Using case studies and analytical overviews this book explores the relationship between broadcasting and the intimate domestic sphere into which it is broadcast. It focuses on the period from the 1920s, when broadcasting was established in the UK, to the present day when both domesticity and broadcasting have become areas of anxiety and contestation. The entry of the wireless, and later television, into the home changed men and womens experience of domesticity, offering education and reducing isolation. But broadcasting did not merely change domestic leisure patterns, it actively intervened...

Using case studies and analytical overviews, this title explores the relationship between broadcasting and the intimate domestic sphere into which it is broadcast. It focuses on the period from the 1920s, when broadcasting was established in the UK, when both domesticity and broadcasting have become areas of anxiety and contestation.

In the Women's Institute's 100th anniversary year, this celebrated text is republished in a new and completely revised edition. There is a new chapter on the formation of the WI in the First World War and substantial additions to existing chapters, including discussions of the WI involvement with radio in the inter-war years, and with evacuation in the Second World War. The book also contains a new afterword on the resurgence of cultural enthusiasm for the domestic in the twenty-first century and its relationship to the present-day WI's feminism and growing popularity. Contesting common-sense...