Alban Webb offers a straightforward, largely chronological narrative of the British Broadcasting Corporation's World Service in this thoroughly detailed account of the first twelve postwar years of the BBC's external broadcasting. There are not many surprises in London Calling, which draws heavily on the BBC Written Archive Centre and the National Archives' Public Record Office, but it provides a cohesive institutional history, filling in many blanks along the way. Webb makes no grand theoretical claims for his work, but through ten chapters he does a fine job of exploring the day-to-day steps of the delicate dance between the BBC's institutional journalistic autonomy and the government's geo-strategic needs, leading to the creation of an enduring model of broadcasting in the British national interest. Although other historians—beginning with Asa Briggs in Sound and Vision (1979), the fourth volume of the History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom—have chronicled much of this, Webb does bring in new detail that makes his work valuable for the specialist.

Webb begins with a quick overview of the development of external broadcasting in the 1930s and the wartime expansion and patterns of control. That sets the stage for the debate over postwar broadcasting culminating in the BBC's 1947 charter and its external service's relationship with the government. The BBC would have editorial independence, but it would consult with the relevant government departments for information and the direction of British policy so as to broadcast in the national interest. The Foreign Office could direct broadcasting hours and languages and would have extra leverage by controlling the annual grant that sustained the services. Even before the rechartering, government officials (led by the Foreign Office's Ivone Kirkpatrick) and the BBC (led by Ian Jacob, later the BBC's director general) began developing a working relationship. There were occasional claims of overreach or irresponsibility, but soon both sides adjusted to the new reality.

Anglo-Soviet tensions had been growing since 1946, and by early 1948 the government's new Cold War policy began reshaping the external service's routines and approaches as part of a wholesale reorientation of British overseas publicity, which Webb details in chapter 3. Early on the Foreign Office had faulted the BBC's “‘overdeveloped sense of objectivity’” in Communist Bloc broadcasts and demanded a more news-oriented, aggressive approach that would expose the fundamental flaws, lies, and injustices of Communist rule (41). The broadcasters were thinking along the same lines and by late 1948 had embraced the change. But the execution varied by audience. In Eastern Europe, unpopular Soviet dominance made this broadcasting strategy relatively easy. Broadcasting directly into the Soviet Union was trickier. The Russian Service initially avoided attacks on the Soviet system, but by 1949 the BBC was bringing in harder-edged ideological attacks. The Soviets responded to the BBC's new edge by jamming their broadcast frequencies, beginning with the Russian service in April 1949. As Webb explains in chapters 4 and 5, this technological contest pushed BBC employees and their American counterparts into closer collaboration as they added broadcast times and jumped frequencies to evade the jamming. Anglo-American cooperation in monitoring foreign broadcasts had begun during the war, and it deepened during the Cold War as British experience and American money meshed into an effective partnership.

British financial problems put unrelenting pressure on the BBC throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Webb details at length in chapter 7, and a parade of budget cuts led to shorter hours for most services and to staff cuts. This parsimonious approach continued despite an independent committee's report (the Drogheda Report) that recommended reversing many of the cuts and even adding new funding while cutting back service to non-Communist Europe.

Webb ends his story with the linked histories of the 1956 Hungarian revolution and Suez Crisis. Other historians have obsessed about Western broadcasters creating unrealistic expectations for intervention in Hungary; Webb's analysis shows caution at the BBC and poor coordination, recklessness, and overreach at the American Radio Free Europe. He also creates a broader picture of crisis coverage, detailing the BBC's reliance on Hungarian radio, cooperation with the Foreign Office, and the intensity of Hungarian listenership during the crisis. Although the near-simultaneous Suez Crisis was arguably less about the Cold War than neocolonialism, its dramatic and defining effect on the BBC's relations with the government demands its inclusion in the story. The BBC's Middle Eastern broadcasts initially frustrated and then enraged the government as the corporation insisted on reporting on major domestic divisions over the Conservative government's bellicose policy. Government anger boiled over in a plan to reorganize coverage and put a Foreign Office liaison officer at the BBC. The crisis peaked before the government could go far with its plans, but the outcome solidified the BBC's independence and, as Webb points out, paradoxically showed how closely the BBC was cooperating with the government behind the scenes. Webb wraps up his story after Suez, although the Cold War would carry on, with ebbs and flows, until the late 1980s.

Webb deftly explores the problems inherent in a state-funded and -directed autonomous broadcast service, and he details the relations between key figures such as Jacob and Kirkpatrick. Little-known episodes, such as the BBC's role in development of the European Broadcasting Union, add spice. Although his archival research was limited to the BBC and the Public Records Office, Webb does provide enough secondary work on Cold War politics to bring what is essentially an institutional history of one branch of global broadcasting out of the postwar London offices. However, more about international broadcasting from the perspectives of the BBC's American partners, their Communist enemies, and the BBC's audiences in Eastern Europe would have enriched his work and answered questions on the effectiveness of different models of broadcasting. Finally, some analysis of BBC-government relations in the post-1956 Cold War would have been valuable to prove whether the broadcasting model outlined in this book was indeed durable.