Auntie: The Inside Story of the BBC

The first director-general John Reith transformed BBC radio into the voice of the nation ready to face the challenges of war.

Robin Day, Harry Secombe, Cliff Michelmore, Sylvia Peters and David Attenborough are among those who recall how radio gradually gave way to a growing television service. Plus the surge in TV ownership following the Coronation in 1953, and how the BBC, whose audience was initially dented by the birth of ITV, combated the new threat.

Developments made under director-general Sir Hugh Carlton Greene in the sixties when the BBC pushed back the boundaries of political satire with programmes such as That Was The Week That Was (TW3), and of contemporary drama with the likes of Cathy Come Home, Up the Junction and Z Cars. Plus the launch of BBC2.

The BBC's successes of the seventies and its more turbulent years during the Thatcherite eighties, when the station was often accused of bias and mis-management.