When I was young, living in Manchester, my parents had an old valve radio. It was big, brown, and beige. It sat pride of place on the dresser in the living room of our house, shiny and smelling of furniture polish. The valves would hum and glow when you turned it on. Twisting the dial, the thin red line would slide along the station bandwidths, bringing the world in through the speakers. Everyday our home was filled with music, local news and...
