This is a fascinating book. It covers a period of television history so often forgotten by television historians. Much has been written about the infancy of television, or the golden age of the 1970s and its neighbouring decades, but the 1940s and 1950s tend to be ignored. There are chapters on every aspect of television at the time, sports, current affairs, commercials, and also much technical information. There are anecdotes from those who worked in television at the time, and information drawn from documents. As this deals with the days of live television, we have very little in the way of video recordings or films to remember them by, and a book of this type is an almost essential purchase for anyone interested in how television was made. David Farmbrough