J. B. Priestley

He's also the host of Too Hot for TV podcast, which explores the extended universes of your favorite film and TV franchises.

Tonight, we are discussing J.B. Priestley's 1927 novel, Benighted, also known as The Old Dark House.

Warning, there will be spoilers in this podcast.

We are assuming that you have read the book if you're listening to this.

... and have it read to me at double speed on the, on the internet, and got...

Just finished it again today, but it was fantastic.

So have you read any J- J.B. Priestley stuff before?

I don't think I have.

Postscript was a short radio programme after the national news on a Sunday evening, at nine o'clock, I think it was.

And it was famous because a British playwright and writer, J.B. Priestley, was on and caused, it is said, some controversy by putting forward socialistic ideas, especially around the time of Dunkirk.

So there's hardly a book on Britain in the Second World War that doesn't mention the postscript broadcasts of Priestley as a key instance of the move to the left at that moment of May, June 1940.

And that movement to the left is seen as the moment in which something called the People's War starts.

The welfare state begins.

With Tribune, of course.

A literary editor of Tribune later on.

And both Orwell and Priestley are presented as left nationalists.

listening to Chesterton Radio, broadcasting from the Little Station on Commercial Street in Atchison, Kansas.

From London, we present The Demon King, adapted for radio from the story by J.B. Priestley.

The Demon King.

Here, miss, two more.

Smoke? It's brimstone fumes.

My, I'll sign pledge tonight.

That was The Demon King by J.B. Priestley, adapted for radio by Michael and Molly Hardwick.

The Demon King was played by Ian Wallace and Dulcie Farrar by Marjorie Westbury.

Theo Walcott, yeah

... for the Jamie Johnson film.

Okay, I was gonna say then.

And the movie's kinda like just did-

She was in a production of Somerset Maugham's For Services Rendered.

She was in JB Priestley's When We Are Married.

You mentioned Alec Guinness, Alan Bennett, Alan Ayckbourn.

She really was part of this great British theater tradition, wasn't she?