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Introduction In May 1932, the British Broadcasting Corporation moved its headquarters from the cramped, makeshift studios of Savoy Hill to a gleaming new purpose-built fortress on Portland Place: Broadcasting House. Above the entrance, a sculpture by Eric Gill depicted Shakespeare’s Prospero sending the spirit Ariel out into the world. The symbolism was deliberate and profound. Prospero, the magician of intellect and control, represented the BBC’s Director-General, John Reith. Ariel, the invisible spirit of the air, represented the medium of radio itself. This stone facade hid a radical experiment. While historians have exhaustively chronicled the BBC’s political and institutional history, less…
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Introduction On December 25, 1932, a gravelly, hesitant voice crackled across the ionosphere, reaching into the drawing rooms of Toronto, the sheep stations of the Australian outback, the verandas of colonial India, and the ships navigating the Atlantic. It was the voice of King George V, speaking from a small room at Sandringham House. “I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all,” he intoned. This, the first Royal Christmas Message, was the inaugural moment of a new kind of empire. It was no longer an empire held together solely by naval tonnage, trade tariffs, or…