Forearmed

It's useful to have the DCMS Select Committee chair feeling warm about the BBC. Lord Hall and Wee Jimmy Purnell are up in front of Jesse Norman MP again this afternoon, on Charter Renewal.

Since last they formally met, Jesse has been on the BBC's Jazz pop-up station, discussing, albeit briefly, his love for jazz trumpeters. As ever, he's been featured on BBC Hereford and Worcester, most recently talking about the establishment of a new local university specialising in engineering. And he was on R4's Media Show, with Steve Hewlett, re-voicing concerns about BBC Studios.

He's also been reviewing the second volume of Charles Moore's biography of Margaret Thatcher, for Prospect Magazine. Here's an extract.

To an extent hard to recognise now, Britain in the 1970s and 80s was beset by hatreds—of class, of income, of religion, of race—made worse by unemployment, economic malaise, loss of international standing and a wider sense of powerlessness. These hatreds were reflected in the media, and to some extent fomented by them, including by the BBC. (Indeed the BBC notoriously spiked The Falklands Play by Ian Curteis, which depicted Thatcher as a heroine; overall, Moore records, it ran seven dramas that were critical of the Falklands War, and none that were favourable to it. Little wonder she disliked it).

I'm sure it's all in Lord Hall's briefing notes.