The BBC: A People’s History

MARCH 3, 2022

New book by David Hendy

The BBC: A People’s History by the Connected Histories of the BBC project’s founding director David Hendy was published on 27 January 2022 by Profile Books Ltd. Based on many of the unique oral histories that the CH-BBC project is helping to bring to public view, it is the only BBC-authorised centenary history book and traces the BBC from its maverick beginnings through war, the creation of television, changing public tastes, austerity, and massive cultural change.

The BBC has constantly evolved, developing from one radio station, to television, then multiple channels and now the competition with the internet and streaming services. The BBC: A People’s History is a history of a now global institution that defines Britain and created modern broadcasting; it is also a reflection of 100 years of British history.

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Entertaining the UK

Morecambe and Wise are standing on a stage, performing. Morecambe is singing, one arm raised, while Ernie has both arms outstretched, and is leaning back. Both are wearing black suits and bow ties.
©BBC

Eighty-five years after the BBC broadcast its first-ever variety programme for television during the 1936 RadiOlympia exhibition, the latest edition of ‘Voices of the BBC‘ – Entertaining the UK – draws on a range of interviews from the BBC Oral History Collection to explore the most enjoyable of the BBC’s three founding principles: to entertain. Along with the Reithian injunctions to inform and educate, collectively they have underpinned public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom for a century.

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Posted in 100 Voices

A teacher responds to the archive materials

NOVEMBER 16, 2020

I wear many hats, and aside from working on the Connected Histories of the BBC project (CHBBC), I am an English teacher. As the project develops, and new archive materials are released, I’m fascinated by the wealth of resources on offer, and feel profoundly privileged to read materials ahead of their release. Today’s blog highlights some aspects of the “Voices of the BBC” websites that we are creating for the BBC as part of this project, and how they can be used in teaching.

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The challenge of inheritance

JUNE 5, 2020

We’re delighted to announce that Professor Margaretta Jolly, a co-investigator in the Connected Histories of the BBC project, has just been awarded the 2019 Hogan Prize. The prize is given to an ‘outstanding essay’ submitted to a special issue of a/b: Auto/Biography Studies.

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To Be Continued

APRIL 9, 2020

Former BBC Monitoring Service employee’s journals found and adapted into a new web series.

“I don’t know what the future may bring, but I think there are fairly good prospects in the BBC. After two years there, I have a good chance of getting on the established staff and thus qualifying for a pension. So, perhaps for the first time in my life, I am in a good steady job at last.” Dick Perceval, 12th June 1950.

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War from the inside: Oral histories from the BBC

FEBRUARY 12, 2020

What was it like to work for the BBC during the Second World War and did it play a special role in shaping the public’s experience of war? These are two of the issues addressed during our project’s third public event held on Saturday 19 October 2019 at The Keep in Brighton.

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The BBC and the Cold War

A man is standing with his arms raised triumphantly. Behind him is a large banner bearing the word Solidarity in Polish.
Polish Solidarity ©BBC

The BBC and the Cold War’ marks the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9th November 1989. In both its domestic programmes and those broadcast overseas by its World Service, the BBC mapped the course of the Cold War for a global audience. Moreover, as an international broadcaster, the BBC soon found itself engaged in an arms war of the ether, as it beamed its programmes over the Iron Curtain.

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Posted in 100 Voices

Opening up the oral history of the BBC during World War Two

OCTOBER 31, 2019

© BBC

We’ve recently launched the sixth of our Voices of the BBC websites, featuring some enticing highlights from the Corporation’s oral history archives. It’s all about The BBC and World War Two and it went live on 3 September 2019, to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the announcement that Britain was at war with Hitler’s Germany.

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The BBC and World War Two

Head and shoulders image of BBC War Correspondent in uniform, holding a BBC microphone.
Robin Duff ©BBC

On 3 September 1939 Britain went to war with Hitler’s Germany. In the fight against fascism, broadcasting played a starring role: as public informant, morale-booster, and propaganda weapon. ‘The BBC and World War Two’ draws on the Oral History Collection to explore how the BBC shaped the popular experience of wartime – and how, by 1945, war had transformed the BBC itself.

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Posted in 100 Voices

Project Management Systems: Our project Journey

AUGUST 20, 2019

One of my first tasks as project administrator was to identify a Project Management System for the Connected Histories team to use. As an information professional, with a background in libraries management, and a techie at heart, this is the sort of challenge I relish.

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The BBC oral history collection as sound and data

JULY 26, 2019

Most historians work in text – we imagine ourselves surrounded by books and filing cabinets full of archival scribblings. But increasingly, we also work with other kinds of data. For myself, the BBC Connected Histories project has challenged me to think differently about how I do research and what kinds of sources I use. In part this is because the project focuses on an ‘oral history’ collection – the BBC’s own oral history. But much more importantly, by obliging me to think about ‘sound’, it has also obliged me to think about space and place; video and image in new ways.

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What’s in an (oral history) archive?

MAY 23, 2019

Anna-Maria Sichani

When I initially started working for ‘Connected Histories of the BBC’ as a PostDoc Research Fellow, almost a year ago, I naively felt rather confident about my knowledge of what an archive might contain. I have previously worked with various mainly textual-based archives for my PhD research, as well as for different Digital Humanities (DH) projects I was involved with in recent years. I am familiar with the “allure of the archives” but also with the undocumented, scattered, unexpected assets, the often chaotic structure of files, folders and boxes. I am aware of – and by now, trained in – how to treat and respect the original archival order, how to cite and use archival assets as a way to understand and narrate (often hidden) histories about the past.

