Lawrence Du Garde Peach is perhaps best Known in children's books as the prolific Ladybird book author but before this time he was a dramatist and writer, especially for radio.
'Light and Shade', described as 'A Short Comedy for Broadcasting' was his first ever play and was presented in London on October 29, 1924 as a two-man play.
Peach stated in 1931, "I have, during the short history of broadcasting, written more than 100 radio plays ... My first radio plays were written in the days when nobody thought for a moment that it would ever be possible to broadcast the dialogue of a play in such a way that it would be understood by anybody. There was reason for their lack of faith."
Do you have an image of L Du Garde Peach?
The claim of '100 radio plays' written was a wild overstatement, though it seems as if it is to be taken as fact. He had broadcast about eight plays and various sketches by 1931, and was about to embark on his best period for broadcasting larger pieces. Unfortunately Chothia, in her English Drama of the Early Modern Period, 1890 - 1940 says 'by 1931 [L. du Garde Peach] had written more radio plays than anyone else in England ? some 400 in all' (Chothia, 1996, 315).
His career up till then had been as a journalist and humorist, 'L. du G.' of 'Punch', as he was to be regularly credited in 'The Radio Times' when he gave his talks from 1925. He had been educated at Manchester Grammar School and then Gottingen University, married in 1915, and done army intelligence work during WW1. Continuing the 'Landmark' magazine article, du Garde Peach goes on to explain what listening was like in 1924, again as a humorist, and then the implications for the playwright:
"In those days transmission was not good and reception was usually worse. The most persuasive voice in the world somehow managed to achieve a metamorphosis in the air, and bellowed from loud-speakers or hiccoughed hoarsely from headphones, like unto no sound ever head before. Such conditions were not conducive to radio drama.
To transmit a play with the knowledge that all the voices would approximate not only to a bronchial jackass, but to one bronchial jackass, did not satisfy the artist in either the producer or the actors."
In the 1950s du Garde Peach started writing history books for children's publisher, Wills & Hepworth, otherwise known as Ladybird Books.
L Du Garde Peach
bibliography - 37
listed
The
L Du Garde Peach
books listed below MAY
include titles that were not published by
Wills & Hepworth / Ladybird.
All
the L Du Garde Peach
books listed below are currently for sale
on our website - we may have some others in
stock so please ask if you don't see the title
you're looking for.
