Greece on Air Engagements with Ancient Greece on BBC Radio, 1920s-1960s

Greece on Air offers the first substantial discussion of the fascinating history of creative and public engagements with ancient Greek literature, history, and thought via the BBC Radio, from the birth of domestic broadcasting in the 1920s up to the 1960s. The astonishing range of programmes broadcast in this period includes some of the most interesting, creative, and political engagements with ideas from and about ancient Greece in twentieth-century Britain. From talks to schools and adult education groups, creative re-imaginings of ancient historical texts written and broadcast as Second World War propaganda, and scores of performances of Greek tragedy, comedy, and their modern adaptations, Wrigley draws on the vast amount of evidence that exists in the written archives (both for production processes and also listeners' responses) to develop a full understanding of the role of the radio medium in public engagements with ancient Greece in twentieth-century Britain.

1 - Mass media and classics, the public and cultural elitism
2 - The contexts of programme-making
3 - Listening in
4 - Gilbert Murray: 'radio Hellenist', 1925-1956
5 - Greek history in the wartime propaganda of Louis MacNeice
6 - The poetry and drama of Homeric epic, 1943-1969
7 - Greek tragedy: the case of Aeschylus' Agamemnon, 1946-1976
8 - Post-war Greek comedy

Amanda Wrigley (Research Fellow, University of Westminster) is a cultural historian who works on a broad range of topics, including ancient Greece in 20th-century British culture; radio and television programmes which adapt and create dramatic and literary forms; and mass media in formal and informal educational contexts. She is author of Performing Greek Drama in Oxford (2011), Greece on Air: Engagements with Ancient Greece on BBC Radio, 1920s-1960s (2015) and Greece on Screen: Greek Plays on British Television (forthcoming). She studied Classics as an undergraduate at Leeds and wrote her PhD thesis in the Department of Classical Studies at The Open University. She held posts in the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford (2001-09) and the Classics Department, Northwestern University (2009-10) before moving to the University of Westminster in 2011. She is Associate Editor of The Radio Journal. For further information, see https://amandawrigley.wordpress.com.