Magic Rays of Light
the early years of television in britain
- Paperback
320 pages
- Release Date
18 March 2026
Summary
Magic Rays of Light: Unveiling the Forgotten Dawn of British Television
Magic Rays of Light is an original and ambitious history of the largely unknown early years of television in Britain. A detailed cultural study of the first demonstrations, of the extensive experimental broadcasts between 1928 and 1935, and of the BBC’s richly varied daily service starting in November 1936 from Alexandra Palace, the book overturns the popular mis-conception that television in Britain ef…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781839028205 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 1839028203 |
| Author: | John Wyver |
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Imprint: | BFI Publishing |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 320 |
| Release Date: | 18 March 2026 |
| Weight: | 454g |
| Dimensions: | 234mm x 156mm |
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About The Author
John Wyver
John Wyver is Professor of the Arts on Screen at the University of Westminster, UK. For Michaelmas Term 2022 he was a Visiting Fellow at All Souls Oxford. He is the co-founder of independent media production company Illuminations, and he is Director, Screen Productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company.
His work as a producer and director has been honoured with a BAFTA, an International Emmy and a Peabody Award. He has made numerous documentaries about the arts and about digital culture. He was Series Editor for the influential BBC2 series The Net (1993-97) which pioneered tie-ups between broadcasting and online systems. He was also Series Editor for Tx. (1993-98), an award-winning series of innovative arts documentaries.
John Wyver has produced a series of notable performance films for television, including Richard II (1997) with Fiona Shaw; Gloriana - A Film (1999), directed by Phyllida Lloyd; Macbeth (2000), with Antony Sher and Harriet Walter; Hamlet (2008), made with the Royal Shakespeare Company and with David Tennant as the prince; Macbeth (2009) with Patrick Stewart, directed by Rupert Goold; and the RSC’s Julius Caesar (2012), directed by Gregory Doran.
In 2013 he produced the RSC’s first live-to-cinema broadcast, which brought Gregory Doran’s production of Richard II with David Tennant to more than 370 UK cinemas and which was also seen in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Russia, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Over the past eight years he has produced 30 further ‘event cinema’ presentations of RSC stage productions, in addition to the 2016 ‘Shakespeare Live! From the RSC’ celebration, co-produced with BBC Two. Other screen adaptations that he has produced include Clowns (2018) with Hofesh Shechter Company, and Mike Bartlett’s Albion (2020) with Almeida Theatre.
As writer and director he made two recent archive-based documentaries for Illuminations and BBC Four: Drama Out of a Crisis: A Celebration of Play for Today (2020) and Coventry Cathedral: Building for a New Britain (2021).
His books include Vision On; Film Television and the Arts (2007) and Screening the Royal Shakespeare Company: A Critical History (Bloomsbury, 2019).
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