Saturday 1st September

On Saturday 1 September, in the Archive Hour on BBC Radio 4 (8.00pm) Sean Street explores the legacy of the woman who began the BBC Sound Archive. : In 1937 Marie Slocombe was doing a summer relief job at the Broadcasting House. One of her tasks was to sort out – and chuck out – a pile of dusty discs. She noticed that in the first batch were recordings of G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill, Herbert Asquith and G. K. Chesterton. So she hesitated. This was the humble beginning of what became one of the most important collections of recordings in the world – the BBC Sound Archive. Working with Linton Fletcher, who was in charge of recorded programmes, Slocombe carried on collecting. She worked in a climate of indifference, even opposition, by BBC management. It doubted the usefulness of recordings, and was troubled by the expense of keeping them. But Slocombe persevered and by 1939 had 2,000 discs, including the voices of Hitler and Goebbels. “History,” she says in one recording, “was piling into the archives.” She recalls Stanley Maxted coming in with the Battle of Arnhem recordings hidden under his great-coat . At first Marie Slocombe didn’t really know what she was doing, so she took a librarianship correspondence course, then invented her own cataloguing system, cross-indexing all aspects of broadcasting. This, thinks Simon Rooks who is in charge of the Archive now, was a wonder – and it was used until almost the millennium. Malcolm Taylor, who runs the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, worked with Slocombe and remembers with affection her Oxford-educated gentility – floral print dresses and cups and saucers rather than mugs. But she was liberal in her views and no snob. This was not, Slocombe insisted, an archive of the great and good. From early on she included the voices of ordinary people from far and wide. After the war she made the archive active rather than merely a receptor. It was Slocombe who first co-operated with the Leeds University Dialect Survey. It was Slocombe who sent out Seamus Ennis, Peter Kennedy and Alan Lomax who collected songs and interviews from more than 700 people from all over Britain, used in the series ‘As They Roved Out’, which was vital to the revival of interest in the traditional music of Britain. There was, says Malcolm Taylor, a cell at the heart of the BBC establishment devoted to vernacular culture. This collection is now considered of major importance. We see, Simon Rooks believes, the legacy of Slocombe’s work today in initiatives such as the BBC’s Voices Project which has captured the conversation of 1,200 from all over the country. Slocombe herself made remarkable field recordings of polyphonic singing in remote parts of Portugal. She gave tapes (and sometimes surreptitiously loaned recording gear) to people going further afield – so the BBC has a collection of Australian Aboriginal music, a recording of the kind of harp King David played, recorded in Ethiopia , and - something of which she was inordinately fond - some Vietnamese spoon music.. In an interview made in 1986 Marie Slocombe considers the use and purpose of it all; how things were selected, and sadly what was lost – such as an early Kathleen Ferrier recording. She is mischievous, too, about the politics involved. The BBC was forbidden from recording Edward VIII’s abdication speech, but Slocombe couldn’t resist. It was kept it under lock and key (along with some other, highly select recordings), it was eventually broadcast and Marie waited for the flak…which never came. The BBC’s Sound Archives are, and not before time, becoming more accessible to the public. So we tend to take them for granted, assuming that this remarkable resource has always been there. The Radio historian Sean Street reveals that this was not so: it was conceived and created by a BBC secretary. She laid the foundations and, as recording techniques improved and programme scope widened, designed and built the cathedral of voices and sounds we hear today. And her own story, which itself is in the Archive, is scarcely known. : In 1937 Marie Slocombe was doing a summer relief job at the Broadcasting House. One of her tasks was to sort out – and chuck out – a pile of dusty discs. She noticed that in the first batch were recordings of G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill, Herbert Asquith and G. K. Chesterton. So she hesitated. This was the humble beginning of what became one of the most important collections of recordings in the world – the BBC Sound Archive. Working with Linton Fletcher, who was in charge of recorded programmes, Slocombe carried on collecting. She worked in a climate of indifference, even opposition, by BBC management. It doubted the usefulness of recordings, and was troubled by the expense of keeping them. But Slocombe persevered and by 1939 had 2,000 discs, including the voices of Hitler and Goebbels. “History,” she says in one recording, “was piling into the archives.” She recalls Stanley Maxted coming in with the Battle of Arnhem recordings hidden under his great-coat . At first Marie Slocombe didn’t really know what she was doing, so she took a librarianship correspondence course, then invented her own cataloguing system, cross-indexing all aspects of broadcasting. This, thinks Simon Rooks who is in charge of the Archive now, was a wonder – and it was used until almost the millennium. Malcolm Taylor, who runs the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, worked with Slocombe and remembers with affection her Oxford-educated gentility – floral print dresses and cups and saucers rather than mugs. But she was liberal in her views and no snob. This was not, Slocombe insisted, an archive of the great and good. From early on she included the voices of ordinary people from far and wide. After the war she made the archive active rather than merely a receptor. It was Slocombe who first co-operated with the Leeds University Dialect