Save the World Service

All this talk about cuts might not be such a bad thing, if it forces us to think about what really should not be left to rot and wither away for lack of funding. Take the BBC’s World Service. Do we really need it in these post-imperial times? After all, it was set up in 1932 so that the King could keep in touch with his subjects, day and night, around the globe, wherever they might be. Those first broadcasts rather touchingly suggested that the King and his representatives in Whitehall actually cared about what happened to the peoples of Togo, Tanganyika and Christchurch, NZ. But, as The King’s Speech suggests, the British Empire Service, as it was originally named, was all about propaganda and preservation, talking up the royals and preserving British hegemony in far-flung corners of the world.

It’s a weird coincidence that the film has become such a huge box-office success, just at the very moment when the radio technology it promotes and salutes is under threat.