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Books

The story of the BBC

Book review: Guardian journalist Charlotte Higgins considers the history of our national broadcaster

8 August 2015

9:00 AM

8 August 2015

9:00 AM

This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC Charlotte Higgins

Guardian Books, pp.274, £12.99, ISBN: 9781783350728

The BBC was created out of the ether in 1922. Its first director general, Lord Reith, inhabited a cupboard some six feet in length and presided over a staff of four people, operating out of one long room. Reith confessed that he did not actually know what broadcasting was — an affliction which you might say, a little cruelly, has been shared by one or two of his successors over the years.

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