Promotional Information
A BBC R4 Book of the Week for 2018, Edward Stourton vividly
recounts the story of the BBC during WW2 and in doing so gives a
remarkable portrait of a unique institution, an entirely fresh
perspective on the war, and a new insight into broadcasting culture
today.
About the Author
Edward Stourton has worked in broadcasting for 38 years, and
regularly presents BBC Radio Four programmes such as The World at
One, The World This Weekend, Sunday and Analysis. He has been a
foreign correspondent for Channel Four, ITN and the BBC, and for
ten years he was one of the main presenters of the Today programme.
Auntie's War is his seventh book.
Reviews
An engaging, balanced and thoroughly researched
history.
It is often a moving and amusing tale containing
plenty of mavericks and colourful episodes.
-- Lawrence James * The Times *
Fascinating, complex and exhaustively researched ... This is
a book that
travels far beyond the bomb-scarred walls of
Broadcasting House, bringing the reader as it did the 1940s
listening public, the drama and immediacy of the war, and
eventually the reality of a post-Nazi world, where Dimbleby's pared
down description of the liberation of Belsen must be one of the
most shattering pieces of ever broadcast. -- Juliet Nicolson *
Spectator *
This book captures how and why the BBC came to be trusted around
the world so much that people like my grandparents - refugees from
the Nazis - would hide in a cupboard every day with their short
wave radio just to hear the truth as reported by the BBC. -- Nick
Robinson
The story of the BBC during the war has hardly been told though
it is both fascinating and important. Edward Stourton's book is an
engrossing account of this important time for one of our great
institutions, perhaps to be read along side Penelope Fitzgerald's
brilliant novel
Human Voices. -- Chris Patten, Lord Patten
of Barnes
This engaging book about the BBC is
full of astonishing
incidents, truth versus propaganda and the unspoken heroism of
correspondents. It tells how eyewitness reports gave a voice to
everyone for the first time. * CHOICE *
