Val Gielgud - BBC Radio

BBC Radio

Following education at Oxford University, Gielgud began his career as a secretary to a Member of Parliament, before moving into writing when he took a job as the sub-editor of a comic book / magazine. It was this job that led him to work for the BBC's own listings the magazine, the Radio Times, as the assistant to the editor Eric Maschwitz. This was Gielgud's first connection to the Corporation, and although he was not involved in any radio production, he often used his position at the magazine to make his thoughts on radio dramas felt: in his autobiography, he later confessed to having written several of the letters appearing on the magazine's correspondence page, supposedly from listeners, criticising various aspects of the Corporation's programming.

Maschwitz and Gielgud were close friends, and even wrote detective fiction together – Gielgud would later on go on to be responsible in whole or part for twenty-six detective / mystery novels, one short story collection, two historical novels, nineteen stage plays, four film screenplays, forty radio plays, seven non-fiction books and be the editor of a further two books.

In January 1929, Gielgud was appointed Head of Productions at the BBC, responsible for all radio drama, when he had never previously directed a single radio play. He succeeded R E Jeffrey, whose output he had been so regularly criticising in his abuse of the Radio Times letters page. He proved to be highly successful in this role, remaining in it for the next twenty years and overseeing all of the radio drama produced during the period, writing many plays himself and sometimes appearing as an actor in small parts.

Gielgud is often praised with inventing many of the techniques of radio drama still common in the form today. He constantly reminded those working with and under him that radio drama could employ vastly larger casts and place itself in more exotic settings than was possible with regular stage plays, and held a theory that while stage plays could show the actions of characters, in radio it was possible to get inside of their minds.

He was not a fan of the soap opera genre which was rising to prominence on radio in the United States at the time – instead he preferred to concentrate on producing a variety of one-off dramas, rather than continuing series. He was not averse to producing the popular as well as the cultural, however, with various mysteries and thrillers being broadcast as well as more 'refined' productions such as Shakespeare plays.