, title and focus should change, you the listeners gave the reasons why it should continue - in an unprecedented furore directed at the then controller Michael Green (who now openly admits to travelling in permanent terror of being handbagged wherever he went)".

"You told him the programme celebrated, informed, entertained and educated women, filling in the gaps that other programmes ignored. Some of you wrote to say how Woman's Hour had changed your life - giving you the courage to apply for a job, cope with a difficult teenager or take out the pension fund you'd been putting off. Some of you spoke of smears or mammograms you'd had because you heard it on Woman's Hour. The programme had saved your life. Men, too, wrote in to save 'their' programme - explaining how they loved to hear a female perspective, or how they now understood their wife's illness considerably better after hearing it described.

Woman's Hour will be celebrating its 70th birthday with a live audience show from the �� Radio Theatre on October 10th. The panel will discuss the results of a poll specially commissioned to find out how life has changed for women at home and at work from 1946 to the present day. In the meantime, our suggestion is to search for different topics + the term "Woman's Hour" and organise it by Oldest First - this gives you a fascinating glimpse at how the programme has tackled different subjects through the decades. We've tried "job" and "sexual." What have you found?

On This Day, 1948: the opening of the first televised Olympics

2015-07-29T08:59:09+00:00

Images of the �� coverage of the 1948 Olympics

The broadcasting and televising of the London 1948 Olympiad, which started on July 29 with the transmission of the Opening Ceremony, was described by Radio Times as "the biggest operation of its kind that the �� has ever undertaken." Viewers were able to watch the main events at Wembley live - which included the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, the athletics, the boxing, the swimming, the diving, the football, the hockey and the riding, while Television Newsreel cameras captured highlights of other sports.

EMI mobile television control room, first used for televising the events at the Empire Pool

Outside Broadcast Manager Ian Orr-Ewing described the difficulty of selecting commentators for the TV broadcast: "Regular viewers will understand that television commentary demands a technique different from that which has been established for sound broadcasting; a television commentator is not merely describing what he can, see but is explaining the picture in the light of his expert knowledge of the subject."

You can watch this clip of the Olympic Newsreel which reports on the �� operation at Wembley Stadium:

�������� Genome Blog Feed

Advent Calendar Day 16: Christmas on Rations

Meet Helen Clare, wartime �������� star

70 years of Woman's Hour: the bouquets and brickbats

On This Day, 1948: the opening of the first televised Olympics

�� Genome Blog Feed

Meet Helen Clare, wartime �� star