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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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The Archers
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(BBC from 1950)
The world's longest running broadcast serial, on BBC radio nationally with a 15-minute episode five days a week from 1 January 1951 (it had been previously been heard for a few months in the Midland region). It was devised for a practical purpose – to convey useful information to the farming community – and 40 years on it still deliberately writes into the plot themes of topical concern to its audience. The original Archers were Dan and Doris, living at Brookfield Farm in Ambridge, and their descendants remain the central family; prominent among their neighbours are the ever discontented Grundys.
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Ambridge is situated south of Borchester in the fictional county of Borsetshire, but in another sense it has a real location at Hanbury in Worcestershire; Brookfield Farm was based on the first producer's farm there, and various weddings in the series have been recorded in Hanbury church. The programme has a tradition of occasionally including real people: Princess Margaret visited Ambridge for a charity fashion show in 1984, as president of the NSPCC; and in 1992 Eddie Grundy got drunk on champagne in Britt Ekland's dressing room, when she was in the Borchester Christmas pantomime. The signature tune, 'Barwick Green', comes from My Native Heath, a suite written in 1922 by Arthur Wood.
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