Norman Collins

British journalist

• Born: October 3, 1907
• Birthplace: Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England
• Died: September 6, 1982
• Place of death: London, England

Although Collins wrote fourteen novels and one work of nonfiction in his lifetime, as well as succeeding as a publisher, he is better known for his innovative programming at the British Broadcasting Corporation during the late 1940’s, and later for advocating and leading the movement toward commercial television broadcasting in Great Britain.

Early Life

By the time Norman Collins was nine years old at the William Ellis School in Hampstead, he displayed a talent for both writing and publishing. The school had no creative magazine, so Collins started one using his own essays (very often written under pseudonyms). He printed only two issues, however, before the school authorities, upset that Collins was charging a half-penny per copy, put a halt to his project, but not to his ambitions. His parents were of modest financial means, so the idea of attending a university was out of the question. This did not deter Collins, however, for he went straight from the William Ellis School into journalism, at age nineteen, working as the publisher’s assistant at the Oxford University Press from 1926 to 1929. He then moved on to the Daily News, where he became the assistant literary editor. In this position, Collins developed his talents reviewing books and writing extra newspaper articles to make enough money to support himself and his wife, stage actor Helen Martin, whom he married in 1931. They would eventually have three children, two daughters and one son, of whom Collins said in a New York Herald Tribune interview in 1951, “Through my children, I am thus kept forcibly in touch with something better than half a generation of contemporary thought and rising opinion.”

At the time of his marriage, Collins, at the suggestion of the publisher Victor Gollancz, began writing his first book, The Facts of Fiction (1932), a rather ambitious and precocious undertaking for an unknown twenty-four-year-old. The book is a series of informal essays surveying English fiction writers and includes such names as Samuel Richardson, Charles Dickens, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Henry James, and D. H. Lawrence, to name only a few. The book received mixed reviews, some calling it a brilliant tour de force, others describing it as a less than serious work by a “skillful journalist” interested in his own version of the “facts of fiction.” Yet, it won for him literary fame and a position in the publishing house of Victor Gollancz, where he was vice chair from 1933 to 1941.

During that period, Collins wrote and published several novels: Penang Appointment (1934), The Three Friends (1935), Trinity Town (1936), Flames Coming Out of the Top (1937), Love in Our Time (1938), and I Shall Not Want (1940). These works earned for Collins the reputation of a good storyteller and accomplished writer of popular fiction, if not the status of a serious novelist. The novels sold, however, and helped Collins earn a living and a name for himself above and beyond his work in the publishing field. A dark-haired, handsomely thin man who was described as dapper, energetic, and brilliant, Collins could have remained solely within the literary world and maintained his steadily growing success, but because of some left-wing political movements during the 1930’s within the Gollancz firm, Collins left the publishing world behind and took a job with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). What he could not have known at the time was that this career change would prove beneficial not only for Collins himself but also for television in general.

Life’s Work

Collins’s move into the BBC (which at that time was undergoing major changes in programming and policies) took him first into radio broadcasting, where he held the position of talks producer for the General Overseas Service (GOS) from 1941 to 1944. This was a shortwave broadcast devoted to providing radio shows for servicemen and newly headed by Sir William Haley, who recognized Collins’s talent and energy for the job but was wary of his ambition and foresight. On the other hand, Maurice Gorham, assistant controller of the GOS, felt no such reserve about Collins: “When I first met Norman he rather took me aback: he looked so exactly like an advertisement of a young business man who uses all the right products and is bound to become head of the firm. When I saw more of him I liked him and thought very highly of him.” Both men would play decisive roles in Collins’s nine years with the BBC.

In the meantime, Collins plunged into his job, pushing for program changes and trying to give the servicemen the type of popular entertainment they wanted, even if that included American and Canadian programs, a move the BBC was reluctant to make. As head of the General Forces Program in 1944, however, Collins (with the backing of Gorham and others, not to mention the direct order from Winston Churchill) was able to change the voice of radio programming, unknowingly foreshadowing his role in television ten years later.

Radio broadcasting was not Collins’s only interest. He was still a writer, and during his years at the BBC he managed to write two more novels, Anna (1942; published in the same year in the United States as Quiet Lady) and London Belongs to Me (1945; published two years later in the United States as Dulcimer Street). In speaking about Dulcimer Street , his most critically and commercially successful novel, he stated that it “was written in air-raid shelters, in Home Guard duty rooms, in aeroplanes and even on occasion under canvas during the course of two long tours that I made of the Near East, India and southeast Asia.” It seemed as if Collins were leading a dual life, with the BBC and the London Blitz demanding much of his time and energy while he still managed to write between three and five pages a night, pulling together characters and scenes from the incidents and images he recalled of everyday life.

