The BBC has just celebrated its ninetieth anniversary (November 14th to be precise), though the current storm clouds hanging over the Corporation have possibly dampened the fervour. Nevertheless the BBC has marked ninety years of radio broadcasts (BBC television did not begin officially until 1936) in a number of ways, including Radio Reunited, a simultaneousRead More
Author: Luke McKernan
Documenting music in Nepal
At the British Library we have been digitising some of our film and video collection. It’s a collection that has been built up not with an overall moving image resource in mind, but rather as a reflection of the interest of particular curators. So the collection does not cover all subjects, instead specialising in certainRead More
The newsreel man
A recent article by Andrew O’Hagan in the London Review of Books has caused quite a stir. Written in the aftermatch of the Jimmy Savile scandal, it exposes a culture of child abuse from past decades perpetrated by various BBC personalities. One of these was the commentator and producer Lionel Gamlin. As a historian ofRead More
The building of Pandaemonium
It’s that time of the year when people start producing lists of their books of the year. This year the choice ought to be an easy one. The book of 2012 is one collated between 1937 and its author’s death in 1950, then not published until 1985, left to dwindle into obscurity except in theRead More
My studio
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has long been distinguished for combining bold and stylish web design with a strong commitment to public access. The museum, which is famous for its works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals and others from the golden age of Dutch art, has now excelled itself with its new Rijksstudio initiative. Rijksstudio makes available 125,000 high-resolutionRead More
Staging the world
But els in deep of night when drowsines Hath lockt up mortal sense, then listen I To the celestial Sirens harmony, That sit upon the nine enfolded Sphears … John Milton, ‘Arcades’ (1634) I spent a great three hours yesterday afternoon at the British Museum’s exhibition Shakespeare: Staging the World. It’s been their blockbuster CulturalRead More
Beyond the stage
Last Friday I went to the Theatre Plays on British Television conference at the University of Westminster. It was somewhat thinly attended, which is a great shame, since every paper was good (and left you wanting to know more) and the theme is an intriguing one. For the first four or five decades of itsRead More
Only the screen was silent
A perpetual buzz of conversation mingled with the crackle of peanut shells that littered the floor like snow in winter. Every step in any direction crunched … Nearby, children were reading the titles out loud for the benefit of their foreign parents. Some even translated the words directly into Yiddish. Babies cried, kids were slapped,Read More
It happened today
I’ve been thinking about news lately. At the British Library we’ve just piloted a television and radio news service, called Broadcast News, which has selected news broadcasts from May 2010 onwards taken from seventeen channels available on Freeview and Freesat. But the service can’t just stand alone. It has to join up with other newsRead More
Changing channels
I spent a fascinating, exhausting and illuminating two days last weekend attending the conference of the Federation of International Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA), which was held at the British Library. FIAT/IFTA is a representative body for those archives, commercial and public sector, that care for the world’s television heritage (its film equivalent is FIAF, the internationalRead More