The tangled beginnings of the establishment of merchandising at the BBC are further developed in Chapter 7. The most troubling question for the corporation was how, in line with the organisation’s traditional public values and duties as expressed in its charter and broadcasting licence, it should respond to the exploitation of radio identities such as ‘Uncle Mac’, a persona linked to the radio star and BBC employee Derek McCulloch, that were, without authority, also being commercialised on everyday consumer goods by outsiders to the corporation. Internal dynamics at the BBC were further impacted by the development of commercial television and the unexpected success of television programmes such as Dr Who. As expectations shifted, rather than being criticised for commercialisation, it was the public corporation’s failure to pursue profit that became contentious. One outcome of this was the development of a new management unit separate from programming, the BBC Exploitation Department, later renamed as BBC Television Enterprises, which served as merchandising agent for third-party productions such as The Magic Roundabout and The Wombles. Both instances resulted in litigation.

E. M. Forster’s friendship with Benjamin Britten reached its creative high point in the Forster-Crozier collaboration on the Billy Budd libretto; tried in this crucible, it remained cordial until Forster’s death. As homosexual artists and public figures at the cultural centre of a homophobic society, they were linked by their shared belief in democratic values and civic freedom, their opposition to totalitarian forces and ideas, and their persistent questioning of hegemonic discourses. With minds broadened and hearts sensitised by personal experience and international connections, they recognised the importance of compassion in all human relations, and were able to address and inspire audiences from all walks of life. Both engaged with the idea of Englishness while rejecting nationalistic sentiment and intellectual bigotry, and produced works which – sadly – remain topical in their denunciation of the toxic aspects of our global masculinist culture. This chapter presents a brief introduction to E. M. Forster, author, critic, radio broadcaster, and public intellectual, with a special focus on how his work and his personal relations intersected with those of Benjamin Britten.

This chapter investigates the rise of scholarly interest in Early English Pronunciation and, along with it, of research and experimental performances in Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation. While the recent surge in Original Pronunciation productions at Shakespeare’s Globe has been well documented by David Crystal, the history of Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation is still largely under-investigated. Similarly, while early modern original theatrical practices have well-known precursors in theatre-makers like William Poel, pioneering experiments with Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation are fairly obscure. However, these early experiments with Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation are important because they offered an alternative to the otherwise absolute and uncontested acoustic norms associated with Received Pronunciation and Standard Pronunciation which still dominated the first half of the twentieth century. This chapter focuses on a selection of such experiments, ranging from BBC radio programmes produced by Mary Hope Allen in the 1930s and 1940s to a production of Macbeth staged at the Mermaid Theatre in London in 1952. This chapter also identifies two different traditions in early experiments with Original Pronunciation, one that exploits the legitimizing function associated with the accent believed to have been originally spoken on Shakespeare’s stage and the other that aims instead to entertain and develop new audiences for Shakespeare.