Webb guides the reader through the intricacies of FO and BBC politics with great verve. He uses the BBC Written Archives (which are rarely consulted by historians) to tremendous effect ... Scholarly and accessible, London Calling is a fine read and a worthy winner of the Longman-History Today Book Prize.
History Today
It is not often a book ... Read moreabout radio wins a prize. Nevertheless, London Calling: Britain, the BBC World Service and the Cold War by Alan Webb is an exception ... What makes this book important is the author's recognition of the significance of external broadcasting in global politics ... I wish Dr Webb well in his academic career and hope that there will be a second volume looking at the history of the BBC World Service from the 1960s onwards.
David Harris
Radio User
Alban Webb’s meticulously researched account of the postwar wrangling between government and the BBC not only provides fascinating detail but also offers a narrative and perspective which allows us to see its relevance today.
Richard Sambrook, former Director of Global News at the BBC and now Professor of Journalism, Cardiff University, UK
The Political Quarterly
Alban Webb’s London Calling: Britain, the BBC World Service and the Cold War won the 2015 Longman-History Today Book Prize. That honor might attract your attention to the book. However, understanding how the leaders of the BBC External Service (renamed the World Service in 1965) fought to maintain a Western standard of journalistic objectivity amid internal and external pressures because of the commencement of the Cold War will keep you engaged in it.
Anthony Moretti, Robert Morris University, USA
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly
At the heart of Webb’s valuable study is the awkward accommodation that took shape between government and corporation ... about the scope, remit, funding and oversight of the BBC’s global services.
History Workshop Journal
This is what a good history should do: both reveal new narratives as well as whet our anticipation for other good stories that might be told. Alban Webb has given us in London Calling, with all the hallmarks, a good BBC history.
James Schwoch
H-Net
Alban Webb expertly reveals the special war of the ether which West and East waged against each other during the all-too-tangible Cold War. In these pages the aerials hum once more and the men and women who made them do so, to considerable effect, also breathe again.
Peter Hennessy, Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History, Queen Mary University of London, UK
London Calling highlights an important, but often neglected area of study in the history of international public diplomacy. Webb shows the BBC External Services’ key role, that was later renamed the BBC World Service during 1965, in the pivot from the Second World War to the early cold war. He successfully details how the BBC was on the ‘frontline’ of responding to international Communism and shows the intricacies of radio programming in geopolitics.
Ryan Shaffer, United States Department of State
Contemporary British History
This book is a pioneering account of the British national security context of the BBC’s external broadcasting from World War II to 1957. …[I]t offers a valuable comparative perspective to readers familiar with the history of US international broadcasting and public diplomacy during the Cold War.
The Historian
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