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Desert Island Discs and British emotional life

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posted on 2023-06-09, 11:34 authored by David Hendy
This chapter explores how the long-running BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs has responded over time to an increasing public appetite for openness and honesty. One of the programme’s presenters once said it was ‘properly impressed by power, wealth and ambition, but… knows that the world is made up of more than that’. This spoke to a longer-term revolution in modern life, as outlined by historians of the emotions: an increasing informality of manners, especially in broadcast talk. How did the BBC navigate these trends in a series that had long been a by-word for decorum? And what did Radio 4 listeners think of its new willingness in the 1980s and 1990s to probe guests more deeply? Drawing on unpublished BBC records and Mass Observation archives, this chapter focuses on how various desires for openness over private lives and feelings - and the anxieties this prompted - were negotiated behind-the-scenes at crucial moments in its history.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Issue

211

Page range

155-172

Pages

328.0

Book title

Defining the discographic self : "Desert Island Discs" in context

Place of publication

Oxford

ISBN

9780197266175

Series

Proceedings of the British Academy

Department affiliated with

  • Media and Film Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Stephen Cottrell, Nicholas Cook, Julie Brown

Legacy Posted Date

2018-01-15

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2019-11-30

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2018-01-12

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