‘UFO Drawings From The National Archives’ by David Clarke, 2017

A recent spate of books have sought to analyze the visual culture of 20th-century ufology. 2016’s Flying Saucers Are Real!, which featured the archive of science fiction writer and amateur UFO material collector Jack Womack, offered richly-drawn, full-color images of UFO culture from every decade of the phenomenon. What Flying Saucers Are Real! did for American ufology, David Clarke’s UFO Drawings From The National Archives does for the United Kingdom…

One Step Beyond: ‘Alpha: Probing the Paranormal’, 1979 – 1980

In one of the first episodes of BBC Scotland’s epochal 1979 paranormal drama series The Omega Factor, the program’s psychic protagonist can be seen sitting in his modish Manchester flat, leafing through a magazine with an aquamarine cover. The cover illustration shows a trombonist, the tubes of his instrument drooping in an evocation of psychokinetic metal-bending. That magazine was Alpha…

Selling the Idyll: Christmas Greeting Cards, 1950 – 1980

Christmas cards became ubiquitous in the post-war era, when millions of Americans retreated to a more secluded existence in the rapidly developing suburbs. As small towns—idealized by Frank Capra and Norman Rockwell, among others—started to be displaced by tract housing complexes and chain stores, embellished scenes of the vanishing idyllic communities became a standard trope on greeting cards…

‘Top of the Pops’ Christmas Special, 1979

For the pop-minded inhabitant of the British Isles in the late ’70s, the dull edifice of the passing weeks rested upon the two mighty, glowing columns that made it all bearable: the British Top 40 countdown, broadcast from 5:00 on BBC Radio 1 every Sunday evening (cancelled only once as a result of what would prove to be an inexplicably traumatic event for the nation: the 1997 death of Lady Diana) and Top of the Pops…