THE RADIO REVOLUTION

The Bodleian Libraries’ new exhibition Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home will tell the story of the advent of radio, placing listeners - rather than broadcasters - at its heart. The exhibition looks at the period from 1922, when the BBC was founded and radio had 150,000 listeners, to 1939, as radio united households on the brink of war and its listenership reached 34 million. Listen In coincides with the centenary of the Daventry Transmitter, which when it opened on 27 July 1925 vastly extended the reach of broadcasts and truly started the ‘radio craze’.

Drawing on books and ephemera from the Bodleian archives – including magazines, cartoons, educational pamphlets and advertisements – the exhibition explores how the arrival of radio affected family life, shifting – or failing to shift – dynamics between children and adults, and women and men. As the boom in audio-on-demand and podcasts continues to change our relationship with radio, Listen In will also consider how we ‘listen in’ today.

The exhibition is curated by Beaty Rubens, a BBC Radio producer for 35 years and now a freelance producer, presenter and writer. When searching through the Bodleian’s archives, Beaty discovered two notebooks containing largely unpublished interviews with early radio listeners, providing rare first-person testimony about the impact of the new technology on ordinary people’s lives. Initially, the BBC did not engage in any audience research at all. However, in 1938 it commissioned two women, Winifred Gill and Hilda Jennings, to conduct interviews in Barton Hill, a working-class area of Bristol. The research was published in a 40-page BBC pamphlet, but much material was not included, such as stories of male control of the wireless. The exhibition will share this material publicly for the first time, with actors voicing interviews from the notebooks to create a soundscape within the gallery. This will consist of motion-activated speakers and an alcove where visitors can listen to extensive extracts from the Gill research, including much of the excluded material.

Although radio did not necessarily transform women’s lives, Listen In considers how it enriched home life and made it less lonely, as captured in beautiful covers for the Radio Times. Beginning at a time when the majority of women did not have the vote, the wireless gave them access to a wider world: not only advice about cookery, parenting, and gardening but also, once all women obtained the right to vote in 1929, to information about politics and public life. However, these benefits masked the ongoing gender imbalance, including coercive control and domestic abuse. For example, the Gill research tells of a husband who turned up the wireless to drown out his wife’s complaints about his financial control, and who would disconnect the machine each time he left the house, preventing her from ever accessing it.

Contemporary cartoons form a key part of the exhibition, often providing a more truthful narrative of radio’s adoption – from technical problems to neighbourly rivalry. A 1922 Radio Times cartoon demonstrates a familiar struggle to peel people away from their devices with guests at a dinner party sitting in silence with headphones on instead of speaking to one another. In addition to cartoons, the exhibition also displays stunning colour images, including rare early magazine covers and the centrefold of the 1922 Illustrated London News depicting Christmas party guests listening in to a wireless.

Alongside the early history of the BBC, the exhibition also tells the story of the growing power of the broadcaster’s commercial rivals and the battle that ensued for the ears of British listeners. European commercial stations were dependent on advertising, with Radio Luxembourg developing a sponsored programme in the 1930s to promote the sale of Ovaltine brand drink, where advertising allowed stations to connect to larger audiences. As radio became more accessible, listeners began to realise that they could actively seek out their own content, with some audiences abandoning the BBC’s church coverage on Sundays, prompting the broadcaster to listen to its audience.

Beaty Rubens, curator of the exhibition, says:

Nowadays, we consider radio a familiar old companion, but in the 1920s and 1930s, it was the radical, disruptive new technology. The early history of radio is almost always told from the broadcasters' point of view, so it's been truly fascinating for me to mine the Bodleian archives and reveal the impact of radio on the first ever listeners - our own parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian, says:

This exhibition examines the advent of radio from a unique and personal perspective. In particular, the rare first-person testimony shines a light on the role of women in the home and how the ‘radio craze’ affected family dynamics. We hope that through the exhibition, visitors will appreciate how the arrival of this new technology dramatically changed people’s lives.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the book Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home, with a foreword by James Naughtie, which will be published by Bodleian Library Publishing on 7 February 2025.

On 20 February 2025 actors will read from the Winifred Gill material in front of a live audience in Oxford’s Blackwell Hall. The event will also feature music composed by Emily Levy and rare early BBC radio archive. It will be recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 2 March 2025.