Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. I loved this one. I have a family member that spent their career with the BBC. I think any media fan will enjoy this. It is very well written and often hard to put down. I have spent many nights enjoying the BBC products so to speak so this was like old home week for me but I feel this could have a wide audience. Highly recommended, very readable.

An impressive tomb of a book featuring the institutional history of the BBC. Despite being "across the pond" here in Canada, I have always been a somewhat avid viewer and listener to the BBC channels and podcasts, finding more content to my liking rather than local or American offerings. I wasn't aware of the history of the BBC, so I found it fascinating to read about the characters who shaped such a massive enterprise - and continue to do so throughout it's first century. You won't find much details about programming (though there were a few delightful snippets about early authors and performers on air - or not on air!), as the author focuses on the history of the organization itself and it's relationship to the various social and political regimes throughout it's life. All in all, a readable and enjoyable (if lengthy) look at a British establishment.

I read a lot of fiction and nonfiction about World War II, particular the war in Europe. In that context, the BBC seems almost like an indispensable weapon of national defense. Used to keep up morale, to send out coded messages to resistance fighters, get accurate news its audience, including clandestine listeners in enemy countries, and just to entertain, the BBC seems omnipresent and as if it had always been there. As Hendy explains at the start, though, the BBC wasn’t even two decades old when WW2 began. But war was a part of its origin, as its impetus was, to a certain extent, a reaction to WW1, a feeling that mass culture and education could heal the wounds of war and knit together the UK’s people.

Hendy’s main focus in this book is institutional; how the BBC has survived its challenges, whether political/governmental, cultural, or technological. The BBC is an independent organization, but funded by mandatory license fees. Conservatives claim it is too left-wing, liberals say it’s too conservative. That’s usually a sign of success, isn’t it? There have been attempts over the years to remove the license fee system, forcing the BBC to sell advertising to finance itself. Those efforts were a particular focus of Margaret Thatcher and her government, and have continued to this day, as the BBC is also dragged into the culture wars. The attacks have largely failed so far, but the right-wingers haven’t given up.

Hendy makes clear arguments in favor of retaining the license fee. He notes the simple fact that when more people pay, all get more for less. Under the license-fee system, for the equivalent of 43 pence per day, all Britons get nine TV channels, 56 radio stations, BBC online, the iPlayer streaming service, BBC Sounds, the BBC World Service and several other services. Those who argue that the license fee should be replaced with a voluntary subscription service, make the same argument as I hear from some locally for why the municipalities shouldn’t provide property-tax-based funding for the local public library and that instead, individuals should buy their own library cards, possibly with some local government subsidy. Hendy makes the same counter as I do: that will inevitably mean you will pay more for less, and those who have money will get better access to the knowledge, information and entertainment that should be recognized as a public good or—as he calls it, a “passport to equality.”

Though I’m an American, I’ve always admired and been interested in the BBC. One aspect of the book that may be striking for Americans is that it dispels any notion that the BBC is equivalent to our NPR/PBS. The BBC is a much larger part of Britons’ lives. Hendy notes that in 2020, it was reported that in a given week, over 91% of British households were using at least one BBC service (TV, radio, online), and nearly half a million people in the rest of the world watching, reading, listening. A few years ago, in response to complaints about the license fee, the BBC offered to refund the fee to those who agreed to be deprived of all BBC services. By the second week, two-thirds of those who accepted the offer changed their minds about the bargain. The BBC is far more integrated into Britons’ everyday lives than public TV, radio and online services are in the US. After 100 years, it is an indispensable part of British life.

It was sometimes hard for me to maintain my interest in the book’s lengthy presentations of institutional and political topics. I think this focus is going to make the book of less interest to general readers, especially non-Britons. Hendy is less focused on the Corporation’s programming, which for me is a disappointment. But there is a large part of this long book devoted to WW2, so that made me happy.

The WW2 chapters are riveting. I didn’t know that much of BBC radio production was secretly moved to a country house in Worcestershire during the war, though the famous “This is London” intro never changed. During the war, the BBC established a couple of dozen foreign-language broadcasts and set up a monitoring station so that their personnel could listen to broadcasts from other European countries and even far further afield, like Japan. The monitoring units expanded to break into communications between German pilots as they flew over Britain. Records were made and important information was forward to government intelligence units as well as the BBC’s news group. Key-word messages were given out in regular broadcasts to signal operations information to resistance groups and agents throughout Europe. The peak was on June 5, 1944, when a very long list of these messages went out, sparking over a thousand acts of railroad sabotage and letting agents know that D-Day was about to start.

Hendy discusses the BBC’s work to provide more programming for Britain’s residents with Indian, Pakistani, and West Indies backgrounds. It didn’t hesitate to the country’s racial issues in its news and other programming. But Hendy also doesn’t stint on coverage of some lowlights relating to the BBC, such as the Jimmy Savile scandal, the broadcasting by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand of an obscene voicemail they left, the 2017 revelation of a serious gender pay gap within the BBC, and the investigation spurred by the revelation that Martin Bashir had obtained his famous Diana, Princess of Wales, interview via trickery.

This is an impressive biography (in a sense) of an institution that I hope will continue for many years to come.