It feels like a long time since the launch of Home Front on Radio 4 back in June 2014, retracing day-by-day events of 100 years ago as Britain went to war. It is a long time. Yet still the violence in Europe rages on while back home the families of the men and boys in trenches carry on as normal, putting on plays at the local theatre, selling toys, running art classes, working the trams. A new season (number 13, with two more to go before the series ends on 9 November) starts up again on Monday.
It may be an everyday story, says its editor, Jessica Dromgoole, but it’s most definitely not a soap. Every episode has been recorded for broadcast in the same studio in Birmingham where The Archers is made. ‘We’re using the same Aga and Belfast sink as Jill Archer,’ says Dromgoole. But there are no cliffhangers, no shocking endings, such as last week’s swift, sharp execution in Ambridge of chirpy Nic Grundy.
‘We wanted Home Front to be a tapestry,’ says Dromgoole.
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