The BBC in WW2 is our focus for the third of our summer specials - longer-form chats with brilliant authors and their take on a century of British broadcasting.
This time meet Auntie's War author and BBC presenter (Today, Sunday, The World at One, and plenty more), Edward Stourton. We can only ever scratch the surface in half an hour (what, no John Snagge?) - but it's a helicopter view of the key moments, from Munich to victory marches in Italy. Discover why reporting from Dunkirk to D-Day differed so much, and which BBC reporter gained notoriety for treating a war report like a football commentary.
Hear tales (and clips) of Edward R Murrow, Guy Byam, George Orwell (no clip there alas), J.B. Priestley, Charles Gardner, Winston Churchill.
Professor David Hendy joins us too to shine a light on a forgotten figure of D-Day: Mary Lewis, a BBC duplicator.
(There's a supplementary episode too, next time - on the flipside of broadcasting in WW2: black propaganda, as programmes were sent from Germany to Britain by Lord Haw-Haw and co, or from Britain to Germany by Sefton Delmer and co... and somehow involved in both, was our favourite radio pioneer, Peter Eckersley - next time!)
SHOWNOTES:
Next time: More WW2 broadcasting tales from Auntie's War author Edward Stourton, plus author of 2MT Writtle Tim Wander, on black propaganda. It's quite a tale... Stay subscribed to hear it!
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