Big Ben's Chimes
Moy McGowan
Producer
Listen to Big Ben's Chimes every day between Boxing Day and New Year's Day and scroll to the end for an exclusive poem by Ian McMillan
Ian McMillan. Photo by Stan Was, copyright BBC
“Midnight, the last day of 1923. We had taken a microphone down to Westminster… Our bright idea was to let the world hear Big Ben.”
These are the words of an engineer in the fledgling BBC, recalling the very first occurrence of an event that’s become a tradition: broadcasting the chimes of Big Ben to the nation.
“And so the year 1924 was heralded in a new way…”
Big Ben’s Chimes are seven radio shorts which pay affectionate tribute to the sound of the bell, as heard on BBC Radio over the past 90 years.
A lyrical mix of poetry and BBC radio archives, Big Ben’s Chimes are built around specially commissioned new works by the poet Ian McMillan. As a regular broadcaster himself, Ian is perfectly placed to celebrate Big Ben’s radio presence.
His seven new poems reflect the iconic status that the sound of the great bell has earned in the hearts of listeners, down the decades and across the globe.They transport us from that first tentative recording, when the BBC engineer had to scale a nearby building with his microphone as they didn’t yet have permission to go inside Westminster! – through war time, in Britain and beyond, when listeners found solace in the familiar bongs on the wireless; to more recent times when the aging ‘Great Uncle Ben’ has succumbed to metal fatigue and icy London winters.
“…the sound doesn’t fade / But instead it gets stronger, deepening, growing, / As layers of memory strengthen the crack / That edges down metal, that makes Ben unique.”
The BBC Sound Archive clips take us back to New Year 1938 when Big Ben heralds the first Arabic news broadcast from London, introduced by Sir John Reith, the first Director General. We eavesdrop on a war time New Year programme sending good wishes to the Allied troops on the battlefronts of the world. And we hear the chimes of Big Ben precede a stark news flash interrupting programmes in 1945: “Hitler is dead”.
Every day between Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, Ian McMillan’s distinctive story-telling style captures the moods of the season: nostalgia, regret, optimism and joy, in this final week of 2013.
“Listen and smile – this is the bell.”
NEW YEAR IN WARTIME
By Ian McMillan
This might not be true.
I’d like to think it could be:
Troops in the cold Western Desert
On a dark and heavy New Year’s Eve
With a scattering of stars for company
Crouched by a wireless that hisses like history
To catch the faraway sound
Of the year-changing bell
And there are tears in the eyes
Of these sand-sculpted soldiers
With a scattering of stars for company
Crouched by a wireless that hisses like history
As through the long airwaves
Comes the sonorous note; Big Ben
Sounding twelve, bringing New shining Year
To a handful of boys just this side of Hell
With a scattering of stars for company
Crouched by a wireless that hisses like history.
As Midnight’s promise strikes,
They pick up rocks and bash mess-tins
Crack stone on stone, bang helmets together
To make their own New Year chimes
With a scattering of stars for company
Crouched by a wireless that hisses like history
Twelve notes on gun metal
Or boxes or shovels. Twelve notes
That sing with the ringing
From London to this place
With a scattering of stars for company
Crouched by a wireless that hisses like history
