Scripting Empire

Abstract Scripting Empire recovers the cultural history of West Indian and West African writing at the BBC in order to rethink the critical mid-century decades of decolonization, late modernism, and mass migration to the metropole. Between the 1930s and the 1960s, a remarkable group of black Atlantic artists and intellectuals became broadcasters, producers, editors, and scriptwriters at the corporation. They included Una Marson, Langston Hughes, Louise Bennett, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, George Lamming Amos Tutuola, V. S. Naipaul, Sam Selvon, Cyprian Ekwensi, Stuart Hall, and C. L. R. James. Operating at the interface of a range of literary and broadcast genres, this loose network of writers and thinkers prompt a reassessment of aesthetic innovation and political imagination between the outbreak of World War II and the first airings of post-colonial independence. Moving beyond prevailing accounts of the novel, and narratives of extension, this book examines the role of short, serial formats and episodic structures within the vibrant economy of mid-century literary production. Focusing on the BBC as both a modernist institution and a mass medium, Scripting Empire works comparatively across dozens of different programmes spanning the Colonial Service, General Overseas Service, Home Service, Light Programme, and Third Programme. The book draws upon a transnational archive of materials including scripts, correspondence, periodicals, visual records, and sound recordings in order to reposition the cultural contribution of West Indians and West Africans within a more pervasive and porous account of radio transmission, the legacy of which extends well beyond broadcasting.