From 1940 until his death in 1963, MacNeice wrote, and often produced, plays and many other scripts for the BBC. He was one of the very few distinguished poets (Dylan Thomas was another) who seized the new opportunities offered by radio and consciously adapted his craft to the medium; and it was in his work at the BBC that MacNeice found his main means of expression as a dramatist, though he never lost his ambitions for the stage. In his writing for radio, particularly, MacNeice was able to blend fantasy and parable. The Dark Tower (1946), an outstanding radio play, is a dense, mysterious allegory of life's quest, indefinite in terms of action and location but very concrete in its poetic imagery and rich in psychological suggestion. The effectiveness of the piece is partly due to Benjamin Britten's music, which is integral. Christopher Columbus (1942), written to celebrate the discovery of America (and also, perhaps, entry of the United States into World War II), is an elaborate "pageant" of words and music.
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