PhDThe Second World War had radically changed the focus of the BBC's overseas
operation from providing an imperial service in English only, to that of a global
broadcaster speaking to the world in over forty different languages. The end of that
conflict saw the BBC's External Services, as they became known, re-engineered for a
world at peace, but it was not long before splits in the international community caused
the postwar geopolitical landscape to shift, plunging the world into a cold war. At the
British government's insistence a re-calibration of the External Services' broadcasting
remit was undertaken, particularly in its broadcasts to Central and Eastern Europe, to
adapt its output to this new and emerging world order.
Broadcasting was seen at the time as an essential adjunct to Britain's non-shooting war
with the Soviet Union and a primary means of engaging with attitudes and opinion
behind the Iron Curtain. Funded by government Grant-in-Aid, but with its editorial
independence enshrined in the BBC's Charter, Licence and Agreement, this thesis
examines, in the context of the cold war, where the balance of power lay in relations
between Whitehall and the External Services. In doing so, it traces the evolution of
overseas broadcasting from Britain, alongside the political, diplomatic and fiscal
challenges facing it, up to the 1956 Hungarian uprising and Suez crisis. These were
defining experiences for the United Kingdom's international broadcaster that, as a
consequence, helped shape the future the External Services for the rest of the cold
war
