Child abuse and the British public
2012; Volume: 34; Issue: 21 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0260-9592
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
ResumoOn 23 May 1949, Lionel Gamlin, producer of the Light Programme’s Hello Children, wrote to Enid Blyton to ask whether she would be willing to be interviewed about the best holiday she could remember. ‘Dear Mr Gamlin,’ Blyton wrote the next day. ‘Thank you for your nice letter. It all sounds very interesting but I ought to warn you of something you obviously don’t know, but which has been well known in the literary and publishing world for some time I and my stories are completely banned by the BBC as far as children are concerned.’ From Room 432 at Broadcasting House, Gamlin later received a memo addressed to him by Derek McCulloch, the producer and presenter of Children’s Hour. McCulloch was known to every child growing up between the mid-1930s and 1950 as ‘Uncle Mac’ and was as famous to them as anyone could be. The memo was marked ‘Enid Blyton Stories’ and, in red, ‘strictly confidential and urgent’. ‘I will be grateful,’ McCulloch wrote, ‘if you would first discuss with me should you be considering the inclusion of material by the above author. I am most anxious that no conflicts in policy shall get loose, not only to our embarrassment, but to yours also.’ Gamlin was a company man and he clearly got the point. 2 ... Lionel Gamlin, born in Birkenhead in 1903, was a Cambridge graduate who came to broadcasting via acting, a profession he turned to in the mid-1930s after he got tired of being a schoolmaster. ... Along with the BBC’s senior announcer, Leslie Mitchell, he became a voice of authority, the tone of war and peace, the man whom people heard in the cinema on the newsreels produced by British Movietone. Gamlin was a star. ... He had a gentle, pleasant manner on air, eventually presenting In Town Tonight and Top of the Form, and becoming a stalwart of light entertainment broadcasting in the 1950s. He once introduced a talk by George Bernard Shaw. ‘Young man,’ Shaw said, pointing to the microphone, ‘this is a devilish contraption. You can’t deceive it so don’t try.’ Gamlin later said he remembered all his life the genial advice Shaw had given him. He didn’t want to deceive anyone, yet sometimes deception is a way of seeming brave in your own eyes as you go about getting your way. It was a time of Player’s cigarettes and gin after hours at the pubs on Great Portland Street. Broadcasting House was a maze of stairwells, long corridors and unknown powers, a world within worlds that couldn’t quite decide whether it was a branch of the civil service or a theatrical den. Many of the men who worked there were getting their own way in the national interest, and the best (or worst) of them combined the secrecy of Whitehall with the languor of Fitzrovia. ... Men such as Gamlin practically lived in Langham Place. ... In the issue of Lilliput magazine for May 1943 Gamlin wrote an essay called ‘Why I Hate Boys’, which is signed ‘A School-Master’. It was a developing theme, boys, children, whatever, and in 1946 Methuen published a book written by Gamlin and Anthony Gilbert called Don’t Be Afreud! A Short Guide to Youth Control. ... Gamlin, in common with later youthquakers such as Jimmy Savile, never liked children, never had any, never wanted any, and on the whole couldn’t bear them, except on occasion to fuck. And, again like Savile, Gamlin managed all this quite brilliantly, hiding in plain sight
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