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Armchair Nation: An intimate history of Britain in front of the TV
But what does your furniture point at?' asks the character Joey in the sitcom Friends on hearing an acquaintance has no TV. It's a good question: since its beginnings during WW2, television has assumed a central role in our houses and our lives, just as satellite dishes and aerials have become features of urban skylines. Television (or 'the idiot's lantern', depending on your feelings about it) has created controversy, brought coronations and World Cups into living rooms, allowed us access to 24hr news and media and provided a thousand conversation starters. As shows come and go in popularity, the history of television shows us how our society has changed.Armchair Nation reveals the fascinating, lyrical and sometimes surprising history of telly, from the first demonstration of television by John Logie Baird (in Selfridges) to the fear and excitement that greeted its arrival in households (some viewers worried it might control their thoughts), the controversies of Mary Whitehouse's 'Clean Up TV' campaign and what JG Ballard thought about Big Brother.Via trips down memory lane with Morecambe and Wise, Richard Dimbleby, David Frost, Blue Peter and Coronation Street, you can flick between fascinating nuggets from the strange side of TV: what happened after a chimpanzee called 'Fred J. Muggs' interrupted American footage of the Queen's wedding, and why aliens might be tuning in to The Benny Hill Show.As Alfred Hitchcock said: 'The invention of television can be compared to the introduction of indoor plumbing. Fundamentally it brought no change in the public's habits. It simply eliminated the necessity of leaving the house.
456 pages, Paperback
First published August 22, 2013
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About the author
Joe Moran
24 books47 followersJoe Moran is Professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University and is the author of seven books, including Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime, Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV, Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness and First You Write a Sentence. He writes for, among others, the Guardian, the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
September 11, 2024
In strict adherence to classic Reithian principles this history of British television informs, educates and entertains. It’s an exhaustively researched and scholarly work which is also very funny, mainly because it is full of odd and sometimes downright bizarre facts. In the 1930s, for instance, many viewers thought the TV was watching them and were reluctant to undress in front of it (this may be where Orwell got the idea of the telescreen in 1984 from). When BBC and ITV simultaneously started full colour transmissions in 1969 hundreds of people phoned to complain that they were still receiving the programmes in black and white. They were advised to buy a colour set. The novelist Anthony Burgess, disciple of Joyce and well known for his highbrow tendencies, was a fan of Benny Hill, eulogising him as ‘one of the great artists of our age’. His friend and fellow novelist Kingsley Amis was addicted to the Lancastrian soap opera Coronation Street and would cheer his favourite bits and boo when characters he disliked came on. The poet Stephen Spender, meanwhile, preferred Neighbours and a detective series called Spender.
Moran is also a dab hand at exploding myths. Kenneth Tynan, it turns out, was not the first person to use the F-word on television. That distinction actually goes to playwright Brendan Behan who made free with the forbidden expletive not once but several times in a BBC Panorama interview with Malcolm Muggeridge nearly a full decade earlier in 1956. The only complaints received on that occasion, possibly because Behan’s delivery was impaired by alcohol, were about his Dublin accent. In 1959 Ulster Television interviewed a man whose never-ending job it was to paint the railings on Stranmillis Embankment alongside the River Lagan in Belfast. The interviewer asked if it ever got boring painting the same railings year in and year out. ‘Of course it’s fucking boring’, came the reply. There were no complaints. In the light of all this Tynan seems less of a pioneer and more a Johnny-come-lately.
Those of a certain vintage, myself among them, are susceptible to a quaint notion that in the 1970s, with only three channels and no on-demand service (and, let’s face it, precious few other forms of home entertainment), British TV helped to bind the nation together in a way that no longer happens in our multi-channel, fragmented, watch when you feel like it age. One big happy square-eyed nation united by their love of Morecambe & Wise and Dad’s Army. Moran regards this as largely mythical as well. He points out that in the 1950s television had been accused of destroying communal life. I’m sure he’s right that all such generalisations tell us more about our current preoccupations and anxieties than the past, or television itself.
