Children’s Hour

When I was little we didn’t have a television, and we weren’t unusual because not many households had TVs. We listened to the radio, and in those days there were three programmes, the Light Programme, the Home Service and the Third Programme, and on one of those there was Children’s Hour, broadcast every evening from five to six. I listened every day and was enthralled by the programmes and owe so much to what I heard and learned.

There were dramas, nature programmes, history, poetry, comedies, music, stories, classics… such variety to appeal to every child. I remember listening to the books by Anthony Buckeridge, ‘Jennings and Darbishire’ about two school boys at a prep school. Their adventures were hilarious and I would laugh until I cried at the ridiculous scrapes they got into with their chums Temple and Venables. There was a drama series which was broadcast as if at a theatre, with all the sounds of a waiting audience and an orchestra tuning up. There would be a cry of ‘overture and beginners, please!’ and then the music would start and there would be a rattle of the curtains drawing. Another drama series was about two young people called Polly and Oliver after the song of the same name, and also the adventures of Norman and Henry Bones, the boy detectives.

For young listeners there was ‘Toy Town’ about a young lamb called Larry and his friend Dennis the dachshund; they were in awe of Mr Growser the grocer, and there was a policeman and the Mayor of Toy Town. Larry and Dennis had the characters of small boys and like Jennings and Darbishire, always seemed to get innocently involved in adventures, although everything was always happily resolved by the end.

For older children Sherlock Homes and Watson enthralled us, and I am sure there were other classic stories but I cannot now recall then but sometimes they were quite scary…  I had dreams about lepers’  bells, and was filled with dread at what might have happened to the Eagle of the Ninth.  No doubt young people these days would think they were unsophisticated and amateurish!

I’m sure Children’s Hour helped me as a writer because it depended on imagination; we were given the voices but we had to picture the scenes and the faces, imagine the settings whether they were at sea, in the countryside or in a foreign land, or in the distant past.