Survey. It was Slocombe who sent out Seamus Ennis, Peter Kennedy and Alan Lomax who collected songs and interviews from more than 700 people from all over Britain, used in the series ‘As They Roved Out’, which was vital to the revival of interest in the traditional music of Britain. There was, says Malcolm Taylor, a cell at the heart of the BBC establishment devoted to vernacular culture. This collection is now considered of major importance. We see, Simon Rooks believes, the legacy of Slocombe’s work today in initiatives such as the BBC’s Voices Project which has captured the conversation of 1,200 from all over the country. Slocombe herself made remarkable field recordings of polyphonic singing in remote parts of Portugal. She gave tapes (and sometimes surreptitiously loaned recording gear) to people going further afield – so the BBC has a collection of Australian Aboriginal music, a recording of the kind of harp King David played, recorded in Ethiopia , and - something of which she was inordinately fond - some Vietnamese spoon music.. In an interview made in 1986 Marie Slocombe considers the use and purpose of it all; how things were selected, and sadly what was lost – such as an early Kathleen Ferrier recording. She is mischievous, too, about the politics involved. The BBC was forbidden from recording Edward VIII’s abdication speech, but Slocombe couldn’t resist. It was kept it under lock and key (along with some other, highly select recordings), it was eventually broadcast and Marie waited for the flak…which never came. The BBC’s Sound Archives are, and not before time, becoming more accessible to the public. So we tend to take them for granted, assuming that this remarkable resource has always been there. The Radio historian Sean Street reveals that this was not so: it was conceived and created by a BBC secretary. She laid the foundations and, as recording techniques improved and programme scope widened, designed and built the cathedral of voices and sounds we hear today. And her own story, which itself is in the Archive, is scarcely known. In 1937 Marie Slocombe was doing a summer relief job at the Broadcasting House. One of her tasks was to sort out – and chuck out – a pile of dusty discs. She noticed that in the first batch were recordings of G.B. Shaw, H.G. Wells, Winston Churchill, Herbert Asquith and G. K. Chesterton. So she hesitated. This was the humble beginning of what became one of the most important collections of recordings in the world – the BBC Sound Archive. Working with Linton Fletcher, who was in charge of recorded programmes, Slocombe carried on collecting. She worked in a climate of indifference, even opposition, by BBC management. It doubted the usefulness of recordings, and was troubled by the expense of keeping them. But Slocombe persevered and by 1939 had 2,000 discs, including the voices of Hitler and Goebbels. “History,” she says in one recording, “was piling into the archives.” She recalls Stanley Maxted coming in with the Battle of Arnhem recordings hidden under his great-coat . At first Marie Slocombe didn’t really know what she was doing, so she took a librarianship correspondence course, then invented her own cataloguing system, cross-indexing all aspects of broadcasting. This, thinks Simon Rooks who is in charge of the Archive now, was a wonder – and it was used until almost the millennium. Malcolm Taylor, who runs the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, worked with Slocombe and remembers with affection her Oxford-educated gentility – floral print dresses and cups and saucers rather than mugs. But she was liberal in her views and no snob. This was not, Slocombe insisted, an archive of the great and good. From early on she included the voices of ordinary people from far and wide. After the war she made the archive active rather than merely a receptor. It was Slocombe who first co-operated with the Leeds University Dialect Survey. It was Slocombe who sent out Seamus Ennis, Peter Kennedy and Alan Lomax who collected songs and interviews from more than 700 people from all over Britain, used in the series ‘As They Roved Out’, which was vital to the revival of interest in the traditional music of Britain. There was, says Malcolm Taylor, a cell at the heart of the BBC establishment devoted to vernacular culture. This collection is now considered of major importance. We see, Simon Rooks believes, the legacy of Slocombe’s work today in initiatives such as the BBC’s Voices Project which has captured the conversation of 1,200 from all over the country. Slocombe herself made remarkable field recordings of polyphonic singing in remote parts of Portugal. She gave tapes (and sometimes surreptitiously loaned recording gear) to people going further afield – so the BBC has a collection of Australian Aboriginal music, a recording of the kind of harp King David played, recorded in Ethiopia , and - something of which she was inordinately fond - some Vietnamese spoon music.. In an interview made in 1986 Marie Slocombe considers the use and purpose of it all; how things were selected, and sadly what was lost – such as an early Kathleen Ferrier recording. She is mischievous, too, about the politics involved. The BBC was forbidden from recording Edward VIII’s abdication speech, but Slocombe couldn’t resist. It was kept it under lock and key (along with some other, highly select recordings), it was eventually broadcast and Marie waited for the flak…which never came. The BBC’s Sound Archives are, and not before time, becoming more accessible to the public. So we tend to take them for granted, assuming that this remarkable resource has always been there. The Radio historian Sean Street reveals that this was not so: it was conceived and created by a BBC secretary. She laid the foundations and, as recording techniques improved and programme scope widened, designed and built the cathedral of voices and sounds we hear today. And her own story, which itself is in the Archive, is scarcely known.