The Second Tower of Babel

The piazza outside the New Broadcasting House has been pressed into service quite a bit of late; mainly news crews filming BBC management and talking to other journalists. It’s the new extension of the existing Broadcasting House, the art deco edifice that was completed in 1932. Variously described at the time as a ‘petrified dreadnought’, ‘a profane cathedral’, this ‘temple of the arts and muses’ was celebrating its 50th anniversary when this programme, The Second Tower of Babel, was broadcast.

Here Wynford Vaughan-Thomas “takes us back in time – down the endless corridors to investigate the many worlds of sound created within this ‘tower within a tower’ – this ‘Second Tower of Babel’.”

The Second Tower of Babel was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 19 December 1982. The producer is Dilly Barlow.
 

Hear more about the early days of BH on The BBC and all That this afternoon (and next week) on BBC Radio 4.