Hello and welcome to season seven of Origin Story, where Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey continue to explore the misunderstood ideas and people that shape our politics today. We hope you’ve enjoyed all the bonus episodes. We’re starting with a topic that’s been on our shortlist since the very beginning, and it’s a big one: Thatcherism. By that we mean Margaret Thatcher herself, born 100 years ago, and the evolution of the rather nebulous idea that bears her name. Is it a coherent ideology or the expression of a very unusual personality?

In part one we follow Thatcher from her birth in Grantham in 1925 to her triumph in the Falklands War 57 years later. We investigate the influence of her father, the Methodist grocer and local celebrity Arthur Roberts; her entry into the reformist wing of the Conservative Party at Oxford University; and her journey to becoming MP for Finchley in 1959. It’s only in the 1970s that Thatcherism really takes shape. Scarred by her vilification as the “Milk Snatcher”, and repelled by Ted Heath and the post-war consensus, she follows the likes of Enoch Powell and Keith Joseph to the right, finding intellectual ideas to match her instinctive

beliefs.

The Thatcher who becomes Tory leader in 1975 and prime minister in 1979 is more “Cautious Margaret” than “Iron Lady”, not yet allergic to advice and compromise. She even has nice things to say about Europe. But before long, she’s the most unpopular prime minister since polling began. As her radical monetarist experiment leads to recession, mass unemployment and civil unrest, she appears doomed but once she’s defeated both the Tory “wets” and Argentina’s General Galtieri, Thatcherism is unchained.

What were Thatcher’s formative influences? How did she grow to hate consensus politics and see herself as the antidote? Who were the other architects of Thatcherism? How close did she come to disaster and was it really the Falklands that saved her? And can Keir Starmer learn anything from her chaotic and unpopular first term?

Next week the story continues with the 1983 election, the miners’ strike and the Thatcherite revolution, before it all goes horribly wrong for Maggie. If you’re a Patreon, you don’t have to wait: you can hear it right now.

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Reading list

• Andy Beckett, Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile’s Hidden History (2002)

• Andy Beckett, When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies (2009)

• Andy Beckett, Promised You a Miracle: Why 1980-82 Made Modern Britain (2015)

• Brian and Maggie, written by James Graham and directed by Stephen Frears (2025)

• Ronald Butt, Interview with Margaret Thatcher, Sunday Times (1981)

• Conservative Central Office, ‘The Right Approach’ (1976)

• Iain Dale (ed.), Memories of Margaret Thatcher (2013)

• Patrick Dunleavy, ‘The lasting achievement of Thatcherism as a political project is that Britain now has three political parties of the right, instead of one’, LSE (2013)

• Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism (1992)

• Ipsos polling on the Falklands War, Ipsos (1982)

• John Harris, ‘Spare a thought for the late unlamented one nation Tory’, The Guardian (2013)

• John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss, ‘Stepping Stones’ (1977)

• Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech (1990)

• Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994)

• The Iron Lady, written by Abi Morgan and directed by Phyllida Lloyd (2011)

• Sir Keith Joseph, ‘Notes Towards the Definition of Policy’, Conservative Research Department (1975)

• Kwasi Kwarteng et al, Britannia Unchained: Global Lessons for Growth and Posterity (2012)

... reading list continues on Patreon

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Season seven is almost upon us and we’ll be starting with an epic two-parter on Thatcherism, so consider this bonus episode a warm-up. We’re unravelling the unusual story of Kemi Badenoch and what her vexed leadership says about the state of the Conservative Party.

As soon as Badenoch became an MP in 2017, she was tipped for big things: a black woman with a compelling backstory, a Thatcherite heart and a strong stomach for culture wars. But the messiness of her victory in last year’s leadership race illuminated MPs’ growing ambivalence about her, and her subsequent performance has only amplified those doubts. Even her allies admit that her weaknesses are more visible than her strengths. As she fights to win back right-wing voters from Reform while disdaining the moderates lost to Labour and the Liberal Democrats, are her days numbered?

