The BBC at Caversham

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2018

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For 75 years the BBC ran a monitoring service based in an English stately home. Its job was to listen to foreign broadcasts from all around the world. But in 2018 the BBC decided the building was no longer needed. David Sillito spoke to veterans of the monitoring service before Caversham closed its doors.

Photo: Inside one of the listening huts at Caversham during WW2. Credit: BBC Monitoring Service.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more watching. Listen on BBC Sounds. Welcome to the
0:31.0	Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me David Silito, and today
0:35.9	we're taking you back to 1943 and a bit of BBC history.
0:40.9	Over the last 75 years a stately home called Kavisham has been used to watch and listen
0:45.0	to the world's broadcasts.
0:47.0	BBC monitoring was set up in the Second World War to listen to German radio stations and grow
0:51.8	into a global operation monitoring news across the world.
0:55.6	But it is now moving and saying goodbye to its old aristocratic home.
1:00.6	But before the doors finally shut, I went to meet two veterans of the monitoring service.
1:06.0	February, 1943.
1:10.0	From the Fjure's headquarters
1:14.9	High Command of the armed forces announces
1:18.9	The struggle for Stalingrad has ended. I spend a lifetime listening
1:23.0	Monitoring began here just after the fall of Stalingrad.
1:27.0	I'm rather in a fork as to why I keep a lot.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.