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Maybe someday
44
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
71/100Critics
16/100Scholars
Author:
David Hendy
Publisher:
PublicAffairs
Date:
March 29, 2022
Transmitted to over 200 countries in more than 40 languages, the British Broadcasting Corporation has been woven deeply into the culture and politics of the United Kingdom over the past centuryâa vast social impact explored here by a British media scholar.
What The Reviewers Say
The author knows what he is doing, and has quietly and elegantly written a book which is nothing short of a nonfiction thriller. Hendy takes a controversial subject and with riveting anecdotes offers a forensic cross-examination of BBC executives and their political adversaries. There are enough showdowns in this account to satisfy any Gunsmoke aficionado, with firings and resignations taking the place of gunfights.
The author himself clearly feels the clouds gathering, and at times cannot banish an elegiac tone from his prose.
... a treasure trove of marvellous detail and some revelations.
Hendy...does set the scene rather well of these three influential figures at the dawning of what would turn out to be this country’s biggest and most significant cultural institution. The reader is prepared for a dramatic tale of innovation and determination as the trio succeed in establishing their new business amid a hostile and powerful Fleet Street resistance. Yet no sooner does Hendy introduce these characters than they largely slip out of the narrative. Instead, an array of other functionaries appear and pretty soon Lewis is gone, the BBC has become a corporation and listening to the radio has shifted from an obscure hobby for the wealthy to a national pastime. Exactly how that transformation takes place is lost in an abundance of information that never quite forms into a dynamic narrative. The book is an authorised history, insofar as the BBC has made its archives available to Hendy, though, as he emphasises, without any editorial control or influence. Yet there is nevertheless a sense of obligation in the writing, a need to cover the ground, even when it’s not that interesting or new.
