But Reith, a visionary with immense ambition – matched by Churchill’s immense personal ambition – understood that broadcasting could be a great democratic power. It was a tiny startup, staffed by a group of young war veterans, misfits, impresarios, intellectuals and engineers. What he means by that last comment is that the BBC was in its infancy. It’s much more asking, ‘What would you have done? What would I have done? How the hell would we have done it?’ And by the way, it could have been any of us.” The play “doesn’t have a polemical message. On the other, he made some serious compromises – for example, bowing to pressure from prime minister Stanley Baldwin not to allow Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour leader, access to the airwaves.įor Thorne, it is precisely “the uncertainty that makes it interesting”. On the one hand, Reith did not hand over the BBC to Churchill, and he did broadcast communiques from the TUC as well as the government. I wrote about Reith and the General Strike in This New Noise, my book about the BBC, and I still can’t decide what I really think about the episode. “I don’t think I was happy until I was 32.” That was when he met his wife, Rachel. “It’s helped me put things in a box – scars – that I didn’t understand before.” Stuff from school? Yes, he says, and other things. “It’s helped a lot with my history,” he says. It has been hugely helpful, he says, and not just to give him an excuse to get out of going to the parties he had always inexplicably hated. He was recently formally diagnosed as autistic, after a doctor wrote to his agent suggesting as much, having heard him on Desert Island Discs. ‘I wasn’t happy until I was 32’ … Jack Thorne. And it is wonderful material for a drama, with two remarkable characters – Reith (Stephen Campbell Moore) and Churchill (Adrian Scarborough) – at its heart. What was John Reith, the high-minded, complicated BBC director general, to do? Fight the government and imperil the young corporation? Or accept that, in a time of national crisis, the BBC should sacrifice its independence and impartiality on the altar of national stability? What played out, says Thorne, was “a defining moment” for the BBC. He also wants to grab the BBC, then a mere four years old, and bring it under full state control. Winston Churchill, then chancellor, sets up the British Gazette as the voice of the Conservative government. On the right, there’s a climate of, says Thorne, “absolute paranoia” that a Bolshevik revolution is on its way. Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School (St.Fight the government and imperil the corporation? Or accept that in a crisis, the BBC should sacrifice its independence?.Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School (Hamilton, Ontario).Sir Winston Churchill Collegiate & Vocational Institute, in Thunder Bay, Ontario.Winston Churchill Collegiate Institute (Winston Churchill CI, WCCI), in Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario.Churchill High School (Winnipeg), Manitoba.Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School (Vancouver), British Columbia.Sir Winston Churchill High School, in Calgary, Alberta.Winston Churchill High School (Lethbridge), Alberta.Winston Churchill High School may refer to a number of schools, all named after Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and from 1951 to 1955.
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