The BBC: A People's History

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

'A dramatic tale of innovation and determination' - Guardian

In 1922, a tiny group of men and women came together to found the BBC, using what had been a weapon of war - Marconi's wireless - to remake culture for the good of humanity.

Twenty years later, when George Orwell famously quit the Corporation, he decided he was done 'doing work that produces no result'. Yet the BBC is now one of Britain's most beloved institutions. Stars once fainted at the microphone; now a select few spend their Saturdays waltzing for the nation's entertainment in front of studio cameras.

From Daleks to Desert Island Discs, the BBC has blazed a trail for British entertainment. Yet it has also always been at the forefront of global change, both breaking and covering the most important stories of the century on Panorama and BBC News.

This is a stirring and monumental history of the British cultural stalwart which created modern broadcasting one hundred years ago.

Reviews

'An impassioned defence [of] a national institution' - Dominic Sandbrook

'A tale of creative endeavour and technological innovation, beset by a constant tension between leading and following the audience' - FT

'Sympathetic but never uncritical, a masterpiece of lucid presentation ... this is the authoritative, much-needed history of the BBC's first century - a century at the heart of British everyday life. I hope it does its bit to counter the vandals' - David Kynaston, historian and Visiting Professor at Kingston University

'A superb account ... David Hendy stages a cast of brilliant and sometimes flawed characters in a page-turning narrative. Quite simply wonderful' - Robert Gildea, Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford

'A dramatic tale of innovation and determination ... at the dawning of what would turn out to be this country's biggest and most significant cultural institution' - Andrew Anthony

Author Bio

David Hendy is a writer, broadcaster and Emeritus Professor of Media and Cultural History at the University of Sussex. His books include Life on Air: A History of Radio Four, which won the Longmans-History Today Book of the Year Award and was nominated for the Orwell Prize.