We start by examining Badenoch’s upbringing under military dictatorship in Nigeria, and the confusing stories she tells about it. She moves to London at the age of 16 and, after a rocky start, becomes a computer engineer. At 25, she joins the Conservative Party. At 30, she’s fighting her first election (unsuccessfully). We follow her through Coutts bank, The Spectator and the London Assembly to Westminster, where she acquires a mixed reputation. Diligent and nuanced in some areas, stubborn and lazy in others. Willing to stand up to the Brexit hardliners yet increasingly radicalised on cultural issues. Some Tory MPs hail her as the future of the right while others mutter that she is arrogant, bullying and unfriendly. And she does say some very odd things.

How did Nigeria shape Badenoch’s politics? When did she start talking like a right-wing podcast? Are her prejudices more powerful than her values? Can she really revive the Tory Party or simply drive it further down a hard right cul-de-sac? Why did Michael Gove lose faith in his protégé? And if Badenoch is trying to follow Margaret Thatcher’s playbook, does her copy have half the pages missing? The story is stranger than you think.

• Origin Story is live at Soho21 on the 16th of April. Tickets here

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Reading list

Articles

• Aubrey Allegretti and Nicola Woolcock, ‘Kemi Badenoch: “epidemic” of children being told they’re trans’ (2023)

• Richard Assheton, ‘Nigeria roots for Kemi Badenoch’s fighting spirit’ (2022)

• Kemi Badenoch, maiden speech in the House of Commons (2017)

• Kemi Badenoch, ‘I want to set us free by telling people the truth’, The Times (2022)

• Kemi Badenoch, ‘Gagging of the brave has let gender ideologues seize control’, Sunday Times (2024)

• Katy Balls and Michael Gove, ‘“I will die protecting this country’: Kemi Badenoch on where she plans to take the Tories’, The Spectator (2024)

• Conservative Home, ‘Speech of the year: Kemi Badenoch on critical race theory’, Conservative Home (2020)

• Rachel Cunliffe, ‘How Kemi Badenoch became the Tory front runner’, The New Statesman (2024)

• Annabelle Dickson, ‘Kemi Badenoch: The Conservative Party’s next leader but one?’, Politico (2022)

• Joe Murphy, ‘Kemi Badenoch: New vice chairman of the Conservatives talks about her fight to recruit a more diverse range of MPs’, Evening Standard (2018)

• Parliament Square, ‘Questioning “Kemi”’s Comments’, The Critic (2024)

Radio and podcasts

• Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, Radio 4 (2020)

• Kemi Badenoch’s Commons speech on Critical Race Theory (2020)

• Profile, Radio 4 (2022)

• Political Thinking with Nick Robinson, Radio 4 (2024)

• Honestly with Bari Weiss: Is Kemi Badenoch the Next Margaret Thatcher? (2024)

• Triggernometry with Kemi Badenoch (2025)

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Welcome to another Origin Story bonus episode. This week we’re discussing the conspiracy theory of Cultural Marxism. In the 1990s, cultural conservatives in America began pinning everything they hated, from feminism and gender studies departments to pop music and horror movies, on the legacy of the Frankfurt School, a group of German intellectuals who came together at Frankfurt University in 1923 and resettled in New York in 1935. The theory claims that these Teutonic eggheads, most of whom were Jewish, used critical theory and social studies to infiltrate American life and undermine “Judeo-Christian culture” from within. Hence, allegedly, political correctness and much else besides.

The delusion of Cultural Marxism was made famous by Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik in 2011 but it is not confined to neo-Nazis. As a pseudo-intellectual justification for the anti-woke backlash, it has been cited by Jordan Peterson, Paul Dacre, Viktor Orbán, Ron DeSantis and Suella Braverman, making it perhaps the clearest bridge between the far

right and “respectable” conservatism: a modern Red Scare for a cultural Cold War.

