Edward Stourton

During the time we lived, until recently, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, tales of the Maquis, and the passeurs who risked their lives helping people flee from occupied France to neutral Spain formed part of the fabric of our lives. I'd already heard Edward Stourton's radio programmes on this subject: his subject then was his own journey on the so-called Chemin de la Liberté (http://chemindelaliberte.fr/), and I heard him speak recently at Richmond's Book and Walking Festival (http://www.booksandboots.org/).

His book doesn't disappoint. He manages the wealth of material he's discovered about French, Belgians, British, Americans all involved in the complicated and dangerous process of getting Jews, crashed airmen, escaped prisoners, and above all young Frenchmen escaping the dreaded enforced STO enforced labour programme of the Vichy Government in WWII. He describes the extreme difficulties of crossing the stark and inhospitable higher reaches of the Pyrenees, and brings to life many of the stories of passeurs and escapees. There are so many threads to bring together, so many aspects to this story, but Stourton makes an appealing narrative of the whole. This book is immensely readable, endlessly fascinating, and brings a difficult period of French history to light in a most approachable manner.… (más)

Engaging, respectful and well-sourced, this jaunty narrative shows how the BBC grew its role and settled in the affections of a whole continent. With limited military action before 1944, the airwaves were a crucial arena as Britain kept a light of resistance burning in the face of Nazi darkness. Stourton enlivens his story by keeping focus on the individuals who made the events happen - and some of the great figures of the age are here, vividly drawn: Churchill, De Gaulle, J.B.Priestly, Ed Murrow, Brendan Bracken, as well as the polished and self-important apparatchiks, the Old Servants, of the BBC.… (más)

This is an extremely entertaining and readable history of the part the BBC played in World War Two. The way the BBC rose to the challenge of reporting war news for the home population and as a tool to bolster morale in occupied territories was one of the marvels of the conflict and was almost wholly positive in its effect. There are many moving stories related here and I did shed a tear, both out of sympathy and of pride, at many of them.

Before the war the BBC had a negligible news and reporting organisation. By the end of the war this had grown to become one of the foundation stones of the modern BBC media machine and had established the BBC as one of the most respected British institutions across the world.

I strongly recommend this book for its historical and political perspective on the middle of the 20th century, and beyond.

There were elements missing from this book that reduced my rating by half a point:

- The book would have benefited from more extracts from actual wartime broadcasts. Some short extracts are included and the reader is directed to other works containing the full text of some of these, but still the inclusion of these texts, even in an appendix, would have deepened the understanding of the part the BBC played in the war.

- The book focuses on the news and reportage activities of the BBC. While these are clearly of the greatest significance, the BBC also had a major role in managing and bolstering morale at home during the war. There is almost no mention of the BBC programming for the home audience, civilian and military, or the effect upon the population. Perhaps this would broaden the scope of the book too much, in which there is definitely another history waiting to be written.… (más)