| Description | Scripts of individual episodes of 'The Archers' serial for radio, transmitted from January 1951 in the BBC Light Programme, later in the Home Service, and from June 1970 on Radio 4, including scripts of four of the five programmes broadcast as a pilot run in the BBC Midland Region in May 1950.
The scripts are all typescript duplicated copies unless otherwise stated. Part way through 1959 the series began to be transmitted in the BBC Overseas Network and scripts from that period bear the Transcription episode number as well as the Light Programme episode number, for example, Light Programme episode 2,438 (transmitted in June 1960) is Transcription episode 368.
Of the scripts in this series, the first or cover pages from episodes from 1,217 onwards give the dates and times of rehearsals and recordings as well as the date of transmission, the characters appearing in the various scenes and the announcer's introduction. The scripts end with '(Theme Music)' or 'Theme In and Down for Closing', later merely 'Music'. The episodes were generally recorded in the BBC studio in Birmingham.
One or two scripts appear elsewhere in the catalogue as Norman had deliberately filed them with other Archers-related correspondence and papers.
Norman Painting alludes to his keeping of scripts in 'Forever Ambridge' [1975] page 236: he had started by keeping all of the early scripts, then transferred several loads to Broadcasting House in Edgbaston, Birmingham, to replace the series there which had been damaged by water, thus relieving storage space in his own country cottage. He then preserved 'current scripts', together with those written by himself under his pseudonym 'Bruno Milna' of which 1,144 of the 1,198 he wrote following the illness and death of writer John Keir Cross, survive here. Of the other scripts now surviving here the writers were mainly Geoffrey Webb, Edward J. Mason, David Turner, John Keir Cross (who took over from David Turner as second script writer in 1962) and Brian Hayles; with other writers contributing in the later years. |