British Radio Drama

Book excerpt: There has been little serious attempt in Britain to deal critically and historically with the subject of radio drama. This volume of essays concentrates upon a small group of influential writers who have devoted all or part of their attention to writing plays for radio. The introduction charts the development of radio drama since its inception in the 1920s and its changing relationships with the theatre and later with television. It shows how the early ideal of broadcasting significant works of established literature and drama helped to provide a broad foundation for the growth of a body of dramatic literature which fully exploited the medium's reliance upon sound alone. Separate contributions contain full appraisals of the radio writing of Louis MacNeice, Dylan Thomas and Henry Reed, while detailed studies of particular aspects of the work of Dorothy L. Sayers, Susan Hill, Giles Cooper and Samuel Beckett explore the practical as well as the critical issues involved in the study of radio drama.