The of Radio Times magazine included the usual Food Facts ad by the  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 Ö÷²¥´óÐã 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.

provides a good glimpse into wartime daily life - suggestions on how to make talks from , guest appearances by  and, of course, to take the mind away from it all.

Her friend Simon Robinson wrote to tell us about her past, and she subsequently featured in a and was interviewed by the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. We were also able to play her some of her old recordings we found in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã archive.

She thinks efforts like 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 Ö÷²¥´óÐã from 1936-1960 the world changed a great deal and the Ö÷²¥´óÐã 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.

One look at the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Genome listings shows you the scope of her career. She is first listed in the 1930s making frequent appearances on radio singing with Helen Clare was also one of the pioneers of early television broadcasts appearing in 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 broadcast to the forces abroad. She sang and compered  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 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,

Woman's Hour 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.

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 first programme was followed by 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  "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 Ö÷²¥´óÐã, 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."

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,  abroad and acquired its own correspondents in five different countries."

Fast-forward to 1967, when Woman's Hour 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 couple  and

She announced some favourite guests and broadcasters would be " 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 Ö÷²¥´óÐã taboos surrounding such things as   and ". 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 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, or 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 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  and  What have you found?

The broadcasting and televising of the London 1948 Olympiad, which started on July 29 with the was described by Radio Times as "the biggest operation of its kind that the Ö÷²¥´óÐã 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.

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 Ö÷²¥´óÐã operation at Wembley Stadium: