Final edition of The Listener published

The final edition of The Listener was published on 3 January 1991. The weekly magazine was launched in 1929 by Lord Reith as an intellectual counterpoint to the Radio Times. At a time when radio output was generally considered ephemeral, the magazine printed those talks that were considered to have lasting value. The Listener’s belief in its readers was exemplified by its popular but fiendishly difficult cryptic crossword, set by compilers such as Scorpio, Eel, Zag, Phi and Duck.

The list of contributors to The Listener reads like a Who’s Who of British intellectual life. The first edition included Constant Lambert and John Buchan. Over the years Dylan Thomas, Hilaire Belloc, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf and Phillip Larkin appeared in its pages, as well as Peter Warlock, Thurston Dart, and Edmund Rubbra.

The Listener ended when a co-partnership with ITV came to an end. But although it is no more, the complete run has been digitised and preserved for posterity. Today the BBC name appears on several magazines spun off from broadcast output, which continue to be popular in the changing media landscape. These include BBC Music, BBC Good Food, Countryfile, Gardeners’ World, Wildlife and BBC History Magazine. The Radio Times remains the longest running broadcast listings magazine in the world.