David Hendy Boeken

'Thorough and engaging ... you can't understand England without understanding the BBC' - New York Times

In this first major account of Radio 4's history, Hendy explores the station's struggle to justify itself in a television age amid passionate disputes with its fiercely loyal listeners. Life on Air provides a gripping insight into the very nature of British life and culture in the last decades of the twentieth century.

Challenging the opinion that public service broadcasting is a thing of the past, David Hendy explains its importance in the present - and in the future.

Traces the BBC from its maverick beginnings through war, the creation of television, changing public taste, austerity and massive cultural change. The BBC has constantly evolved, developing from one radio station, to television, then multiple channels and now the competition with the internet and streaming services

Based on a major BBC Radio 4 series, David Hendy explores the role of sound - and of listening - in 100,000 years of human history. In prehistoric caves, drummers used natural acoustics to recreate natural sound. In classical Europe, orators turned the human voice into a lyrical instrument. In Buddhist temples, the icons' ears were exaggerated to represent their spiritual power. And in modern metropolises we are battered by the roar of sound that surrounds us. In the first narrative history of the subject which puts humans at its centre, and coinciding with the author's major Radio 4 series on the same subject, acclaimed historian David Hendy describes the history of noise - which is also the history of listening. As he puts it himself: 'By thinking about sound and listening, I want to get closer to what it felt like to live in the past or be caught up in the major events of history. The book is a chance for readers to discover more of the personal and social background to those stories featured in the radio series.' This unusual book reveals fascinating changes in how we have understood our fellow human humans and the world around us. For although we might see ourselves inhabiting a visual world, our lives are shaped by our need to hear and be heard.