Owing to some lovely winter weather this morning, I've got a brief reprieve from work: a half-day snow day. It seems unlikely that the journal volumes which I requested from library storage last week will show up today, so instead I'll post two items I've been sitting on for some time: illustrations for billings of Reed's radio plays from the Radio Times:


This illustration is by Peter Kneebone, and is from the Radio Times for May 1, 1959. It accompanied the billing for the sixth play in Reed's Hilda Tablet series: Not a Drum Was Heard: The War Memoirs of General Gland, first broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on May 6, 1959. The General looks distinguished, but he's quite mad.


This drawing is by Bruce Angrave, from the Radio Times for October 23, 1959, illustrating the seventh and final play in Reed's sequence, Musique Discrète: A Request Programme of Music by Dame Hilda Tablet. The play premiered on October 27, 1959, with musique concrète renforcée provided by Donald Swann. Isn't Hilda's monocle a gas?

(I'm not embarrassed to admit that I could only recognize Beethoven's bust [bottom left] getting tumbled in Angrave's picture. Our friend the Webrarian came to my rescue: that's Wagner turned sideways, with Brahms just below.)