Dorian takes Ian through the evolution of the theory, from post-war fascist Francis Parker Lockey via conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche to the paranoid fringes of conservatism and ultimately the mainstream. Is Cultural Marxism just a rebranding of Hitler’s antisemitic obsession with “cultural bolshevism” or something more ornate? Who were the Frankfurt

School and what were they really trying to do? Why do conservative politicians keep using a phrase popularised by a fascist terrorist? And what does this have to do with the Beatles or A Nightmare on Elm Street? Join us as we unravel one of the most perniciously influential conspiracy theories in the world.

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Reading list

... reading list continues – full list available on Patreon

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Travel into the furthest reaches of space and time as we investigate the history of Doctor Who. From its inception in 1963, as a longshot gamble to fill a hole in the teatime schedule, to its current status as British television’s biggest international drama, we track the story of the eccentric alien with two hearts and what the Doctor’s adventures have to say about modern Britain. 

Doctor Who was the brainchild of a group of outsiders and it maintains that provocative sensibility today under Russell T. Davies, with an increasingly pointed and explicit political agenda. What are its core values and ideas? How does it balance consistency with change? And how does one programme get away with promoting such a radically progressive message inside the otherwise anxious BBC? This is the story of one of the weirdest and most beloved characters in popular fiction, in all its timey-wimey goodness. Find yourself a decent spot behind the sofa and we’ll begin…

Reading list

John Higgs – Exterminate/Regenerate (2025)

Dorian Lynskey – ‘Once Upon a Time Lord’, Empire magazine (2013)

An Adventure in Space and Time, written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Terry McDonough, BBC (2013)

• Support Origin Story on Patreon

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Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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Happy new year, Origin Story listeners. We’ll be releasing regular bonus episodes between now and the launch of season seven in April and we’re kicking off with a sequel to the finale of season three: Elon Musk and the Death of Twitter. With jaw-dropping behind-the-scenes information from two recent books, Dorian explains how and why the richest man in the world wrecked its most influential social media platform.

In October 2022 Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion and set about remaking it in his own image. He gutted the payroll, cluttered the timeline with crud, welcomed back trolls with open arms and rebranded the corpse as X. At the same time, his breakneck self-radicalisation made him the new lodestar of the international far right. In due course the “global town square” became a playground for conspiracy theorists, grifters and extremists.

Musk used to agonise that the Twitter takeover was a ruinous mistake but he’s ended up with a seat in the Trump administration and more billions than ever. It’s everyone else who’s paying the price.

Why was Musk so determined to own Twitter in defiance of all financial logic? What role did the platform’s eccentric founder Jack Dorsey play? Why does Musk’s professed love of free speech only cut in one direction? (Trick question.) How does all this play into his messianic delusion that he is the saviour of humanity? And can Bluesky redeem the failed experiment of social media?

NOTE: This episode was recorded in December, before Musk escalated his attacks on the Labour government and his support for Germany’s AfD, but he was already dreadful beyond belief.

• Support Origin Story on Patreon

• Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory 

Reading list

Axios – How It Happened: Elon Musk vs. Twitter (2023)

Kate Conger, Mike Isaac, Ryan Mac and Tiffany Hsu – ‘Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter’, New York Times (2023)

Kate Conger and Ryan Mac – Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed

Twitter (2024)

Sheon Han – ‘What We Lost When Twitter Became X’, New Yorker (2024)

Katie Harbath – ‘Elon Musk’s Takeover’, Lawfare (2024)

Walter Isaacson – Elon Musk (2024)

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.

Welcome to part two of the story of the Daily Mail. We pick things up with the disastrous reign of Esmond Harmsworth and his wife Ann, aka “the Monster”. The paper loses direction, readers and money until, in 1971, Esmond’s eccentric son Vere proves his doubters wrong by relaunching the Mail as a tabloid under editor David English. English is young, brilliant and unpredictable: a charming bully with a flexible relationship to the truth. He perfects the winning formula of gravitas, fun and permanent outrage while getting so close to Margaret Thatcher that the Mail effectively becomes an arm of the Conservative campaign machine.

