Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford

It’s 1926 and Maisie Musgrave is desperately down to one pound, thirteen shillings, and ninepence when she finally gets offered a job. It’s at the new British Broadcasting Company where she is interviewed by the Director General’s dragonlike assistant to provide additional secretarial support to the legendary John Reith. 

Maisie knows she is lucky Reith has taken an interest in her and hired her but from the beginning she is fascinated by her other assignment, working for the Director of Talks, Hilda Matheson. The BBC’s radio broadcasting is new and exciting as Miss Matheson wants to invite T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, George Bernard Shaw, and other leading lights of their industries to be interviewed.

Maisie is a timid young woman, half British-half Canadian yet brought up in New York, who came to Britain to nurse during WWI and decided to stay. With a steady wage and Miss Matheson’s encouragement, she blossoms and becomes a valuable part of the Talks department programming. As she starts to research and come up with her own ideas, Maisie and Miss Matheson learn of a fascist propaganda campaign that threatens the BBC as it revolutionizes the industry (not to mention the country). Even if they are able to vanquish that plot, they may not be able to withstand their own organization’s male-dominated culture.

My Impression: This was an enjoyable historical novel, full of fascinating real-life individuals. I think those like me who feel they have overdosed on WWII historical fiction yet love books with British settings will appreciate this look at London between the wars and the development of the radio industry to include entertainment as well as news. Maisie is not a real character but John Reith and Hilda Matheson were very influential figures at the BBC. Reith hired Matheson originally but her interests and vision were so wide-ranging that he became alarmed and began to censor her guests and content. Matheson had worked for Nancy Astor, the American-born British politician who was the first woman seated as a Member of Parliament, serving from 1919 to 1945, so knew everyone interesting and saw no reason not to feature them in the BBC’s Talks.

As women in Britain got the vote (as of 1918, women over 30 could vote if they or their husband owned property, then in 1928, all women over 21 gained the right to vote), Matheson created a program for these millions of women voting for the first time. Stratford gives Maisie credit for the idea:

“Perhaps we can do a series, something to teach . . . Something to help prepare women for voting, learn about the process, how to choose their party interests. I mean, masses of women will think they ought to vote as their father or husband does, won’t they? . . .

Hilda leaped up and paced the office. “We can start something once a week. O more nearer the election. Invite women from all fields, positions, interests, and talk about politics and women’s place in it. We’ll be accused of being shills for Labour, obviously –”

“Or the Communists,” Maisie put in.

Stratford’s research is strong without overpowering the story - this can be nearly as annoying as poor research or glaring anachronisms. However, her heroine Maisie is a less appealing character than Hilda Matheson, who really leaps off the page. Maisie was a wimp at the beginning but she improved once she could afford several meals a day and wasn't as worried about survival, as perhaps we all would.

This is book 23 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024.  NAL is the division of Penguin I worked for long ago and I saw in the Author's Note that my friend Ellen Edwards was the original editor of this book.  She and I have such similar taste in books that I invited her to join my book group when I lived in New York and she is still in it, although I moved back to Boston in 2006!

Author: Sarah-Jane Stratford
Publication: NAL, trade paperback, 2016
Genre: Historical Fiction
Setting: 20th century London
Source: Library