Introduction

For nearly fifty years, the Reith Lectures have enjoyed a distinguished place in the cultural life of modern Britain. Traditionally delivered deep in the autumn and early winter, they honour the founding Director of the BBC, John Reith. Proud, imperious, and vindictive, Reith was an autocratic administrator and formidable personality who succeeded brilliantly both in bruising the sensibilities of subordinates and overseers alike and in creating one of Britain’s most admired and durable institutions. True to Reith’s insistence that the BBC make available to its audience the most eminent of speakers on the most wideranging of subjects, the Reith lecturers have been chosen for the breadth of their interests, the mastery of their subjects, and the ease of their ability to make difficult issues intelligible to a broad audience. Since 1948, the British public has therefore been enlightened by anthropologists and zoologists, astronomers and diplomats, art historians and economists, theologians and tycoons.