Radio Girls(122)

The BBC was very progressive in the 1920s and urged to be less so following the economic downturn. Reith was very ready to comply with this. However, the BBC, despite Reith’s Puritanism, was one of the few entities where women could hold positions higher than clerical staff and men and women received equal pay. While it did institute a marriage bar, this was only nominally put into practice. Mary Somerville, the Director of Schools, was both married and a mother during her tenure at the BBC, and indeed took maternity leave. I deliberately kept the directorship of Schools Broadcasting nebulous, as Mary Somerville was its first director but was not given the title until 1931. She was, however, one of the first women to work as a producer at the BBC, and she was in Schools all that time.

One of my biggest changes regards Charles Siepmann, whose initial position was actually in Adult Education Programming. As the nature of the programming seemed so close to both Schools and Talks, I felt it read more clearly to have him in Schools and thus streamline the narrative. This was especially the case as the whole idea of “shaping the minds of the youth” runs lightly through the book and Siepmann’s willingness, as I portray it, to toe the more conservative line made it feel right that he would be specifically in Schools, one of Reith’s most prized departments in my rendition. I was also very imaginative with Siepmann’s characterization, using his conservatism and his preference for hiring men (as noted in an internal memo) over women to inform his behavior and speech.

While the relationship between Reith and Hilda began to decline not long after Hilda’s tenure at the BBC began, Hilda herself thought that Lionel Fielden, himself gay, “accidentally” outed her to Reith, which thus marked her for dismissal before the Harold Nicholson incident. The journalistic coup is wholly fictional, but Hilda’s determination to resign rather than submit to censorship is real.

My only composite character is Ellis, whom I based loosely on Maxwell Knight, the head of MI5 and, apparently, one of the models for M in the James Bond series. I chose to make him a composite because Knight was said to have Fascist sympathies.

Maisie is a wholly fictional character, as is her initial job straddling the two offices. I wanted to place someone at the center of these volatile characters, with Reith, the traditionalist, and Hilda, the progressive. In one of Hilda’s letters, she refers to her need for a capable young woman to whom she could readily delegate. She did secure a fine secretary and assistant, but I preferred to keep my character free of any of their qualities so as to allow her to follow her own inclinations and instincts.

I was fairly inventive in my rendering of the studios, as most of the controls were not so close to the microphones, but I wanted to keep the engineers more in the mix.

Nearly all of the Talks programs mentioned are real titles. This is especially true for The Week in Westminster, developed by Hilda in 1929 and broadcast to this day on Radio 4, though it is now more of a summation of political events of the week.

If there are things I have forgotten to mention, or details I have left out or mistaken, these are all faults of the author for which apologies should be considered duly made.

A brief biography:

HILDA MATHESON, OBE

(1888–1940)

Hilda Matheson attended what was then called the Society of Oxford Home Students, now called St Anne’s College. She was not technically a graduate, as women were not allowed to obtain degrees until 1920. She worked for MI5 during the war and afterward became political secretary to Lady Astor. After her wildly popular tenure at the BBC, and in the wake of her much-discussed resignation, Lady Astor attempted to have her made a BBC governor. Hilda declined, instead becoming a radio critic and columnist, and then writing the first comprehensive book on broadcasting, Broadcasting (1933), alluded to in this novel. This remained the only textbook in use on radio broadcasting until the late 1960s (some say early 1970s). She later worked with Lord Hailey on producing the African Survey, published in 1938, taking on most of the work when Hailey became ill. This garnered her OBE in 1939. She became involved with Dorothy Wellesley, the duchess of Wellington, beginning in 1932, and it was by all accounts a long, stable, happy relationship. Hilda returned to MI5 at the commencement of World War II, working as director of the joint broadcasting committee. Among other work, she prepared instructions in wartime broadcasting including propaganda. Despite her unexpected death during surgery in 1940 (she died of Graves’ disease), these instructions were so thorough, they were used throughout the remainder of the war.

You can find more biographies of real people mentioned in this book at www.sarahjanestratford.com.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Researching and writing this book was a joyous yet arduous experience, and I cannot fully enough express my gratitude for the many people who gave me such tremendous help in a variety of ways as I crawled to the finish line.

As Maisie says, librarians are an endless source of assistance. Three libraries in particular were invaluable to me: the Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College, and especially Barbara Blumenthal. The Bienecke Collection at Yale, whose invaluable staff was also so kind as to mail back the hat I accidentally left in the locker. UCLA library—where a certain lovely mother (mine!) is happily one of the librarians—was especially terrific in allowing me a long loan of Hilda’s book, Broadcasting, which was a wonderful talisman to keep at hand while I worked.

I spent a lovely two weeks researching in Britain, where I was hosted by one of my oldest and dearest friends, the writer Allie Spencer, and her wonderful husband, Christopher Daniell, and their two fantastic sons, Matt and Jamie.