Perhaps no form of radio art emerged from the Second World War more vitalised than the feature. A plural and changeable genre whose roots date back to the experimental dramas of Tyrone Guthrie and Lance Sieveking in the late 1920s, the feature is best understood as a dramatised documentary tailored to the medium of radio. Features were based in fact but could weave music, sound effects, dialogue, verse and fictional re-enactments in order to conjure elaborate sonic worlds for the listener. This composite form allowed the feature to capitalise on the full range of expressive possibilities afforded by radio. Long-time BBC producer Laurence Gilliam considered the feature to be

Despite the radiogenic ‘purity’ of the feature, the BBC did not create a specialised branch for its production until 1936, when the Drama Department, overseen by Val Gielgud, adopted a tripartite structure comprising sections responsible for Drama, Features and the Children's Hour (Briggs 1965: 168). After a string of wartime successes, Features would become its own department in 1945 under Gilliam's direction; it would thrive for two decades before closing in 1965 amid a changing media landscape that then included independent broadcasters, a well-established television culture and pirate broadcasting (Briggs 1970: 347–8; Crisell [1986] 1994: 28; Bridson 1971: 299–304).

That the Second World War witnessed the consolidation of the feature within the hierarchy of the BBC testifies to the central role such productions played in the war effort; the creative treatment of current and historical events lent itself naturally to wartime demands of propaganda. But neither all features nor all feature writers could meet the particular demands of the wartime Features section. Writing for Features was a matter of radio craft as well as a matter of literary expression, and demanded a careful balance of imaginative daring, technical know-how and political astuteness. In comparing the scripts and experiences of two notable wartime contributors to Features – James Hanley and Louis MacNeice – the following two chapters parse the complicated mixture of sensibilities required to meet the needs of the BBC and the publics it addressed.