Dramatic Works of Denis Johnston

Publication of the third volume completes the collection of Johnston's work. Volume 3, The Radio and Television Plays, is in many ways the most interesting, not least because Johnston was one of the founding fathers of BBC drama and a major influence on viewers' very perception of what a television play consists of. Also printed in this collection are a number of articles and other prose writings about drama on radio and television. After a very happy pre-war period working for BBC Radio Northern Ireland, he moved to the embryonic television service at Alexandra Palace - he was one of the few to have been temporarily thrown out of television when broadcasting ceased for the duration of hostilities and he became a BBC Radio War Reporter. An interesting feature of the TV scripts is the early development of television script-writing technique, which, as these faithful reproductions from extant typescripts show, grew out of the conventions used in play-scripts.