LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
From: Val Gielgud, Rodney H. Downes, George Greenfield, Nicholas A. J. Philpot, Claire Rayner, Roger Pemberton, Archibald Car- michael, Ronald Hingley, R. L. J. Ticehurst, Robin Murray, Martin Ennals, John Harrison.
Radio Drama
SIR,—Mr. Tube says that 'Drama is no doubt a sore point .at Broadcasting House.'
It would be interesting to be given Mr. Tube's evidence for this, remarkable statement. It was cer- tainly not true during the years when I was responsible for radio drama, and I very much doubt if it is true now with Mr. Martin Esslin in the driver's seat. As an outside listener, and viewer, I am inclined to wonder whether Mr. Tube has not confused Broadcasting House with Television Centre, where television drama has been submerged beneath an administrative pyramid of such proportions that not even the enthusiastic vitality of Mr. Newman has been allowed to survive—hardly to appear.
Mr. Tube seems to mistake journalistic notice for popular appreciation. TV is 'the New Thing'; is 'with it'; and gets the headlines. Granted. Time was when radio drama was good for the gossip-writers, and pie for the papers. That was not the time when the best work of radio drama was done.
I suggest that Mr. Tube inquires of schoolmasters about Shakespeare; of actors about Chekhov; of theatrical avant-garde enthusiasts concerning their debt to Mr. Donald McWhinnic and the Third Programme.
1 fancy he might think again before dismissing radio drama as inconsiderable in its own eyes. and unimportant in the context of the contemporary dramatic scene.
VAL GIELGUD
Wychwood, Barcombe, Lewes, Sussex
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