[Martin Phillp]

An excellent tribute at lunchtime on the World Service, which then continued on the Have Your Say programme and another piece on Newshour this afternoon.

[Gildersleeve]

Is it available on line?I see Radio 4 had a documentary earlier today at 11.30am and another is on Sunday with John Tusa at 13.30pm.

[MikeBr]

Originally Posted by Gildersleeve

Is it available on line?I see Radio 4 had a documentary earlier today at 11.30am and another is on Sunday with John Tusa at 13.30pm.

Both World Have Your Say and Newshour are available as podcasts and are on Listen Again on the Iplayer.

Podcasts are here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice

[Andy Walmsley]

Another documentary on Bush House that aired earlier today, Echoes of Bush House:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00vyz58

[MikeBr]

The BBC World Service website page on the Bush House closure links to one episode of Witness about Irving T Bush.

There are in fact two episodes of Witness about Bush House. The second episode is about Bush House in wartime, with an interview with Lisa Hirsch who worked there at the time, including when it was hit by a German V1 bomb.

Witness Irving T Bush, Builder of Bush House
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00v3xlc

Witness, Bush House in Wartime
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00v3y0h

[MikeBr]

David Boyle, July 13

So Bush House has shut up shop for the first time since 1941. Sad. But one thing you won't hear from the BBC is the true origins of the headquarters of the World Service, because it lies in a revolution against their authority at the height of the war. Frustrated by the bureaucracy of the BBC, the director of the BBC European Service led a kind of coup that made his broadcasts semi-independent of the BBC controllers.
Full entry:
http://davidboyle.blogspot.co.uk/201...ush-house.html

[RadioRob]

Total fantasy on my part, but I've sometimes thought that for every edition of BBC Handbook going back to the first in 1928, there should have been a Not the BBC Handbook giving details or maybe a press roundup of other broadcasting developments aimed at the UK.

So for example a yearly account of Radio Luxembourg's development from 1933; ditto the IBC; arguments in favour of commercials and sponsorship; a perspective on the theatre organ monochrome of the BBC from Sept 1939 until it pulled itself together with home and overseas broadcasts; co-operation and the lack of it with AFN from 1942; and the stifling attitudes of various interests which prevented significant changes to music broadcasting until 1967 and beyond.

Of course many of these topics are now discussed and written about, some less so (I really must think about an MA project) but it would have been healthier, it seems to me, for the UK to have been exposed to these arguments from early on, both within and around radio broadcasting.