BBC

ABOVE The BBC war correspondent Robin Duff reporting from the front lines during the Battle of Normandy, June 1944. One of the wartime challenges for the Corporation was to break out of the studio and broadcast vivid reports recorded on location.

The BBC at war

This year marks the centenary of the birth of the BBC. To celebrate, Taylor Downing looks at how the Corporation came of age during the Second World War.

DP 13441

The Secret History of Writing

This intelligent, articulate, and visually imaginative three-part BBC documentary series about five millennia of writing – shortened into two parts for US transmission as A to Z in the PBS series NOVA – is particularly welcome, and will probably be watched for many years.