Nicholas Rankin
Tuning Out
Auntie’s War: The BBC during the Second World War
By Edward Stourton
Doubleday 422pp £20 order from our bookshop
The endpapers of this book show two photos of Broadcasting House, seen from Portland Place. In the first, taken in 1932, the building resembles a sleek white liner; in the second, from 1945, the blackened building looks more like a battle cruiser after a hard run to Malta or Murmansk. The BBC played an integral part in the Second World War, unifying at home, beaconing hope abroad. It should be a great story to tell, but Edward Stourton’s attitude to the BBC is oddly conflicted.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'When the language starts functioning as a character in fiction, when it is there drawing attention to itself ... It’s not anything that anybody really takes seriously.'
Our interview with Anthony Burgess from 1983.
http://ow.ly/5u0y50yrjoO
'Sabotage became so prevalent that bankers even created their own terms – ‘asymmetric information’, ‘lack of financial literacy’, ‘the principal-agent dilemma’ – to describe how they might turn a dime from customers’ gullibility or ignorance.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/master-criminals-of-the-universe
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire