VE Day 2025: BBC series explores how WWII transformed reading

8 May 2025
screenshot 2025 05 08 at 11 05 15

A new BBC radio series by Professor Emma Smith explores how WWII transformed books, reading and publishing

A radio series presented by an Oxford academic seeks to explore the impact of World War Two on books, reading and publishing, as part of the BBC’s celebration of the 80th anniversary of V.E. Day.

Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford (English Faculty and Hertford College), has researched and presented the Books for Brighter Blackouts series for BBC Radio 3. The series’ five programmes will be broadcast on BBC Radio Three from Monday 5 to Friday 9 May at 9.45pm, and they can be listened to via BBC Sounds.

The series is based on archival research by Professor Smith, and interviews and conversations she recorded across the UK. It builds on her book, Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers, and tells some fascinating stories:

  • Episode 1 explores the stories of two novels which were saved, against the odds, from the bombing of Paternoster Row on 29th December 1940 – when an astonishing five million books were destroyed.
  • In Episode 2, Professor Smith takes a cinematic steam train to Nottingham to learn which book a woman such as Laura Jesson in Brief Encounter might really have wanted to read on the Home Front.
  • Episode 3 visits London’s Imperial War Museum, where Professor Smith is among the first to view a remarkable collection of cheap paperbacks which reveal what servicemen and women read during the war.
  • In Episode 4, Professor Smith explores wartime Oxford to learn about a remarkable service to send books to Allied POWs in European camps. Some requested educational books to prepare them for a post-war career, whilst others sought escapism via hardboiled and violent fiction
  • In the final episode, Professor Smith handles a best-selling wartime cookery book, Vegetables for Victory, at the University Library in Cambridge and even gets a taste of one ration-book recipe.

Professor Smith said: “I really enjoyed the process of archival research and interviews for the Books for Brighter Blackouts Series, and I hope the stories will be new and interesting to a very wide audience. The series takes its name from a 1939 publication which suggested something for people to read during every blackout evening of the year – from learning a card game to reading a new book. It is surprisingly reminiscent of people’s lockdown activities during the Covid-19 pandemic, when we were faced with the dilemma of reading something improving, or escaping into detective fiction (as I did!).”

Professor Smith was particularly interested to learn more about Oxford’s wartime history. She said: “The extensive Red Cross Education Programme was run out of the basement of the New Bodleian by a formidable woman called Ethel Herdman. It sent books by request to prisoners in European camps to help with their education. Many took courses and exams while in the POW camps – and C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were both involved in generating an English Literature certificate sat in Stalag/Olag camps and marked back here in Oxford.”

Each episode seeks to identify a change in reading or publishing that was brought on by the war, and remained afterwards. The move towards adult education following the success of POW education programmes, is one example. Another can be found in Ambrose Heath’s book Vegetables for Victory, which explored recipes that made vegetables a main course. Moreover, the move towards paperbacks during the war slashed the cost of books for everyone.

The series also looks at books published during the war which left a lasting impression. “A lot of women over 60 will remember the book Forever Amber, which was released in 1944 and was still being passed around classrooms for its sexually explicit content decades later,” said Professor Smith. “We also look at a comedy book written by Peter Fleming (brother of Ian) which tries to imagine Hitler parachuted into England. Almost immediately, the dictator wins two jars of marmalade from a Hitler lookalike competition in a village hall. In the preface, Fleming says that making fun of Hitler is a very British reaction to the war.”

Books for Brighter Blackouts was produced for BBC Radio 3 by Beaty Rubens of Just Radio. You can find out more about Oxford’s commemoration of VE and VJ Day here.