Asa Briggs, one of Britain's foremost historians and the author of a widely acclaimed four-volume history of British broadcasting, here provides a concise account of the BBC's first fifty years (1922-72). This work is not an abridgement of the four larger volumes, which were based mainly on BBC archives, but, like them, draws on many previously unpublished primary sources, while adding material from a wide variety of sources outside the BBC. Briggs puts the history of the BBC as an institution in national and international perspective, and relates it to changes in British society, culture, and politics. He is concerned with programs and presonalties as well as with structures and procedures, and has designed the book for everyone interested both in broadcasting and in twentieth-century British history. About the Author: Asa Briggs has been Provost of Worcester College, Oxford, since 1976 he was made a life peer. He is the author,most recently, of A Social History of England.