Enter Paul Dacre in 1992 — the Mail’s most long-lasting and divisive editor. Socially awkward and writhing with prejudice, he sees himself as the vessel for the aspirations and phobias of the middle classes — the voice of the ordinary man and woman despite his giant salary, multiple homes and Etonian sons. For 26 years, he terrorises staff, persecutes minorities, intimidates politicians and rails against institutions like the EU and the BBC. (Be warned: this episode contains a record number of beeped obscenities.) We close by talking about Dacre’s toxic legacy and how his peculiar ideas about Britain continue to shape the direction of the country even under his successors. But the Mail’s circulation is plummeting and even its cursed website has lost momentum. Almost 130 years after Alfred Harmsworth founded it, why does it remain the most venomously powerful newspaper in Britain?

How did the Mail reverse its decline and become what it is today? Do the editors or the readers decide its preoccupations? How did it influence both James Bond and the Beatles? What do Paul Dacre’s shoes tell us about this self-proclaimed voice of the people? And is the Mail really as plugged in as it thinks it is? Join us for the dramatic story of the newspaper that reveals Britain’s dark heart.

• Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory 

Reading list

Books

Adrian Addison – Mail Men: The Unauthorized Story of the Daily Mail, the Paper That Divided and Conquered Britain (2017)

Richard Bourne – Lords of Fleet Street: The Harmsworth Dynasty (1990)

William E Carson – Northcliffe: Britain’s Man of Power (1918)

Tom Clarke – My Northcliffe Diary (1931)

James Curran and Jean Seaton - Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain (1998)

Nick Davies – Flat Earth News (2008)

Stephen Dorril – Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (2006)

Roy Greenslade – Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (2003)

Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth – Northcliffe (1960)

Martin Pugh – ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005)

... Full reading list can be found on Patreon

Journalism

Paul Dacre on Desert Island Discs (2004)

Paul Dacre – Cudlipp Lecture (2007)

Paul Dacre – Speech to the Society of Editors (2008)

Lauren Collins – ‘The Mail Supremacy’, New Yorker (2012)

... Full reading list can be found on Patreon

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

•Fill in our listener survey for a chance to win an exclusive Origin Story t-shirt.

Welcome to the season finale of Origin Story. We put it to the vote and Patreon supporters chose the Daily Mail — the newspaper that loves to hate, and be hated. We thought this would be just one episode but the story is so juicy that it ended up as two, so we’re releasing both parts on the same day as a festive bonus.

In part one we chart the rise of the Harmsworth dynasty. Alfred ‘Sunny’ Harmsworth (aka Lord Northcliffe) is a dynamic visionary whose understanding of the British public enables him to build the world’s biggest magazine empire while still in his 20s. In 1896 he launches the Daily Mail to give the newly literate and enfranchised middle classes exactly what they want: gossip, jingoism, punchy headlines and making stuff up. Snapping up venerable institutions like the Times and the Observer, Northcliffe soon owns half the market and uses it to promote his own views on issues like rearmament (good) and women’s suffrage (bad). 

By the First World War, he’s a formidable power-broker with the muscle to bring down a prime minister and bag himself a place in the war cabinet. But his mental health collapses and he dies in 1922, paranoid and lonely.

Alfred’s brother Harold ‘Bunny’ Harmsworth is the money man who dreams of becoming the richest man in the land and almost gets there. He’s also a right-wing zealot who boasts of toppling the Labour government with the infamous Zinoviev letter and considers Stanley Baldwin’s Tories “semi-socialist”. Inevitably, he is drawn to fascism. It’s not just his support for Oswald Mosley and that notorious headline, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ Enthralled by Mussolini and Hitler, Rothermere becomes Britain’s loudest cheerleader for fascism and appeasement. Hitler, in return, declares that the Mail is “doing an immense amount of good”. We pause the story in 1940, with Rothermere dead, his unremarkable son Esmond taking the reins and Lord Beaverbrook’s Daily Express determined to steal the Mail’s thunder.