The war, however, was coming to an end, and in 1946, within three months after V-E Day, Collins’s job at the BBC had changed to controller of light programming (at the request of and succeeding Gorham). This was one of the three divisions of the BBC’s postwar Home Programmes, which included the Home Service (shows reflecting the needs of the community), the Light Programme (shows providing news, lectures, and light entertainment), and the Third Programme (shows offering more serious musical and dramatic entertainment). Little did his colleagues and superiors at the BBC realize that it would be Collins’s Light Programme that would gain the widest listening audience and become, in effect, his stepping-stone into commercial television.

In his position as controller, Collins was responsible for a number of innovative and popular British dramatic serials, such as Dick Barton, Special Agent and Mrs. Dale’s Diary, as well as more serious programs, such as The Radio Newsreel and The Plain Man’s Guide to Music. One of his most daring and successful shows was a “marathon documentary” on Hiroshima. While Collins was making a name for himself as the “liveliest of the new men” in the BBC, he was also upsetting the conservative bureaucratic powers of the company. The high ratings and large audiences were too impressive, though, and thus Collins continued to push forward his ideas, this time toward television.

In 1948, Collins again succeeded Gorham, but this time in the position of controller of television at the Alexander Palace. At first, he was looked on as a novice intruder from radio, but he soon proved an able and risk-taking force in a new and often times mistrusted medium. Collins had faith in television and was quoted in the BBC Quarterly, saying that “once television is truly national it will become the most important medium that exists. Everything that it does or does not do will be important” and he was right, though being right did not make it easy. The BBC was a slow-moving and reluctant political animal, and Collins had to fight for what he wanted. He scored a major victory in 1950, when he fought for the right to televise (for the first time) the general elections, which proved to be a watershed for both Collins and the future of British television. Along with victory, however, comes defeat. Haley (with the support of Lord Simon, chair of the governors of the BBC) was again concerned with Collins’s ideas and ambitions, and he chose George Reginald Barnes to fill the newly created position of director of television. As a result, Collins resigned from the BBC publicly, on October 13, 1950.

The headline in The Times the next day read, “Controller of Television/ Resignation of Mr. N. Collins/ ’Clash of Principles.’” There was some speculation that Collins had resigned over program disputes, but he issued the following statement:

I am anxious that my resignation from the post of controller of the B.B.C. . . . should not be interpreted as a clash of personalities. It is a clash of principles. . . . The principle that is at stake is whether the new medium of television shall be allowed to develop at this, the most crucial stage of its existence, along its own lines and by its own methods, or whether it shall be merged into the colossus of sound broadcasting. . . .

Thus, with his resignation came his open hostility toward the BBC’s slow and antiquated methods as well as its long-standing monopoly over the broadcasting world in Great Britain.

For the next thirty years, Collins remained in the public’s eyes and ears primarily through his continued work in television, but also through his writings. Between 1951 and 1978, he wrote five more novels: Children of the Archbishop (1951), The Bat That Flits (1952), The Bond Street Story (1958), The Governor’s Lady (1968), and The Husband’s Story (1978). As usual, these were popular with the public but received only satisfactory and lukewarm reviews from critics. Yet the sales of his books, both the earlier and the later ones, did provide Collins with a decent income, and along with moneys received from a small electronics company that he helped establish and the cash from life insurance policies, he managed to live comfortably after quitting the BBC.

From 1950 to 1954, Collins held no official position in the broadcasting community, yet he hardly remained inactive or out of touch. He took advantage of the British government’s faulty attempts to break the BBC’s monopoly, thus becoming a loud and persuasive advocate of commercial and competitive television in Great Britain. His name appeared often in The Times speaking out against the BBC’s tight hold over Great Britain’s right to free enterprise. He scorned those who said that commercial television in Great Britain would be either influenced by or patterned after American television. He argued that the issue over commercial television was as basic as an issue over a “free” press as opposed to a press “ruled” by a “single board of governors.”

