Name: The Magic Box
Brand: Rob Young

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

9780571284603

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Colour

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format Books GB

Paperback

Format detail

Limited edition

Release date

2022-08-18

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Faber

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

1 / Extended format: No / Paperback / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Rob Young

Genre GB

Music

Label GB

Faber and Faber

A riveting journey into the psyche of Britain through its golden age of television and film from the late 50s-late80s. A cross-genre feast of moving pictures, from classics to occult hidden gems, The Magic Box is the nation's visual self-portrait in technicolour detail.

I found myself thinking more and more about how for the post-war generation, the television had replaced the village storyteller. Growing up in the 1970s, Rob Young's main source of stories was the wooden box with the glass window in the corner of his grandparents' living room.

Before the age of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, YouTube and commercial streaming services, watching television was a vastly different experience. You switched on, you sat back, and you watched. There was no pause or fast forward button.

The cross-genre feast of moving pictures that were produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s - from The Village of the Damned, Bagpuss and Day of the Triffids to The Wicker Man, Worzel Gummidge and Brideshead Revisited - contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. It played out tensions between the past and the present, dramatised the fractures and injustices in society and acted as a portal for magical and oc-<br>cult notions. It expressed something about the nature and character of Britain, it's uncategorisable people and its buried histories. It became a golden age that influenced an entire generation of filmmakers and television producers.

In The Magic Box, Rob Young explores the strange and wonderful ways British identity has been portrayed on the screen, discovering a telemetric folklore of the British Isles.

The Magic Box

Books GB