How did Northcliffe revolutionise British newspapers? Was his hatred of Germany really one of the drivers of the First World War? Which politician denounced his “diseased vanity”? And what led Rothermere to turn the Mail into a vehicle for fascist propaganda? It’s a tale of power, money, madness and extremism.

• Get the Origin Story books on Fascism, Centrism and Conspiracy Theory 

Reading list

Books

Adrian Addison – Mail Men: The Unauthorized Story of the Daily Mail, the Paper That Divided and Conquered Britain (2017)

Richard Bourne – Lords of Fleet Street: The Harmsworth Dynasty (1990)

William E Carson – Northcliffe: Britain’s Man of Power (1918)

Tom Clarke – My Northcliffe Diary (1931)

James Curran and Jean Seaton - Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain (1998)

Nick Davies – Flat Earth News (2008)

Stephen Dorril – Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (2006)

Roy Greenslade – Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (2003)

Reginald Pound and Geoffrey Harmsworth – Northcliffe (1960)

Martin Pugh – ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (2005)

... Full reading list can be found on Patreon

Journalism

Paul Dacre on Desert Island Discs (2004)

Paul Dacre – Cudlipp Lecture (2007)

Paul Dacre – Speech to the Society of Editors (2008)

Lauren Collins – ‘The Mail Supremacy’, New Yorker (2012)

... Full reading list can be found on Patreon

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to part two of the story of the BBC. The Second World War is over, radio is booming and television is back. The BBC is stronger than ever, with new talent, new formats and new opportunities. But there are new challenges too: stormy waters over the Suez crisis and a brash new competitor in the form of ITV.

Under director general Hugh Carleton Greene, the BBC plugs into the revolutionary energy of the 1960s: Radio 1, Doctor Who, Cathy Come Home, That Was the Week That Was. Meanwhile, David Attenborough’s highbrow upstart BBC2 introduces the nation to colour TV and landmark documentaries. The 70s and 80s are a golden age for ratings, from Morecambe and Wise to Live Aid to EastEnders. Yet there’s also a looming existential crisis thanks to Margaret Thatcher, who loathes the corporation as the embodiment of the bloated state and centre-left groupthink. After the defenestration of DG Alasdair Milne, John Birt gives the BBC a Thatcherite makeover that fends off the Tory assault, but at what cost?

In the 21st century, the BBC has lived under the shadow of scandals, cuts and relentless salvos from the right — every blunder, from the Iraq War to Jimmy Savile, becomes another cudgel for its enemies to beat it with. Too successful and it’s accused of stifling competition. Not successful enough and it’s not worth the license fee. The crisis never ends. Yet more than nine in ten of us use it every week and would be devastated to lose it.

How has the BBC lived up to the Reithian imperative to inform, educate and entertain, and why did Reith himself end up hating it? How can an organisation so powerful be so vulnerable? Is its unruly pluralism a blessing or a curse? Is it really politically biased — and if so, in which direction? And who did Mary Whitehouse personally blame for Britain’s “moral collapse”? Tune in.

