The Radio Front

Within 17 years of the birth of public broadcasting in Britain, the nation again found itself at war. The Radio Front describes how the BBC gradually awakened to the wartime benefits of public radio. Maintenance of morale was critical as the service sought to provide information and entertainment to an anxious public, including war-production workers, and the fighting forces overseas. This new study examines how the BBC delivered carefully controlled propaganda to listeners throughout occupied Europe, to the dominions, and into the heartland of the enemy, facilitating contact between exiled-governments and their oppressed populations by conceding 'free time' on BBC controlled wavelengths. Also with a foreword from Richard Blair, whose father George Orwell was an architect of propaganda for the BBC's India Service, and memories of living in a house dominated by radio during wartime from 91-year-old Dione Venables, this is a comprehensive account of the BBC's radio propaganda operation.