The fight was long and bitter, but in 1954 the British government issued a statement (later known as the Television Act) allowing for advertisers to finance and sponsor television programs and stations. Collins was one of the first to receive a franchise, and he was also appointed vice chair of the Associated Television Corporation (ATV), a post that he retained until 1977. Before the official act, however, The Times had printed an early announcement from the government (a white paper) anticipating the end of the monopoly as early as 1953, and at the same time, Collins also issued a statement heralding the birth of competitive television in Britain, which he firmly believed would improve both the quality and the service of television programming. It would also improve Collins’s personal life, making him a wealthy man worth more than œ225,000. Thus, from 1954 on, in addition to his work in and for the ATV, Collins was a director for the Independent Television News and the Associated Communication Corporation, not resigning until 1981.

For fifty years, Collins held powerful and public positions in the worlds of both publishing and broadcasting. He was greatly interested in public service and cultural advancement; indeed, he briefly considered announcing his candidacy for the Conservative parliament, but nothing ever came of that. He did manage, however, to find the time throughout his life to become involved in a number of organizations, committees, and causes, such as the Loch Ness Investigation Bureau, the Adoption Committee for Aid to Displaced Persons, the Council for Nature, the English Stage Society, the National Book League, and the Central School for Speech and Drama. When he died on September 6, 1982, at seventy-four, Collins left behind him a legacy from which British television has continued to benefit.

Significance

To say that Collins led a challenging, rewarding, and visionary life is both an understatement and a cliché, yet it is true. What is even more amazing is that so little has been written about Collins or his accomplishments, except in passing. That he entered the publishing world at age nineteen was no small feat, for it was a rather narrow world, and he had neither the usually required education nor the normally necessary connections. He somehow managed to call attention to himself, through both his talents and his drive, thus opening doors, sometimes at great risk of failure or ridicule, no matter which way he turned, be it publishing, journalism, literature, or broadcasting.

Two of the greatest risks Collins took brought him the most success, although some might label his success to be of an ambiguous nature, given the conservative and traditional worlds in which he moved. With the publication of Facts of Fiction (1932), he stepped knowingly and without caution onto hallowed ground: criticism of some of Britain’s greatest literary figures. He knew that he was treading where others had already planted a firm hold, yet this did not stop him; furthermore, if it worked once, it could happen twice. Some ten years later, then, Collins made his way into another well-established (although newly established) and unmoving British stronghold, the BBC. Within only another ten years, he had managed to shake the foundation on which it stood. Granted, he was not alone in his desires or struggles to break the broadcasting monopoly; nevertheless, he took a great risk as a relative newcomer, and he won.

In both cases, literature and broadcasting, it seems that Collins recognized a need for change. It was unquestionably in the field of British broadcasting, however, that Collins’s impact was felt most heavily. Without him, British television would likely not be what it is today.

Bibliography

Briggs, Asa. The BBC: The First Fifty Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. In this one-volume overview of the BBC, Briggs provides somewhat more information on Collins than he can in his four-volume history, but again the information is brief and tied up in the larger picture of broadcasting. This book offers not only a history of the changes but also a commentary on the relative effects of those changes over time. Briggs’s voice is far more informal here than it is in his four-volume history, a difference that makes for enjoyable reading.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The War of Words. Vol 3. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970. In this third volume of a four-volume history of broadcasting in Great Britain, Collins is mentioned only in passing, yet it is clear that he had much to do with the changes taking place within the BBC. The volume itself covers the years from 1939 to 1945 and provides a rather straightforward chronology of the events taking place at the time Collins entered the broadcasting field. In this respect, it is a valuable source for understanding just how complex and political the world was that Collins helped to change.

Gorham, Maurice. Sound and Fury: Twenty-One Years in the BBC. London: Percival Marshal, 1948. In his foreword, Gorham states that his book is not a history but a “personal story,” and for this reason it is a fascinating account of the BBC from 1946 to 1948. The several references to Collins establish Gorham’s admiration for him and attempt to explain, although somewhat briefly, Collins’s role in fighting against the BBC’s in-house politics and monopoly. The book is opinionated and biased but extremely interesting and informative.

Leasor, James. Author by Profession. London: Cleaver-Hume Press, 1952. This book includes a chapter on Collins the novelist. Unfortunately, Leasor seems more intent on providing his readers with his own philosophy on how and why writers write than with an in-depth study of Collins himself. He does provide a brief synopsis and analysis of a few of Collins’s early novels and techniques, shedding some light on Collins’s early life and career.

“Obituary: Mr. Norman Collins.” The Times (London), September 7, 1982. Ironically, this three-column article offers more information on Collins than any other source. It gives a precise chronology of his life and accomplishments, as well as a brief but laudatory comment on Collins himself. It is a valuable source of information.