Indeed from its arrival there was no shortage of those who were convinced that television was the end of civilisation as they knew it. There were others who thought it might play a part in creating a genuinely democratic common culture that was neither highbrow or lowbrow. Armchair Nation offers overwhelming evidence that they were all wrong. Television failed to kill off any pastimes that weren’t already dying of natural causes. Far from destroying domestic life, as many feared, it was quickly absorbed into it. As for the participatory potential of TV a quick glance at shows like The X Factor, described by Moran as ‘a grotesque caricature of democracy’, should tell you all you need to know.
This informative and powerfully nostalgic book (I find there’s nothing like the titles of TV shows from decades ago to induce a Proustian rush, and this is teeming with them) reveals television as something much less transformative or apocalyptic, yet all-pervasive and absorbing nonetheless: moving wallpaper; a way of watching the time pass; a surreal collage of the mundane and the marvellous, and the marvellously mundane; a magic box of waking dreams which soon evaporate into the ether; and a reliable cure for insomnia. As one viewer is quoted as saying: ‘It’s like opening your post. Every now and then something interesting comes along but you still forget about it two minutes later’.
Moran is also a dab hand at exploding myths. Kenneth Tynan, it turns out, was not the first person to use the F-word on television. That distinction actually goes to playwright Brendan Behan who made free with the forbidden expletive not once but several times in a BBC Panorama interview with Malcolm Muggeridge nearly a full decade earlier in 1956. The only complaints received on that occasion, possibly because Behan’s delivery was impaired by alcohol, were about his Dublin accent. In 1959 Ulster Television interviewed a man whose never-ending job it was to paint the railings on Stranmillis Embankment alongside the River Lagan in Belfast. The interviewer asked if it ever got boring painting the same railings year in and year out. ‘Of course it’s fucking boring’, came the reply. There were no complaints. In the light of all this Tynan seems less of a pioneer and more a Johnny-come-lately.
Those of a certain vintage, myself among them, are susceptible to a quaint notion that in the 1970s, with only three channels and no on-demand service (and, let’s face it, precious few other forms of home entertainment), British TV helped to bind the nation together in a way that no longer happens in our multi-channel, fragmented, watch when you feel like it age. One big happy square-eyed nation united by their love of Morecambe & Wise and Dad’s Army. Moran regards this as largely mythical as well. He points out that in the 1950s television had been accused of destroying communal life. I’m sure he’s right that all such generalisations tell us more about our current preoccupations and anxieties than the past, or television itself.
Indeed from its arrival there was no shortage of those who were convinced that television was the end of civilisation as they knew it. There were others who thought it might play a part in creating a genuinely democratic common culture that was neither highbrow or lowbrow. Armchair Nation offers overwhelming evidence that they were all wrong. Television failed to kill off any pastimes that weren’t already dying of natural causes. Far from destroying domestic life, as many feared, it was quickly absorbed into it. As for the participatory potential of TV a quick glance at shows like The X Factor, described by Moran as ‘a grotesque caricature of democracy’, should tell you all you need to know.
This informative and powerfully nostalgic book (I find there’s nothing like the titles of TV shows from decades ago to induce a Proustian rush, and this is teeming with them) reveals television as something much less transformative or apocalyptic, yet all-pervasive and absorbing nonetheless: moving wallpaper; a way of watching the time pass; a surreal collage of the mundane and the marvellous, and the marvellously mundane; a magic box of waking dreams which soon evaporate into the ether; and a reliable cure for insomnia. As one viewer is quoted as saying: ‘It’s like opening your post. Every now and then something interesting comes along but you still forget about it two minutes later’.
November 15, 2013
This is a history of television in the UK - and more. It is academically rigorous, analytically sound, gossipy and at times funny. It takes us from the world's first television dept in a department store (guess which one? Selfridges 1928!) through the arrival of colour (the first colour programme? Wimbledon 1967. Many people know that. But what was the second? Again the book tells us - Henley regatta 1967. Presented by Peter West surrounded by lovely green pot plants.)through the arrival of satellite and cable, "Big Brother" etc.
