I recall, as a teenager, recording plays and other things onto cassette tape. I also recollect that sinking feeling when the cassette tape became horribly tangled (those c120 tapes where amongst the worst offenders, at least in my memory).

Besides recording, I also built up (and still retain) a large library of spoken word cassettes, ranging from Stevenson’s Kidnapped through to The Turn of the Screw and When Eight Bells Toll.

Despite my memories of cassettes becoming mangled, I still have great affection for the technology, which perhaps explains why I still retain those spoken word cassettes from my childhood and teenage years.

I therefore confess to having given in to a certain amount of nostalgia as I listened to an item on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row about the rise and fall of the cassette tape, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000sz98. The item is about 10 minutes in length and can be found at the start of the podcast.