London Calling Italy: BBC Broadcasts During the Second World War

'London Calling Italy offers an expertly researched, thought-provoking analysis of BBC propaganda for Italy during the Second World War, exploring how programmes were put together and what listeners made of them. It will surely become the key work on this topic.'
Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History at the University of Bristol

London calling Italy is a book about Radio Londra, as the BBC Italian Service was known in Italy, and the company’s development as a global leader in the broadcasting industry, starting from the Second World War. Drawing on unexplored archive material collected in Italy and the United Kingdom, it aims to understand how the BBC programmes engaged with ordinary Italians, while concurrently conducting political warfare against fascist Italy. The book also focuses on the relationship between the BBC Italian anti-fascist broadcasters, the British Foreign Office, and Labour Party. Key sources analysed in the book are, among others, the Foreign Office’s records, the programmes broadcast by the BBC Italian Service during the Allied campaign, the memoirs of Italian anti-fascist broadcasters, the BBC surveys on the audience and the letters sent by listeners of the Italian Service.

Ester Lo Biundo is a transnational modern historian, specialising in media history, popular culture and public engagement.

She has extensively published on the BBC Italian Service and has recently researched the ways in which BBC and RAI radio exported British youth cultures in Italy in the post - war decades. She has also worked for schools, universities and museums both in the United Kingdom and Italy