John Birt, Director General of the BBC from 1992-2000. © BBC

Frances Stevenson, secretary and mistress of David Lloyd George, writes in her diary on 21st March 1934:

“We dined before the broadcast with John Reith [BBC Director General]—he is a curious character—a cross between a canny Scot and a medieval saint—but more of the fanatic in him than the academic. He firmly believes in the mission of the BBC to purify the life of the nation. Lord Beaverbrook [proprietor of The Daily Express] has been running a campaign against the BBC and Reith says it is a purely personal one against him, and that B is out to bust the BBC.”

On 17th June 1953, Harold Macmillan, then Minister for Housing, writes in his diary about the Conservative government’s plans to allow commercial TV broadcasting:

“Television fills the whole political world. There are violent opinions, for and against. The BBC and the Times newspaper (now edited by William Haley, former head of the BBC) are putting up a tremendous fight to defend their monopoly. They have got Lords Halifax, Waverley and Brand—and of course the bishops—to form a society for their support. The alleged American ‘vulgarity’ and especially their handling of the coronation has been whipped up into a great cry against sponsoring. [US networks had broadcast the ceremony, but had interrupted it with advertisements at critical moments]. After all the tedious economic problems which no one can understand, this is one issue on which everyone can have an opinion.”

Hugh Carleton Greene, Director General of the BBC, recalls a meeting with Harold…