A 1940s radio, called a wireless, next to a bowl of nuts for scale. Note the three knobs for on/off, volume and tuning; the dial and the fabric covered speaker. Photographed in Milestones Museum, Basingstoke.
When I was a child in England in the Second World War, there was one radio in the house. (Televisions were still many years away.)
The radio was called the 'wireless'. I don't know why the name changed over the years to 'radio', but I do know that some twenty or so years later, anyone who still used the term 'wireless' was considered very out-of-date.
The wireless was a large contraption in a polished wooden box. It had a speaker covered in some sort of rough fabric, a dial and three knobs. Twisting one knob turned the wireless on and twisting the second adjusted the volume. The third knob was for tuning, and rotated a needle over a dial.
Some families had wirelesses with only two knobs, with the on-off knob also adjusting volume.
A 1940s radio with two knobs: one for on/off and volume and the other for tuning.
What always struck me was that every family seemed to have a different-looking wireless, housed in its own individually shaped box. Even the woods were different. Although all fitted the same description of a polished wooden box with either two or three knobs, a dial and a fabric covered speaker, to me, as a young child, they all looked very different. Clearly domestic radios, unlike home telephones which were all identical to one another, must have had a number of makers, each producing their own range of styles.
According to David White, radios were produced for the home market during the war. They were very basic indeed and made to government specifications by several manufacturers. A feature was that they could not receive long wave, which meant that we in England could not listen to or be influenced by the propaganda transmitted from Germany. The first photo on the page shows one of these radios. More photos show David's vintage radio collection.
It turned out that all the wirelesses that I remember had been bought in the relatively affluent 1930s, before the Second World War. In the first years of the war it was probably difficult to buy new ones, unless of course you 'knew somebody who knew somebody'.
An extension speaker. Photographed on a Watercress Line event..
Even as the 1940s merged into the 1950s, radios must have been rather expensive in real terms. I never knew any families who had more than the one. The better-off families had something called 'an extension', ie a run of cable from their one radio to a speaker in another room, which meant that the radio could be listened to in either room.
I asked my mother if we could have an extension too. Looking back, I don't think I was particularly concerned about being able to listen in a second room. Rather, it was my first awareness of the existence of a 'status symbol'. Anyway, my mother said 'no' and that we couldn't afford it - but that was her response to most requests. During and immediately after the war, money must have been tight.
Even as a child I was puzzled at why, with only one programme being transmitted, the dials of all the radios seemed so wide-ranging. The answer came from a TV programme Ration Book Britain. I learnt that British people frequently listened to European radio stations in the 1930s, ie before the war. I can’t say whether the programmes were in English or whether only the music was popular. Early in the war, however, with the Nazi insurgence, the Nazis closed most of these European stations, making the German station, Radio Hamburg, the only European one that could be heard in Britain. The Nazis took advantage of this to broadcast propaganda to demoralise the British people, as explained above by David White.
Also according to Ration Book Britain the Government closed all cinemas and radio channels bar the Home Service at the outset of the war. However people became so demoralised with lack of entertainment, that the cinemas were opened again and the Light Programme was allowed to transmit.
A radio channel was also known as a station or a 'side'. In fact, for us ordinary listeners in the war years, there were only two channels, which made the term 'sides' particularly appropriate. Both were broadcast by the BBC, ie the British Broadcasting Corporation. One called the Home Service seemed designed to inform about the progress of the war, while the other, the Light Programme, seemed to be for light entertainment.
Just after the war, a new channel was broadcast by the BBC, known appropriately as The Third Programme. It was dedicated to what my mother called 'highbrow music'. It may have been popular but we never listened to it.
I particularly remember Music while you work which broadcast very lively music with a quick beat, designed to encourage the women working in the factories to speed up.
Being a child, my favourite programme was the daily Children's Hour, which my mother and I listened to over tea.
My mother and grandmother - and my father when he was home from the army - listened to the Light Programme during the evenings when I was supposed to be asleep. The News, of course, on the Home Service, was not to be missed, because it reported on the war, but I was too young for it to mean much to me.
More programmes of interest were introduced after the war. My mother seldom missed Woman's Hour. It was broadcast just after her lunch when, presumably, women were deemed to be allowed a sit-down after the morning's housework.
My parents liked In Town Tonight which was broadcast on Saturday evenings and presented interviews with well-known people who happened to be in London at the time. I was not particularly interested, but in the late 1940s, as in previous years, it was accepted practice for all family members to be together in one room. So I could not help but hear what my parents were listening to, especially in winter when there was only heating in one room, with its single coal fire.
As I grew older, after the war, I liked the programmes in which people phoned in special requests for individuals still serving overseas in the forces. The requests were invariably for pop music which appealed to me at that time. Europe was transmitting again, and Radio Luxemburg provided non-stop pop music requests. For some reason which I cannot now understand, I seemed perfectly able to listen to the music while doing my school homework to an acceptable standard.
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