Reading list

Patrick Barwise and Peter York – The War Against the BBC (2020)

John Birt – The Harder Path: The Autobiography (2002)

Bill Cotton – Double Bill: 80 Years of Entertainment (2000)

Desert Island Discs with Sir Hugh Greene (1983)

Simon Elmes – And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World’s Best Radio Station (2007)

Lionel Fielden – The Natural Bent (1960)

Grace Wyndham Goldie – Facing the Nation: Television and Politics 1936-1976 (1977)

David Hendy – The BBC: A People’s History (2022)

Charlotte Higgins – This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC (2015)

Sam Knight – ‘Can the BBC Survive the British Government?’, New Yorker (2022)

Ian McIntyre – The Expense of Glory: A Life of John Reith (1993)

Eric Maschwitz – No Chip on My Shoulder (1957)

Hilda Matheson – Broadcasting (1933)

Joe Moran – Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the TV (2014)

JCW Reith – Broadcast Over Britain (1924)

JCW Reith – Into the Wind (1949)

Jean Seaton – Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation 1974-1987 (2015)

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

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So far this season we’ve had to deal with Russell Brand and Benjamin Netanyahu, and we’ve got the Daily Mail coming up, so we all deserve a more uplifting tale. This week we commence the epic story of the British Broadcasting Corporation — the BBC.

“Hullo, hullo, 2LO calling. 2LO calling. This is the British Broadcasting Company. Stand by for one minute please!” With those words, at 6pm on Tuesday 14 November 1922, the amiable wireless wizard Arthur Burrows introduced just tens of thousands of listeners to Britain’s first national broadcaster. Its founding director general, John Reith, defined its mission in three words: “Inform, educate, entertain.”

When Reith and his team set up shop in Savoy Hill in 1923, the BBC’s staff numbered just 31, including the cleaner. A century later, the BBC is the world’s most popular public broadcaster and most trusted news source. It is the heart of the UK’s soft power and one of our most beloved national institutions. It is the mirror of our tastes and concerns and the background to our lives. Yet it has always been a battleground, too, tormented by newspaper barons, rival broadcasters, suspicious politicians and its own internal tensions. As 1960s director general Hugh Carleton Greene observed, it is “the universal Aunt Sally of our day”.

The story begins with the utopian dreams of the wireless pioneers, and Reith’s own paternalistic idealism about the power of radio to elevate the nation. We meet such gamechanging talents as Hilda Matheson and Cecil Lewis as they develop the art of broadcasting — including one, inevitably, who becomes a fascist. In 1926, the BBC faced its first major crisis, the General Strike, and made its first sworn enemy, Winston Churchill. By

1939, the BBC had 34 million radio listeners and was pioneering the new medium of television. During the Second World War, it proved its worth as a morale-boosting, unifying force at home and an advertisement for democratic British values abroad. One French broadcaster called it “a torch in the darkness.” We end part one with the BBC preparing to enter the radically transformed post-war world and the age of television.

What are the origins of the BBC’s values and structures? Who were the shellshocked misfits who got it off the ground and why did they think it would change the world? Why did the General Strike almost bring it to its knees? How did it help win the war? Oh, and what did Reith have against television?

It’s a saga of bohemians, bureaucrats and bust-ups, with walk-on parts for George Orwell, HG Wells, the Bloomsbury set, JB Priestley, Ewan MacColl, Lord Haw-Haw and Mickey Mouse. And at the centre of it all is the prickly, domineering, inspirational figure of John Reith. Stand by for one minute please!

Reading list

Patrick Barwise and Peter York – The War Against the BBC (2020)

John Birt – The Harder Path: The Autobiography (2002)

Bill Cotton – Double Bill: 80 Years of Entertainment (2000)

Desert Island Discs with Sir Hugh Greene (1983)

Simon Elmes – And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World’s Best Radio Station (2007)

Lionel Fielden – The Natural Bent (1960)

Grace Wyndham Goldie – Facing the Nation: Television and Politics 1936-1976 (1977)

David Hendy – The BBC: A People’s History (2022)

Charlotte Higgins – This New Noise: The Extraordinary Birth and Troubled Life of the BBC (2015)

Sam Knight – ‘Can the BBC Survive the British Government?’, New Yorker (2022)

Ian McIntyre – The Expense of Glory: A Life of John Reith (1993)

... Full reading list available on Patreon

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Produced by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Art by Jim Parrett. Logo by Mischa Welsh. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices