Mother of the BBC

Jennifer J. Purcell is Professor of History at Saint Michael’s College in Vermont, USA. Using Mass-Observation diaries and directives, her first book, Domestic Soldiers (2010), seeks to understand the day-to-day lives of six women on the home front during the Second World War. She is also the author of Mother of the BBC: Mabel Constanduros and the Development of Light Entertainment on the BBC, 1925–1957 (Bloomsbury, 2020) and editor of Mass Observation: Text, Context and Analysis of the Pioneering Pamphlet and Movement (Bloomsbury, 2023) and Reflections on British Royalty: Mass Observation and the Monarchy, 1937-2022 (with Fiona Courage; Bloomsbury, 2024).

• AcknowledgementsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction1. Comedy and the Early BBC, 1922-19292. Introducing the Buggins Family3. Early BBC Celebrity: Negotiating Morality, Femininity and Wireless Celebrity4. Variety and Beyond: Evolving and Cultivating Career, 1930-19395. The Kitchen Front and Popular Entertainment during the People’s War6. Mother of the BBC: Portraying the “Ordinary”, Family, and Femininity, 1936-19457. Reimagining Family and Managing Career in the Postwar WorldConclusionNotesIndex

Once a national treasure, writer and performer Mabel Constanduros has been forgotten, like so many other pioneering women. Purcell does so much more than merely recover Constanduros as a household name, she uncovers and revises BBC broadcasting history, identifying the source of situation comedy and its place in the BBC’s bid for the hearts and minds of British households. Purcell uses personal and corporation archives to reveal the sometimes surprising role of women like Constanduros in realising the BBC’s ambition. This book is for anyone interested in the birth of the entertainment industry, women’s histories and the power of the broadcast medium. Purcell’s engaging narrative will appeal to everyone interested in public histories but it is the richness and depth of her meticulous research that makes this book a must for a better understanding of British culture in the mid-twentieth-century.