Three Maps

Available for over a year

In a week of programmes for the BBC centenary, historian Robert Seatter selects three objects from the BBC’s archive store and tells the stories behind their creation - what they tell us about the changing history of the organisation, about expansion of the media and the nation at large. Robert’s choices are unexpected, revelatory and sometimes, with the cruel benefit of hindsight, funny. In today’s programme, Robert unpacks three very different and significant maps associated with BBC output. i) A very early Shipping Forecast chart from 1925, when the famous broadcast was launched in partnership with the Met Office in order to save lives at sea. ii) A football grid designed to make the sport comprehensible in the early days of radio, and the source of that everyday phrase ‘back to square one…’ iii) A handy map of the broadcast itinerary of the 1953 Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the UK’s first big television moment of the last century. Robert explores themes of lifeline broadcasting and myth-making, early attempts at ‘visualising’ radio, and the post-war arrival of mass media television in the UK. He is joined by Shipping Forecast enthusiast, the poet Imtiaz Dharker. Producer: Mohini Patel