Radio History

In 1945, the New Yorker commissioned star reporter Rebecca West to cover the London trial of William Joyce, who stood accused by the British government of aiding the Third Reich. Joyce was alleged to have hosted a radio program, Germany Calling, devoted to Nazi propaganda and calls for a British surrender. The legal case against Joyce (known as "Lord Haw-Haw" for his supposedly posh accent) proved to be tenuous and full of uncertainties.

Brought to you by Penguin. Explore how music has changed our world through 50 pieces across classical, folk and world traditions with BBC presenter Tom Service, in this official Radio 3 compendium. Music transports us and defines us. As a form of expression, it has been passed down through oral...

A massively entertaining oral biography of the golden era of critically derided yet monumentally popular radio rock, when Journey, Boston, REO Speedwagon, Toto, and more ruled the airwaves Paul Rees’s Raised on Radio is, remarkably, the first biography of AOR (“Album-Oriented Rock”)...

From America’s #1 radio talk show host and #1 New York Times bestselling author, the second book in a series for young readers with a history teacher who travels back in time to have adventures with exceptional Americans. Rush Revere rides again! Saddle up with Rush Limbaugh’s really good...

As a young man, Richard Neer dreamed of landing a job at WNEW in New York - one of the revolutionary FM stations across the country that were changing the face of radio by rejecting strict formatting and letting disc jockeys play whatever they wanted. He felt that when he got there, he’d have made the big time. Little did he know he’d have shaped rock history as well. FM: The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio chronicles the birth, growth, and death of free-form rock-and-roll radio through the stories of the movement’s flagship stations.

Four satirical spoof shows from the multi-award-winning Patrick Barlow The National Theatre of Brent is a two-man company founded in 1980 and led by Patrick Barlow as his comic alter ego, Artistic Director and Chief Executive Desmond Olivier Dingle. Helping him to realise his enormously...

The Radio Right tells the story of the 1960s far right, who were frustrated by what they perceived to be liberal bias in the national media, particularly the media's sycophantic relationship with the John F. Kennedy administration. By the early 1960s, millions of Americans listened each week to conservative broadcasters, the most prominent of which were clergy or lay broadcasters from across the religious spectrum, including Carl McIntire, Billy James Hargis, and Clarence Manion.

This is an abridged edition of Sanjeev Sanyal's Revolutionaries: The Other Story of How India Won Its Freedom, shortened and illustrated for younger readers. You may have read the history of India's freedom struggle from the perspective of the non-violent movement. Yet, the story of armed...

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British institution, and its story during the Second World War is also our story. This was a period of remarkable voices: Churchill’s speeches, de Gaulle’s broadcasts from exile, Richard Dimbleby and Vera Lynn. Radio offered an incomparable tool for propaganda while at the same time eyewitness testimonies gave a voice to everyone, securing the BBC’s reputation as a purveyor of truth.

Veteran White House reporter April Ryan thought she had seen everything in her two decades as a White House correspondent. And then came the Trump administration. In Under Fire, Ryan takes us inside the confusion and chaos of the Trump White House to understand how she and other reporters adjusted to the new normal. She takes us inside the policy debates, the revolving door of personnel appointments, and what it is like when she, as a reporter asking difficult questions, finds herself in the spotlight, becoming part of the story.

In an era of fake news and new fault lines in global politics, millions of listeners turn to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme each morning to help them make sense of the world around them. The first ever book from the iconic programme marks 60 years of programming with 60 world-changing stories. Covering everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Anti-Apartheid Movement to the emergence of Brit Art and space exploration, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Today explores events as they happened and reveals how they changed the world around us.

This is an inspiring memoir about a young woman who, abandoned by her father and then her mother, must become an adult at a very young age and deal with her teenage pregnancy.

Clergymen rarely make good politicians. There is perhaps no better example of this than Father Charles Coughlin, a Depression-era priest-turned-demagogue who was seen as an angel by some and a devil by others. The same man who cruelly castigated the Jews also spoke eloquently on the needs and rights of the most downtrodden in society. The same orator who said, "Roosevelt or ruin", later cried, "Roosevelt and ruin." In the 1930s, his effective use of the radio revolutionized mass communications, and millions of people listened to his every word.

Scripting Empire recovers the literary and cultural history of West Indian and West African writing at the BBC in order to rethink the critical mid-century decades of shrinking British sovereignty, late modernism, and mass migration to the metropole. Scripting Empire works comparatively across dozens of different programs spanning the General Overseas Service, Home Service, Light Program, and Third Program.

Join Rush Revere on another action-packed journey! Rush and his friends head back in time to the early days of our independent nation to watch the early American presidents George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson in action! Hey there, young readers! Rush Revere here. I can’t wait...

Turn Your Radio On tells the fascinating stories behind gospel music's most unforgettable songs, including "Amazing Grace," "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," "He Touched Me," "I'll Fly Away," "Were You There?" and many more. These are the songs that have shaped our faith and brought us joy...

Back in 1972, people had never heard of Samantha, Sven, nor Mrs. Trellis, and had no idea of the rules of Mornington Crescent, nor what points are for. The year 2022 marks 50 years of radio insanity—of the nation's finest comic minds being given silly things to do, with some of them set to music. Celebrate the Golden Anniversary of the greatest radio comedy of all time, the antidote to panel games, with the epic and exhaustive, fully authorized history of both I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again and its beloved spin-off, I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue.

In the Twist of the Dial addresses how economics, changing regulatory policies, and even retail trends have conspired over the last few decades to effect what listeners, especially in non-metropolitan markets are now hearing on their local radio stations. It reminds listeners that in the final analysis, as with so much else in the U.S., in radio, it’s all about sales, profit, and the bottom line. It is a must-listen for anyone who enjoys listening to radio, who wonders about how it all works, and what its future may be.

While not dead, radio's familiarity has made it seem a bit mundane, but people shouldn’t think of it that way. In fact, the airwaves have always been a place of mystery, a battleground of competing ideologies, and a source of anonymous voices. Radio has been used to support war efforts, topple governments, communicate secretly, and even attempt to communicate with the dead. These strange stories will make this familiar medium seem a bit less familiar and far more interesting.

First broadcast in 1948, Sports Report is the longest-running radio sporting programme in the world and one of the BBC’s hardy perennials. Pat Murphy has been a reporter on the programme since 1981 and here he sifts comprehensively through the experiences of his contemporaries and those who made their mark on Sports Report in earlier decades. Drawing on unique access from the BBC Archives Unit, he highlights memorable moments from Sports Report.