I loved the first part of the book in particular, dealing with the arrival of television and the way in which it entered the British consciousness (not just because of the Coronation 1955, by the way, as Moran establishes). But throughout it all, facts explode on the scene like fireworks, like the ones above.
A delight from first page to last.
One last fact then. The first man to say the F word on television? No not Kenneth Tynan. It was in fact a Belfast bridge painter on Ulster Television. No doubt he'd just seen the schedule on ITV2.
I loved the first part of the book in particular, dealing with the arrival of television and the way in which it entered the British consciousness (not just because of the Coronation 1955, by the way, as Moran establishes). But throughout it all, facts explode on the scene like fireworks, like the ones above.
A delight from first page to last.
One last fact then. The first man to say the F word on television? No not Kenneth Tynan. It was in fact a Belfast bridge painter on Ulster Television. No doubt he'd just seen the schedule on ITV2.
January 10, 2020
I really enjoyed Moran's On Roads: A Hidden History. This was even better. The chapters covering the early days of television transmissions were a particular highlight. Incredible to look back on how much ground we've covered in barely a hundred years, both technologically and culturally. Moran's knack for finding a telling or otherwise delightful anecdote is unsurpassed.
August 7, 2015
Having enjoyed the author's previous book, On Roads , I'd been looking forward to reading this for some time and wasn't let down. The author, a Professor of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University, puts the hours in on the research and his eye for anecdote is astoundingly good.
A cultural history of British telly, from its early days to contemporary trends, there's something worth sharing on almost every page. I'll restrict myself to a few here:
Regional telly: the author notes the role of local television in helping create and sustain regional identity around somewhat arbitrary geographic boundaries - Tyneside, Wearside and Teeside are a notably tough group to lump together and the owner of the new channel for the region rejected several names to avoid offence, including the acronym-challenged Tyne, Wear And Tees Television.
Critics: early television critic Clive James cited John Keats' "notion of negative capability, a way of being receptive to the multifarious nature of the world without bounding it with categories or judgements".
Viewing habits: much like Twitter, television was largely forgettable and forgotten requiring programme makers to "invent a new televisual grammar that kept viewers awake by repeatedly telling them what they had just seen and what was coming up".
Conservatism: so much that is championed as new on television has forgotten precedents, from the obvious similarities between Opportunity Knocks and the genius who decided to outsource talent spotting and promotion by televising A&R via The X Factor to the 1987 series "Watching You Watching Us" that spawned current hit Gogglebox.
Satellite & Cable: associated with the "militant individualism" that saw The Sun, Sky and other "vulgar manifestations of Thatcherism"
Football: The author quote an early media studies monograph - "Match of the Day is not football in the way that Come Dancing is not dancing and goes into a fascinating mini-history of football commentary
Snobbery: new digital channel BBC4 offered a little "'caviar for the snobs'" allowing arts programmes to be ghettoised 'so that - like the celebrated daft pianist in a brothel - they may not know and so may cease to complain about what goes on elsewhere in the building".
With a poetic turn of phrase a wit that infuses the tone, Joe Moran is now an unmissable author for me - looking forward to his next work.
A cultural history of British telly, from its early days to contemporary trends, there's something worth sharing on almost every page. I'll restrict myself to a few here:
Regional telly: the author notes the role of local television in helping create and sustain regional identity around somewhat arbitrary geographic boundaries - Tyneside, Wearside and Teeside are a notably tough group to lump together and the owner of the new channel for the region rejected several names to avoid offence, including the acronym-challenged Tyne, Wear And Tees Television.
Critics: early television critic Clive James cited John Keats' "notion of negative capability, a way of being receptive to the multifarious nature of the world without bounding it with categories or judgements".
Viewing habits: much like Twitter, television was largely forgettable and forgotten requiring programme makers to "invent a new televisual grammar that kept viewers awake by repeatedly telling them what they had just seen and what was coming up".
