Auntie's War

BBC RADIO 4 'BOOK OF THE WEEK'
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British institution unlike any other, and its story during the Second World War is also our story. This was Britain's first total war, engaging the whole nation, and the wireless played a crucial role in it. For the first time, news of the conflict reached every living room - sometimes almost as it happened; and at key moments - Chamberlain's announcement of war, the Blitz, the D-Day landings - the BBC was there, defining how these events would pass into our collective memory.

Auntie's War is a love letter to radio. While these were the years when 'Auntie' - the BBC's enduring nickname - earnt her reputation for bossiness, they were also a period of truly remarkable voices: Churchill's fighting speeches, de Gaulle's broadcasts from exile, J. B. Priestley, Ed Murrow, George Orwell, Richard Dimbleby and Vera Lynn. Radio offered an incomparable tool for propaganda; it was how coded messages, both political and personal, were sent across Europe, and it was a means of sending less than truthful information to the enemy. At the same time, eyewitness testimonies gave a voice to everyone, securing the BBC's reputation as reliable purveyor of the truth.

Edward Stourton is a sharp-eyed, wry and affectionate companion on the BBC's wartime journey, investigating archives, diaries, letters and memoirs to examine what the BBC was and what it stood for. Full of astonishing, little-known incidents, battles with Whitehall warriors and Churchill himself, and with a cast of brilliant characters, Auntie's War is much more than a portrait of a beloved institution at a critical time. It is also a unique portrayal of the British in wartime and an incomparable insight into why we have the broadcast culture we do today.