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.
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.
An engaging, balanced and thoroughly researched history.
It is often a moving and amusing tale containing plenty of
mavericks and colourful episodes.
*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.
*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*
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