The Radio Hour
By Victoria Purman
Harper Collins
It’s 1956 and spinster and secretary Miss Martha Berry lives with and cares for her mother. She has also worked at ABC Radio for twenty-four years and is indispensible and invisible at the same time.
It was a time when women, who were sacked if they got married, were delegated to do the typing, making the coffee, making excuses for their male bosses and occasionally buying presents for their wives or mistresses.
Victoria Purman’s story may be fictional, but it is based on working life in the 1950s when there were very few women in managerial roles – and the few that were did their own typing and made their own coffee.
When Martha is sent to work with the latest young radio producer Quentin Quinn on a radio serial to follow in the heels of Blue Hills (that actually ran for 5,795 episodes and was created and written by Gwen Meredith), she knew the job would be demanding.
Martha had a lot of experience rescuing men who had been appointed far above their levels of competence but she had not had to deal with the level arrogance and incompetence displayed by Mr Quinn.
She had worked with all types of procrastinators, but Quinn’s lack of output on the new ‘sweep while you weep drama’ meant that she would be “tainted with the brushstrokes of his failure”.
It was a particularly at a critical time with huge new studios being built for the introduction of television, and Martha had to find ways of working around Quinn so the production would not be killed.
As time goes on and Martha shoulders more of the workload, she finds that she has had enough of being polite. She is also done with being overlooked and underestimated by men like Quentin Quinn who was young enough to be her son – but treated her like a child.
Lezly Herbert
