Monthly Archives: July 2015

A week that really shows the limitations of broadcast contemporary history.  The BBC delves into it own “secret” archives but only to have Penelope Keith retail celebratory chit-chat and  Jools Holland goes on a nostalgia trip to the big bands of Second World War Blackpool while Len Goodman get bleary-eyed about the swing bands of 1950s Britain (and all of this on BBC4).  Elsewhere we have spires and royals, although in the last case the programme about the establishment’s reaction of the establishment to Prince Philip courting of Princess Elizabeth might well hold the interest.

Details can be found on the TV and Radio page.

Another poor seven days of contemporary British history on the airwaves.  We have Peter Hennessy interviewing Thatcher’s Chancellor Nigel Lawson on Radio 4 but not much else that is new.  There is a rerun for the second part of James Holland’s Cold War, Hot Jets, a misty eyed eulogy to military jets which has a wrapper of pro-nuclear propaganda in the place where real history should be.  Details can be found on the TV and Radio page.

Another thin week.  If you are interested in nuclear bombs, the planes that carried them and the surrounding cast of spies, this week is for you.   So we have a radio documentary on the British involvement in the development of the nuclear bomb, a repeat of a BBC documentary about British jet technology in the Cold War and an interesting radio piece about how MI5 was always more a matter of dirty politics as La Carré has described rather than the glamour of James Bond.  The only non-military history the broadcasters can muster this week is Peter Hennessy interviewing David Owen in a new series on BBC Radio 4 of Reflections.

Details can be found on the TV and Radio page.

Another poor week for contemporary British history on television, with the second part of a second-rate BBC4 documentary looking at grammar schools through a nostalgic fog of meritocratic incense.  Radio 4 offers some respite.

Details can be found on the TV and Radio page.