Life On Air: A History of Radio Four 
Customer Ratings: - Dissertation time. Like the reviewer below, I too was disappointed. Radio 4 has provided the backdrop to so many of our lives, including Today, PM, Letter from America, the Archers, Woman s Hour, Home Truths and so on. I was hoping for a book that delighted in the programmes and the characters that made them, but what we were served up with was a heavy undergraduate dissertaion focussing on the history, and eventually the reader just gets bogged down that it becomes less Life On Air and more Coming Up For Air. Shame..
- The Pleasure of Life on Air. Skipping to the chapter Pleasures at the end of Life on Air, is quite simply like putting Radio 4 on and finding you are at the beginning of a gripping drama, a heated debate or a review of a film that sounds a must see. David Hendy uses this last chapter to share with us the emotional responses Radio 4 always brings out in its listeners, who, despite having favourite hate bits stick with it pretty much through thick and thin as a much valued background to their daily lives. I loved the poetic bits used here : Carol Ann Duffy talks about the Shipping Forecast s power late at night, listened to in the dark as Hendy says the power lay in it being like a sudden utterance carried through the air, unbidden but somehow consoling - darkness outside. Inside the radio s prayer - Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre. And did you know that we don t have Finisterre any more on the shipping forecast and it s been replaced with Fitzroy? or that German Bight used to be Heligoland? Or that when a BBC controller tried to axe it in 1995 as it was no longer useful to sailors who used automatic weather reports there was a considerable public outcry and he relented? Not a shout out loud revelation to be sure, but one that is typical of this brilliantly researched, beautifully written book. Life on Air isn t about trash celebs or DJs but it is filled with riveting detail and fine analysis about why this quirky, idiosyncratic and ultimately very British institution is still as popular as it is. It shows that David Hendy has been a producer at the BBC working on among other things Analysis and the World Tonight - this book is for the thoughtful reader who relishes fine writing. David Hendy won the much coveted Longmans History book of the year for this in 2008 and it is easy to see why.
- For the diehard Four Fan only really. As a listener to, and fan of, Radio Four for nigh on 40 yeras I was delighted to find this book as I was hoping for some really in depth analysis, reviews & comment on the history and output of the station. Sadly I have been a little disappointed...
The book is well written but it is so very dry. Sadly it also only seems to concentrate the main movers and shakers of the station, not the actual programme output, and it is this that has caused my disappointment.
If you re a real afficenado of the station then I m sure this book will prove more than adequate in furthering your knowledge. However for my part, and I m guessing the vast majority of readers of Radio 4 material, then Simon Elm s And now on Radio 4 provides a far more comprehensive and approachable read.
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Life On Air: A History of Radio Four (ID: 0199550247)
