Greece on Air: Engagements with Ancient Greece on BBC Radio, 1920s–1960s by Amanda Wrigley (review)

This innovative new study in cultural history explores what its author identifies as the "creative engagements" (3) with Ancient Greek literature and thought on BBC Radio from the early 1920s to the 1960s. During this period, the BBC produced and aired a wide range of programs inspired by Greece (mostly) and Rome (less so); these included straightforward radio performances of Greek tragedy and comedy, as well as their modern adaptations, often commissioned specifically for the radio. The book's material also includes "creative re-workings" of nondramatic texts (3), such as the Homeric epics or the Socratic dialogues, individual talks or series of lectures forming part of the school curriculum or further education initiatives, and a number of antiquity-inspired feature programs (some of which broadcast during World War II as pieces of antifascist propaganda). According to Wrigley, this activity includes "some of the most interesting, creative, and political engagements" with classical culture in twentieth-century Britain (3).

Although the book, as well as its approach, may be classified as part of the subfield generally identified as reception studies, Wrigley seems rather ambivalent as to this term's validity. Instead, the author maintains that "reception" may be inadequate as a term to fully describe the public's "layers of engagement" with classical texts, which she finds too complicated and subtle to be termed as such (21–25). Hence Wrigley prefers to talk of "engagement," which relieves her subject from the active/passive power balance implied by such terms as production and reception. What she proposes instead is a "classical reception studies in the round" (25), where classically themed broadcasts are studied not merely as stand-alone texts, authored and performed by playwrights and actors, themselves often trained as classicists, but also as engagement pieces with an audience free to interact with those texts in its own way. In the case of the BBC broadcasts discussed in this book, such interaction is admirably monitored by Wrigley through previews, features, and reviews published in Radio Times and The Listener, as well as internal memos penned by the producers themselves, listeners' letters, and Listener Research Reports (vaguely a precursor to our own daily ratings). The collection and analysis of such sources is a commendable initiative that makes an important contribution to the field of classical reception, where the actual impact of such revivals often cannot be known or is largely ignored. By incorporating such evidence in her discussion, however, Wrigley fails to attempt a more nuanced approach to her data (and in that sense, her public remains as passive as in those discussions she criticizes). One would wish, for example, to know whether class registers (such as education background and occupation) of the listeners affected the reception of these programs. In a study where the author is actively looking for ways in which classical Greece was reconstructed as public entertainment, the reader would expect to find some acknowledgment of the fact that audiences are also subject to training and, in effect, construction.

Following an introductory first chapter, where the author discusses the theoretical model presented above, a second chapter discusses the BBC and its early history. The author is right to offer much-needed context, as this book serves as a seminal work in its attempt to bridge the field of classics with that of broadcasting and media studies. The third chapter, along the same lines, offers useful insights in radio programming as, on the one hand, a "democratic and educative" medium (77) and, on the other, a "popularizing" one at the same time (97). Studying interviews, statements, and other accounts by radio practitioners of the time, Wrigley assesses their efforts to "stimulate the public's imagination" (97) through and for the benefit of classical literature, attempting in a sense to recreate ancient culture as a modern experience.

The book's second part is devoted to case studies elucidating, or revisiting, the points raised...