![]() ![]() We are also asked to acknowledge his shame over a supposedly sexless marriage with his wife Muriel (although they did manage to have two children).īut the further idea that a Scottish Presbyterian of any stripe might kneel down to pray submissively with the Archbishop of Canterbury (as Reith does here) is harder to swallow than Creationism. If someone told him his principles would eventually be embodied by Gary Lineker, he might well have pulled the plug.Įven so, we're asked to accept the idea of Reith as a sensitive and nervy man who spoke in strangled vowels and was haunted by his betrayal of his lifelong friend and alleged lover, Charlie Bowser (Reith destroyed their correspondence). In reality, Reith was a war-wounded, 6 ft 6 in, famously truculent and hair-triggered son of a Glaswegian Presbyterian minister.Īt one point he asks the archbishop: 'How can we protect the Sabbath from jazz and variety?' It also involves the actor Stephen Campbell Moore sentimentalising the famously fascist-sympathising Reith as a species of pussycat tormented by his repressed homosexuality. The problem with this simplistic idea of Lord Reith (later irritated not to have been made a Knight of the Garter) as a defender of the people, is that it mistakes the BBC's patrician condescension (then and now) for impartiality. ![]() Churchill (then Chancellor) had Reith by the goolies. The only problem was the BBC's funding and Charter of 1927 had yet to be approved by the government. ![]() Head to head: Stephen Campbell Moore as Lord Reith and Adrian Scarborough as Churchill ![]()
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