BBC SCHOOLMASTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 516, 13 May 1949, Page 24

BBC SCHOOLMASTER

HEN Val ’ Gielgud, long head of the BBC Drama Department, takes his sabbatical leave this August his place will be taken by E. A. Harding, at present Director of the Staff. Training School. The Staff Training School was started in 1936 to give new staff an introduction to broadcasting and old staff a refresher course, and Harding has from the beginning been the mainspring of its activities. The School was the first thing of its kind in radio, and gave comprehensive one to four-week courses in all branches of the subject. Some of these were unconventional. During the war it trained what were classified as "members of propaganda companies of Allied Armies" — French, Dutch, Polish, and Czech agents retiirning to their occupied countries-in methods of sabotaging radio programmes and stations. Before D-Day it trained

a military unit to operate a secret radio station which could transmit to men dropped behind enemy lines after the opening of the Second Front, and at the end of the war it trained Germans cleared of Nazi sympathies to man radio stations. Harding still keeps in touch with these students. « Harding joined the BBC Drama Department as a producer in 1929. In 1933 he was appointed first Programme Direca

tor of the Northern Section of the BBC centred at Manchester, a position he held till he became Chief Instructor of the Staff Training Department. In 1939 he returned to Drama as a temporary. producer, then in 1941 went back to Staff Training as its director. His personal tradition of alternation between Staff and Drama now continues with his appointment as Acting Head of the BBC Drama Department. Henn a AR RR NN RN TN A