Conservatism: so much that is championed as new on television has forgotten precedents, from the obvious similarities between Opportunity Knocks and the genius who decided to outsource talent spotting and promotion by televising A&R via The X Factor to the 1987 series "Watching You Watching Us" that spawned current hit Gogglebox.
Satellite & Cable: associated with the "militant individualism" that saw The Sun, Sky and other "vulgar manifestations of Thatcherism"
Football: The author quote an early media studies monograph - "Match of the Day is not football in the way that Come Dancing is not dancing and goes into a fascinating mini-history of football commentary
Snobbery: new digital channel BBC4 offered a little "'caviar for the snobs'" allowing arts programmes to be ghettoised 'so that - like the celebrated daft pianist in a brothel - they may not know and so may cease to complain about what goes on elsewhere in the building".
With a poetic turn of phrase a wit that infuses the tone, Joe Moran is now an unmissable author for me - looking forward to his next work.
July 5, 2017
Superb book about the history of how we watch television. Great read switching from social history to anecdotes around the early watching of tv. Best book I have read this year to date
July 8, 2018
Sofa surfing: a witty wander with Liverpool University’s Joe Moran, through the history of the idiot box, from health fears to moral panics, via the golden age(s) - mainly three-channel colour in the 70s. It’s mostly affectionate, even about Crossroads, the BBC/ITV duopoly and even community television. Frighteningly, Moran points out that although NASA’s Voyager has been sent into space with representations of human culture (Bach, Sydney Opera House, greetings to our friends in outer space in multiple languages), “remnants of old television were far more likely to give our position away than those snail-slow Voyager [craft], which have only just reached the outer reaches of the solar system and will not pass another planet for another 40,000 years.” Every episode of Supermarket Sweep and Loose Women...perhaps they’re currently top of the ratings on Alpha Centauri?
December 10, 2013
I was a bit underwhelmed by Armchair Nation to be honest. Perhaps it was because I wasn't too sure what I was expecting, but I was left with a sense of disappointment. Joe Moran starts by taking a fairly traditional approach to recounting the the early days of British television, but this isn't a traditional history of the subject.
The first few chapters tell of TV's early days, from invention, to testing by a reluctant BBC, through to war time suspension and then enthusiastic post-war uptake of the new medium. I enjoyed the early chapters best as Moran gives us one of the best histories of early television I've come across...very detailed and a wealth new material on the subject. But once we hit the mid 1960s the remaining chapters seem a hotch-potch of facts and bits of analysis on a series of disparate topics. Crossroads gets a mention, plus loads on the 1969 moon landings and Big Brother. These are sort of mini essays which are moderately interesting, but the problem with putting them in book form is there needs to be a coherent thematic arch, and unfortunately I couldn't identify one in this case. Plus there were a few factual errors, which although not a big deal in themselves, just made me feel more irritated than I needed to be with a book which could have been improved with a clearer purpose and focus. A scant 3 stars.
© Koplowitz 2013
The first few chapters tell of TV's early days, from invention, to testing by a reluctant BBC, through to war time suspension and then enthusiastic post-war uptake of the new medium. I enjoyed the early chapters best as Moran gives us one of the best histories of early television I've come across...very detailed and a wealth new material on the subject. But once we hit the mid 1960s the remaining chapters seem a hotch-potch of facts and bits of analysis on a series of disparate topics. Crossroads gets a mention, plus loads on the 1969 moon landings and Big Brother. These are sort of mini essays which are moderately interesting, but the problem with putting them in book form is there needs to be a coherent thematic arch, and unfortunately I couldn't identify one in this case. Plus there were a few factual errors, which although not a big deal in themselves, just made me feel more irritated than I needed to be with a book which could have been improved with a clearer purpose and focus. A scant 3 stars.
© Koplowitz 2013
November 3, 2017
Brisk, yet surprisingly detailed social history of television watching in the United Kingdom. On the whole I enjoyed it, but at times it reminded me of the old Video+ codes for recording programmes in the middle of the night - expectations squelched because I’d read the code from the previous week’s newspaper.
