Writing the Radio War: Literature, Politics, and the BBC. 1939–1945 by Ian Whittington (review)

In the wonderfully written and extensively researched Writing the Radio War, Ian Whittington builds upon over a decade of work in literary radio studies and late modernism, providing a much needed connection between British World War II radio writing and the postwar era. Through his study of the wartime experiences and radio writings of five authors—J. B. Priestley, James Hanley, Louis MacNeice, Denis Johnston, and Una Marson—Whittington argues that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) not only helped mobilize a nation and "project Britain to itself and to the world," but also provided an "auditory space" in which these authors could articulate the "possible configurations of a postwar Britain, with or without its Empire" (4, 3). As Whittington shows, the expansion of radio networks and communities both nationally and internationally during wartime was a central goal of the BBC. But Whittington takes seriously this idea of expansion and deftly replicates it on multiple levels. Writing the Radio War not only extends the temporal reach of wartime radio into the postwar era, but also expands beyond wellknown modernist writers to include Hanley, Johnston, and Marson, and explores a variety of different radio genres, including talks, features, journalism, and literary broadcasts. The result is a multi-layered investigation into how the BBC and its writers helped expand the definition of what it meant to be British and, as a result, "open up new possibilities for belonging to Britain and to the nations of the Commonwealth to come" (191).

Whittington begins with a familiar voice in radio studies, the Yorkshire writer Priestley, whose tenure at the BBC coincided with the studio's increasing democratization. Priestley's Yorkshire accent was a far cry from the "upper-middle-class, Oxbridge-educated, Southern" voice the BBC typically broadcast, and his self-identification as a "Broadbrow"—what Whittington defines as "a move from the vertical hierarchy of high and low to an implicitly democratic horizontal plane of cultural consumption"—echoes the BBC's own content expansion in order to reach a wider audience (31, 36). Paired with his "othered" accent, Priestley's "Broadbrow" approach to literature and politics enabled the author to become the voice of the "People's War." The highlight of an already compelling chapter, however, comes toward the end when Whittington evaluates Priestley's contribution to wartime and postwar cultural politics. Although he advocated for a "vibrant cultural democracy," Priestley offered his listeners and readers few concrete plans (59). Instead, as Whittington argues, Priestley's lasting influence can be seen in the evolution of the BBC. By bringing his regional accent into the broadcasting house and onto the airwaves, Priestley expanded the definition of "British" belonging. This broadening of British cultural identity was crucial during wartime when mass participation in British patriotism was needed. But as Whittington goes on to show in subsequent chapters, this wartime expansion made way for other marginalized groups to see themselves as British in the postwar era.

In the following two chapters, Whittington illustrates the BBC's further wartime expansion in content and form by focusing on the broadcasts of Hanley and MacNeice. Both wrote radio features, which Whittington helpfully contextualizes at the chapter's start. By pairing Hanley (a lesser-known wartime radio writer) with MacNeice (one of the BBC's most successful radio playwrights), Whittington clearly demonstrates the type of broadcasting deemed appropriate during wartime and draws a sharp contrast with changes that would occur at the postwar BBC. Thus, while Hanley's somber wartime radio writings rarely found airtime, the author had radio success after the war's end. Whittington's discussion of MacNeice and three of his major broadcasts (The Stones Cry Out, Alexander Nevsky, and Christopher Columbus) offers a striking contrast. Whereas Whittington shows Hanley to be solitary in his radio work, MacNeice's productions both rely on and preach collectivity to their radio listeners. MacNeice's focus...