It is entirely appropriate that this book's title mentions magic: what John Wyver has achieved here is nothing short of miraculous. Wyver takes a period of television production long thought to be out of our grasp and constructs a painstakingly researched history of its key personnel, programmes, and technological developments. He illuminates the relationships between early television and cinema, theatre and radio, and highlights the creativity and innovation of those making it. This will change everything we understand about the early development of television in the UK.

Helen Wheatley, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Warwick, UK

Wyver offers us a startlingly original way of understanding television's origin story. Through meticulous research and brilliant storytelling, he reveals just how intimately connected this strange invention was to inter-war British cultural life, as well as conveying all the delicious drama that accompanied its birth as a new mass medium. Wonderful.

David Hendy, Emeritus Professor of Media and Cultural History, University of Sussex, UK

This is a meticulously-researched and extremely detailed account of the early days of television in Britain. Wyver has produced a thoroughly engaging account of those pioneering years and this book needs to be on the shelf of everyone with an interest in media history.

Jamie Medhurst, Professor of Film and Media at Aberystwyth University, UK

The cluster of centenaries of television make this the ideal moment to publish an account of its infancy. Who better to write that history than John Wyver, who unites the deep intuitions of the programme-maker with the bloodhound instincts of the researcher-scholar? What television could have been, and what it became, make for a compelling account that will immediately become the standard work on the subject.

Tim Boon, author, Films of Fact (2008)