Book:  On Air - A History of BBC Transmission

Reviews, Comments & Corrections
reproduced below with permission from the originators.
 

Reviews

Monitoring Times magazine - November 2003

Prospero* - October 2003

Mike Brown - September 2003
 

Comments

12 October 2003:

Your book is riveting. I opened it at random when I got home .......... and just couldn't stop reading - it turned into a very late night! You've captured well the sort of anecdotes that enliven many a pub session after a day on site, and the variety of writing styles makes it as interesting as the variety of people in the business.

John Robinson
Ex BBC Designs Department and Crown Castle UK

2 October 2003:

Congratulations on the publication of your book which I have enjoyed greatly, in particular the individual reminiscences and the information which continues from where Edward Pawley’s book ended.

Neil Wilson
Curator
Washford Radio Museum

20 September 2003:

May I first of all thank you for the prompt and efficient fulfilment of my order for 'On Air - A History of BBC Transmission'.  For those of us who have worked for Auntie's transmitter department at one time or another, this book falls into the category of 'Cannot Put Down'. Whilst being a definitive chronology of BBC Transmission from start to end, you have managed to make this light reading with the use of amusing anecdotes and the recognition of the very human aspects involved in the running of this operation throughout its life.

Under separate cover I am ordering the hardback version to include in my library along with such gems as 'Daventry Calling The World -  Norman Tomalin', various BBC Year Books and of course the bible - 'Sound and Television Broadcasting General Principles - Dr K. R.Sturley'.

Thank you for permitting me hours of nostalgia over sites from Daventry to Bressay coupled with renewed memories of named individuals (characters) long since forgotten in the mists of time.......

Best regards

May I wish you both congratulations on your enterprise in this undertaking and every success in its future sales.

Dave Stephen

3 September 2003:

Just to say I bought a copy and have enjoyed it immensely. I started my training at the BBC WS and therefore the sections on HF filled some gaps in my understanding of the history of the External services. As Chief Engineer at Virgin I am daily using a network built and developed by BBC Transmission for Radio 3 and then re-engineered for Virgin in 1993. There are some very interesting anecdotes about bits of the network and certain sites that I just was not aware of until now.

It has to be said that having read this I have the utmost respect for the people who made the BBC systems work in the early days. They truly were pioneers and your book illustrates this well. We may have more high technology these days, but rarely do we have to build systems from the ground up because nothing exists that can do the job.

Best wishes
Alex
Alex Lakey, Chief Engineer, Virgin Radio Engineering

Corrections to first print (July 2003)

1. Page iii: change [Peter Chamerlain] to [Peter Chamberlain]
2. Page iv: Add [Peter Chamberlain] to last para.
3. Page 3, last para, line 5: change [resourses] to [resources].
4. Picture 14: The date should probably be c1990.