Listen In

Beaty Rubens’ hugely enjoyable book shows us why the medium of radio cast such a spell over those who suddenly found they could travel the world without leaving home. She weaves a compelling story of the radical changes the wireless brought to the way people lived.

For all of us who love radio and feel it is the essential companion in our lives, this book is a delightful and insightful read. It’s both informative and entertaining as it takes the reader on a journey behind the scenes of a medium we have come to take for granted in its scope and ability. Lord Reith would be proud!

The author’s engrossing narrative is supported by a rich archival resource mined in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It ranges from journalism, diaries and fiction to original testimony and is illustrated with magazine covers, cartoons, cigarette cards and contemporary photographs; scholarly it most certainly is, but wonderfully readable.

In her joyous, richly illustrated book about the early years of radio from the listeners’ point of view, the BBC radio producer Beaty Rubens takes us inside the British home… For anyone curious about how British families lived in the first half of the 20th century, the book is full of gems.

Beaty Rubens’s study of the impact of early radio broadcasts in Britain is full of fascinating and often poignant detail.

‘Listen In’ held my attention throughout. I loved the extracts from listeners’ letters…Filled with excellently reproduced images…this book is highly recommended.

[This] is a fascinating and attractive book, enriched with a multitude of photos and cartoons. 

Beaty Rubens was a BBC Radio producer for thirty-five years and is now a freelance producer, presenter and writer.