Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Cities on the Brink

The Essay: Cities on the Brink: Episode 5: London

Factual: History

London

Episode 5

Episode 5: London

Cities on the Brink

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Cities on the Brink, LondonClose menu

BBC news correspondent Emma Jane Kirby discusses London in 1914.

BBC News correspondents capture the mood of World War One's European capitals. Emma Jane Kirby discusses 1914 London, aided by Macdonald Gill's new Wonderground Tube map.

Stepping back in time, BBC News correspondents present a personal perspective on principal cities of the major European powers that fought the First World War. In this Essay, Emma Jane Kirby considers the capital of the largest contemporary modern maritime empire: London.

To today's listeners some of Londoners' concerns a century ago will seem extraordinarily familiar. Complaints about the Tube were as frequent and heartfelt then as they are today. To try and divert travellers from their misery, Macdonald Gill - the brother of sculptor and designer Eric Gill - was commissioned to produce a "Wonderground" map. It was intended to amuse them as they waited for their trains which were infrequent, often dirty and overcrowded.

The map's whimsical illustrations - together with Cockney asides put in the mouths of some of the invented characters - captured the city's above-ground, pre-war character. It evoked the zeitgeist which George Bernard Shaw simultaneously reflected on stage in "Pygmalion" - and led to a subsequent commission to design a theatreland map during the First World War.

Emma Jane Kirby considers the idea of Britain which London was presenting to both the wider world and Britons themselves, and she assesses how far these attitudes still resonate today.

Producer Simon Coates.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Perspectives on the capital cities of European powers involved in World War One

BBC news correspondents present personal perspectives on the capital cities of the major European powers that, later in 1914, would face each other in the First World War

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Cities on the Brink

Episode 5: London

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3