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Project Update

MARCH 15, 2019

We’re entering a particularly busy time in the life of the Connected Histories of the BBC project. This month’s blog focuses on some of our upcoming events.

The BBC Studio in Delhi © BBC
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Why oral history? The BBC and the challenge of memory

JANUARY 10, 2019

Introspective, sometimes confessional, the 650+ filmed interviews with former staff in an ongoing oral history of the BBC contrast dramatically with the broadcaster’s lustrous front face. But for anyone wanting to understand the policies, people, direction and self-image of a broadcaster so uniquely powerful and respected, they are a treasure trove.

Frank Gillard in Germany, May 1945 © BBC

Former war correspondent, later BBC executive Frank Gillard’s inspired decision in 1971 to interview retiring staff anticipated the rise of ‘corporate oral history’. Today, recordings of the memories – and voices – of employees at all levels are recognised as valuable additions to the business archive, enhancing our understanding of a company’s development and culture.

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Voices of the BBC: Pioneering Women

DECEMBER 13, 2018

Lorna Clarke Speaks with David Hendy –
© Connected Histories of the BBC

As part of the AHRC-Connected Histories of the BBC, Saturday1st December 2018 saw the launch of the fifth in the series of BBC websites, Voices of the BBC.

Pioneering Women is published to coincide with the centenary of women’s suffrage in the UK, and explores the contribution that women have made to shaping close to 100 years of British broadcasting.

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Pioneering Women

BBC reporter Noni Wright is seated on the grass, holding a microphone. A young man is speaking to her while 8 others look on.
Noni Wright ©BBC

This edition of ‘Voices of the BBC‘ was prompted by the 2018 centenary of partial women’s suffrage. It draws on the BBC Oral History collection to explore the working lives of women at the BBC, both on air and behind-the-scenes, tracing the story from early pioneers in the 1920s and 1930s through to very recent debates about equal pay.

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Posted in 100 Voices

Website Launched – Voices of the BBC: People, Nation, Empire

JULY 18, 2018

The BBC has opened up its archives for exploration of how TV and radio have understood and covered race, immigration, British identity, and nation across the twentieth century.

As part of the AHRC-Connected Histories of the BBC, the fourth in a series of BBC websites, Voices of the BBC, has been released. It’s called People, Nation, Empire. Published to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush and the King’s formal renunciation of the title of Emperor of India, it explores how the BBC has tried to reimagine itself in the multicultural and postimperial age – how it’s grappled over the years with the wider issue of who exactly gets to speak on air and who exactly gets to appear on screen. You can see it here

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People, Nation, Empire

Pauline Henriques is seated at a desk with Samuel Sevlon in this black and white image. A large microphone bearing the letters BBC is in between them. They both hold pages of paper in front of them.
Pauline Henriques and Samuel Selvon in 1952 ©BBC

To mark seventy years from June 1948, when the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury and King George formally ceased being Emperor of India, ‘People, Nation, Empire’ dipped into the archives to explore how the BBC has responded to a multi-cultural, post-Imperial Britain. It examines the representation of the immigrant experience on radio and television, and sheds light on the various ways in which broadcasters tried – and sometimes failed – to embrace diversity.

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Posted in 100 Voices

Radio Reinvented

Radio DJ Tony Blackburn is sitting in a recording studio smiling
DJ Tony Blackburn 1967  ©BBC

To mark fifty years since the launch of Radio 1, ‘Radio Reinvented’ offered a selection of clips from the BBC Oral History Collection that tells the behind-the-scenes story of the suppression of pirate radio and the BBC’s first pop-music station. It also sets this tumultuous episode in broadcasting history against a wider reorganisation of radio across the whole of the Corporation. On 30 September 1967, Radio 1 went on the air, the Light Programme changed into Radio 2, the old Third Programme became Radio 3, and the old Home Service emerged as Radio 4. Although it was a ‘television age’ – indeed, because it was a ‘television age’ – radio was being reinvented from top to bottom. Were the changes wrought in 1967 instrumental in helping the older medium to survive as a major cultural force in the UK – or were other, longer-term processes just as important?

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Posted in 100 Voices

The Birth of TV

A black and white image, showing five dancers. Three women stand with their hands clasped over their heads, while two men kneel on the ground. The women wear similar costumes, flounced lace skirts, bare midriffs, and halter neck tops, while the men wear striped trousers and floral shirts.
Ballet at Alexandra Palace ©BBC

The BBC launched the world’s first regular ‘high-definition’ television service in 1936. This edition of Voices of the BBC explores the story of the BBC’s involvement in early television, from John Logie Baird’s mechanical experiments in the 1920s through to 1953, when the Corporation’s Television Service covered the Coronation of a new queen.

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Posted in 100 Voices

Header Collage

A selection of interviewees in the Connected Histories of the BBC catalogue. Top Row from Left to Right: Joan Bakewell, Asa Briggs, Deborah George, John Tusa, Mamta Gupta, Olive Bottle / Bottom Row from Left to Right: Julia Zapata, Esther Rantzen, Venera Koichieva, Suluma Kassim , John Birt, Olive Shapley, Mike Phillips

This collage contains a selection of interviewees from the Connected Histories of the BBC catalogue. Top row from left to right: Joan Bakewell, Asa Briggs, Deborah George, John Tusa, Mamta Gupta, and Olive Bottle. Bottom row from left to right: Julia Zapata, Esther Rantzen, Venera Koichieva, Suluma Kassim, John Birt, Olive Shapley, and Mike Phillips.