Death of a Pirate: British Radio and the Making of the Information Age [Hardcover]

Adrian Johns (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 8, 2010

A killing in the English countryside takes us inside the world of pirate radio in its mid-1960s heyday.

When the pirate operator Oliver Smedley shoots and kills his rival Reg Calvert in Smedley's country cottage on June 21, 1966, it is a turning point in the careening career of the outlaw radio stations dotting the coastal waters of England. Situated on ships and offshore forts like Shivering Sands, these stations blasted away at the high-minded BBC's broadcast monopoly with the new beats of the Stones and the Who and DJs like Screaming Lord Sutch. For free-market ideologues like Smedley, the pirate stations were entrepreneurial efforts to undermine the growing British welfare state as embodied by the BBC.

The worlds of high table and underground collide in a riveting story full of memorable characters like the Bondian Kitty Black, an intellectual femme fatale who becomes Smedley's co-conspirator, and the notorious Kray twins, brazenly violent operators of a London protection racket. Here is a rousing entertainment with an intellectual edge. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Johns, an expert in the field of intellectual property and piracy, walks us through the history of pirate radio. Pirate radio stations were most famously a British phenomenon (although many other countries had their own versions of these outlaw broadcasters); they operated from offshore sites, usually a boat, skirting the British regulations regarding license fees, broadcast rights, etc. The BBC saw them as illegal and disreputable, but the pirate broadcasters and their listeners (and even many artists) thought they were exciting and indispensable. The end of British pirate radio came soon after a partnership between two colorful station owners, Oliver Smedley and Reg Calvert, ended in violence, property theft, and death. Highly detailed but unfortunately rather dry, the book is closer in texture to a textbook than it is to a lively history of this fascinating period in British broadcasting history. For readers interested in the subject, however, the wealth of information in the book should outweigh its lack of zest. --David Pitt

Review

“A treasure. . . . [Adrian] Johns portrays the British radio pirates not in the warm glow of sentimental memory that the period usually enjoys but in the historian’s cold bright light.” (Randall Bloomquist - Wall Street Journal )

“A well-written tale about those buccaneers of the high C’s.” (The Economist ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 305 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393068609
• ISBN-13: 978-0393068603
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.1 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,335,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Story November 3, 2010

By CWOS

Format:Hardcover

As the son of Oliver Smedley, I have been steeped in the history of the Radio Pirates because my father helped start Radio Atlanta (later Radio Caroline South), because I listened to them and lastly because, when I was aged 15, my father shot Reg Calvert dead and was arrested for murder. But obviously my history was biased!
Adrian Johns has researched the story of Radio Caroline and the other stations and the killing of Reg Calvert with great diligence. He has written an excellent and exciting book which will bring back the days of pop radio in the early 1960's to those of my generation as well as inform all readers of the dramatic impact the Radio Pirates had on broadcasting and the media. I have learnt a lot from the book; the history of these pirates is fascinating. 'Death of a Pirate' really is the real story of the Radio Pirates, the development of British broadcasting and the shooting of Reg Calvert, not only that, it's a great read!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The end of one era of pirate radio May 8, 2012

By J. Duffy

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Adrian Johns frames the collapse of one era of Pirate radio in the UK (the sixties era of offshore transmissions) around the death of pirate Reginald Calvert at the hand of rival pirate Oliver Smedley. He boldly suggests that Calvert's death was the result of a misunderstanding between the two adversaries. While Calvert's death may have been the proximate cause of the shutdown of the pirate radio operations, there were greater economic and political forces at work that doomed that era of pirate radio (regardless of Calvert's death) and led to the incorporation of its main innovation -the playing of pop music- into mainline radio broadcasting (i.e., the BBC). Still, a fascinating and well-researched book on the myriad forces at work that led radio pirates to lurk offshore in pursuit of making radio broadcasting a commercial enterprise.

1.0 out of 5 stars The Road More Boring August 10, 2012

By theblackgecko

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I originally ordered this book after reading an article on the Principality of Sealand. After reading an exciting piece which referenced the book, I expected interesting stories of the challenges and adventure in running pirate radio. Instead, the book glazes through the history of government monopoly and right wing thought in the UK. If you want a badly written autobiography of Fredrich Hayek and libertarian thought, read up. Otherwise, save your time and energy.