Fireside Talks with Stanley Baldwin

In the 1920's with the advent of the radio, diiferent styles of broadcasting could be the difference between an election victory or defeat, as Vivian Ogilvie expressed in 1953 in 'Our Times.'

"During the election campaign Stanley Baldwin went to the microphone and very simply gave a “fireside talk”. He was the political leader to understand the subtle use of the microphone. A week before his broadcast he took the trouble to go to Savoy Hill to obtain advice how to put it over. Ramsay MacDonald insisted on broadcasting his speech direct from a public meeting at Glasgow, despite a warning from Reith that the two techniques were utterly different. By comparison with Stan’s pipe-sucking chat Ramsay MacDonald sounded like a street-corner ranter. Baldwin’s quietly spoken plea for a ‘sane, common sense Government, not carried away by revolutionary theories or hare-brained schemes’, went straight to the heart and home."