70th anniversary of Composer of the Week

Mention of the 70th anniversary of Composer of the Week brings to mind a distinguished list of long-running programmes on Radio 3. They all beg the question of how they have managed to survive so long in an atmosphere of constant doubt about the value of a station that has so few listeners. Time and again it has seemed as though dumbing down would be the fate of all these old shows, if not of Radio 3 itself, and every time a peculiarly British mix of grudging respect for the arts alongside a trenchant nostalgia for familiar things — of the kind that has kept The Archers going since 1951 — has saved them.

Composer of the Week can outrank The Archers, however, having been launched (as This Week’s Composer) in August 1943. It was a classic exemplar of the Reithian intention that broadcasting should ‘inform, educate and entertain’, the last of these coming last.