Dylan Thomas on the BBC Eastern Service

Abstract

This chapter offers an approach to one of Thomas’s most regular forms of employment in the 1940s: public broadcasting. The BBC had always been an exacting employer, and so it proved to be for Thomas, who often complained that his contract with the Corporation afforded little room for manoeuvre. His work on-air requires special attention, however, both for the things it has to tell us about his development of voice during and after the Second World War, and for what it reveals about the BBC’s imperial politics. For as well as contributing to the Home Service, Thomas spent a good deal of the 1940s writing scripts for the Eastern Service – supposedly educating young Indian listeners, but, more often than not, getting caught up in debates about Independence. With the help of his extant Broadcasts and a series of manuscripts, this chapter assesses Thomas’s work for a poetry series called ‘Book of Verse’ – including his programme about the influence of Wilfred Owen in 1946 – and touches too on his contribution to wartime cinema.