August 11, 2021
Really this would be a 3.5⭐ because I did enjoy it but I found the slightly more technical sections a little dull, the sections about key moments in television were more enjoyable. Overall a very solid read, with a lovely writing style, which was a fun frolic into the history of television
February 5, 2024
Not a topic I would have chosen if I hadn't randomly seen it on the library shelf and had it catch my eye, but really glad I picked it up because I learned a lot - and had no idea what TV used to be like when our parents generation were young
September 14, 2024
Ponderous and over technical, this history of television makes some interesting observations, but I would have preferred a more entertaining overview that a writer like Alwyn Turner would have provided.
October 7, 2014
The main problem with this is that it tries to describe entire decades of tv culture in 30 - 50 pages leaving each chapter to consist of quotes from biographies and figures about how many were watching thus missing out on a lot of potential points of discussion, specially the later decades when the readership will have some knowledge of what was going on. Obvious missing discussions would be the sudden acceptability of blatant sf/fantasy/horror since Doctor Who returned, the modern acceptability of prime time foreign language programmes, Channel 5, the crossover between tv and music in the 80s in which anyone from neighbours or eastenders could have a hit single, the differences in british and American culture, for example.
November 23, 2017
British social historian Joe Moran is such a wonderful writer but wasn't as enraptured by this as by his earlier Queuing For Beginners (on random everyday habits) and On Roads (an elegy about UK roads, bridges, highways, service stations, town planning etc. perhaps the whole of TV in Britain is a little too broad an area for him to cover? however, his languid, thoughtful style and wistful poetry are still in evidence and there are a wealth of anecdotes and well crafted observations to enjoy as ever
December 14, 2013
Readable social history of television in the UK. The history up to he 1980s is very well handled - the per-war and immediate post-war parts are very strong. As the book moves into the 1990s the presentation is more thematic and is covering an area that has had saturation coverage in the comment sections of newspapers. That's not to say that the latter part of the book is without interest or that it is badly done, it's simply so familiar that it lacks the novelty of the early parts. Overall it's a serious social history written with great lightness of touch.
April 14, 2014
I rather think this is the best book I have ever read about television. For an academicky tome it is hugely absorbing, deeply enlightening, pleasingly nostalgic, and in places unexpectedly moving. There was more than one passage I found myself reading misty eyed - and I'm not even British. Yet so much of my life has been spent in the thrall of pommy telly. This marvellous book is a celebration of humanity's symbiosis with the box. Highly recommended.
September 22, 2013
A captivating survey of our relationship with telly, atmospheric and full of fascinating snippets (a hospital agreed to turn off some fairly vital seeming medical equipment so it didn't interfere with transmission of a Wimbledon final; Kinglsey Amis' ashes regularly watched The Bill). Especially good on how magical and weird TV must have appeared in its early years.
February 19, 2014
It's a book and it's about television - what's not to love? Joe Moran has a real knack for taking the everyday and telling its story. I'd completely forgotten that there was a time before breakfast tv, a time when television finished last thing at night and started again some time during the morning.
Fascinating stuff.
Fascinating stuff.
July 31, 2021
Not five stars but four. In terms of quality it should have had five stars, but it's a immense piece of work, in terms of size and detail. If you want a really complete history of TV then this is your book. Wonderfully written, nicely anecdotal to prevent it from getting too heavy. But boy, it takes a while to get through it. Thank god I had the time... Almost two months...
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February 14, 2014A comprehensive and readable history of TV in Britain. Top heavy on the years of early development but still fascinating on the slow creep of TV on society.
April 16, 2014
A fascinating account of the social history of television in Britain, really worth reading.
July 15, 2015
Great history of British TV - and even more so - British TV viewing.
August 25, 2015
Эту книжку должен был написать Брайсон. Миллион презанятных фактов, но как же постно они поданы!
November 24, 2016
Slow to start but the perseverance was worth it in the end. Very informative.
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