'Countries in the Air': Travel and Geomodernism in Louis MacNeice's BBC Features. Issue 2 (3rd April 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lodhi, Aasiya
• Is Part Of: Media history. Volume 24:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 226
• Page End: 238
• Publication Date: 2018-04-03
• Subjects: BBC radio -- empire -- features -- geomodernism -- spatiality -- travel -- MacNeice; Mass media -- History -- Periodicals; Press -- History -- Periodicals; Journalism -- History -- Periodicals; 070.09
• DOI: 10.1080/13688804.2018.1471349
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1368-8804

Abstract

Abstract : In the middle stretch of his twenty-two-year BBC career, the poet and producer Louis MacNeice earned a reputation as one of the 'undisputed masters of creative sound broadcasting', a reputation derived, in part, from a huge range of radio features that were founded upon his journeys abroad. Through close examination of some of his most significant overseas soundscapes—including Portrait of Rome (1947) and Portrait of Delhi (1948)—this article will consider the role and function of travel in shaping MacNeice's engagement with the radio feature as a modernist form at a particular transcultural moment when Britain moved through the end of the Second World War and the eventual disintegration of its empire.