Hilda Tablet is a fictitious " twelve-tone composeress " created by Henry Reed in a series of radio comedy plays for the British Broadcasting Corporation 's Third Programme . Hilda is the inventor of musique concrète renforcée (literally, "reinforced concrete music"), and the composer of the all-female opera Emily Butter set in a department store .
6-423: She first appeared in the play A Very Great Man Indeed where the central character and narrator is the scholar, Herbert Reeve, played by Hugh Burden . Reeve plans to write a biography of the novelist Richard Shewin, and interviews various friends and relatives of the deceased author. Reed became intrigued by the character of Hilda and subsequently wrote a sequel The Private Life of Hilda Tablet in which Reeve
12-426: Is bullied into undertaking the biography in "not more than twelve volumes" of Hilda. Five further episodes followed. Hilda Tablet was played by Mary O'Farrell . The principal models for Hilda were Dame Ethel Smyth (from whom Hilda took her lesbianism and rural heartiness together with the endlessness of her proposed memoirs), and Elisabeth Lutyens , with whom Reed was acquainted, from whom Hilda took her interest in
18-629: The Hampshire Regiment and the Indian Army from 1939 to 1942. Burden made appearances in many UK television plays and series including Doctor Who : Spearhead from Space (1970), The Crezz (1976), Sykes (1979), Strange Report (1968) and The Avengers (1963). He played the title role in The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder (1969). His many film appearances include One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), The Way Ahead (1944), Fame Is
24-564: The Spur (1947), Malta Story (1953), Funeral in Berlin (1966), Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971) and The Ruling Class (1972). Burden acted in radio plays and was known for readings of the works of T. S. Eliot and Evelyn Waugh . He also wrote several television and stage plays and was an Equity council member. He married actress Joy Hodgkinson in 1950, and had a daughter with her, but
30-621: The macabre and obsession with architecture. And included (among others): Denis Quilley , Leonard Sachs , Michael Flanders , Norman Shelley and Rose Hill . Hilda's music, and the pop-songs of Owen Shewin, were created for the series by Donald Swann . All seven plays were produced by Douglas Cleverdon . Hilda Tablet and Others , BBC Books, London, 1971 – contains the scripts of A Very Great Man Indeed , The Private Life of Hilda Tablet , A Hedge Backwards , and The Primal Scene, As It Were... . Hugh Burden Hugh Archibald Nairn Burden (3 April 1913 – 16 May 1985)
36-627: Was an English actor and playwright . Hugh Archibald Nairn Burden was the eldest son of Harry Archibald Burden , a colonial official, and Caro Cecil née Jackson on 3 April 1913 in Colombo , Ceylon . He was educated at Beaumont College and trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and RADA . He appeared on stage in repertory theatre in Croydon and in London 's West End before military service in
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