John Bleasdale Writes On Film
Writers on Film
Rob Young's Magic Box
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Rob Young's Magic Box

CORRECTION: Rob mentioned some 80s film essays on Channel Four by Lindsay Anderson and Alan Clarke – it was actually Alan Parker. (His correction)

Rob Young's new book continues his exploration of British culture, delving into TV and cinema.


Growing up in the 1970s, Rob Young's main storyteller was the wooden box with the glass window in the corner of the family living room, otherwise known as the TV set. Before the age of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, YouTube and commercial streaming services, watching television was a vastly different experience. You switched on, you sat back and you watched. There was no pause or fast-forward button.


The cross-genre feast of moving pictures produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s - from Quatermass and Tom Jones to The Wicker Man and Brideshead Revisited, from A Canterbury Tale and The Go-Between to Bagpuss and Children of the Stones, and from John Betjeman's travelogues to ghost stories at Christmas - contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. British-made sci-fi, folk horror, period drama and televisual grand tours played out tensions between the past and the present, dramatised the fractures and injustices in society and acted as a portal for magical and ghostly visions.


In The Magic Box, Rob Young takes us on a fascinating journey into this influential golden age of screen and discovers what it reveals about the nature and character of Britain, its uncategorisable people and buried histories - and how its presence can still be felt on screen in the twenty-first century.

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John Bleasdale Writes On Film
Writers on Film
<p>The only podcast to focus on film books and to talk to the best authors working in the area of cinema. From Making ofs to biographies, studies to novelisations, I'm fascinated by where the written word intersects with the world of the big screen. </p><p>Support this show <a target="_blank" rel="payment" href="http://supporter.acast.com/writers-on-film">http://supporter.acast.com/writers-on-film</a>.</p><br /><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>