The General Strike affected transport, travel and supplies over 12 days. The BBC was the only source of news, independent from both the government and the TUC. The picture of Churchill is not that of the heroic war time leader but someone bullying, determined that the Bolshevik revolution should not encompass Britain. What with Churchill’s anti-emancipation shown in Sylvia, pre-war Churchill is being reassessed.

Stephen Campbell Moore as Reith, ten years younger than the youngest of his six siblings, son of a Presbyterian Minister and educated at Glasgow Academy,  prays frequently and is shown as a man obsessed by an early friendship and love for Charlie Bowser (Luke Newberry) a relationship which Reith’s daughter Marista Leishman was convinced was homosexual.  His own marriage to Muriel (Mariam Hague) seems to have had difficulties.  He has a prominent scar on his left cheek after being wounded in the First World War which at the time he regretted because he was wearing a new tunic.  

There is a wonderful opening scene of the makeshift radio sound effects made by the early Foley technicians, the coconut shells of horses’ hooves, the gunshot that is a stick of celery being cracked in two or the popping of a champagne cork.  The trowel on a spade for the slice of a sword, the eye gouging of a spoon in a soft orange.  The play’s backdrop is a collection of these novel items used for radio sound.  Ben and Max Ringham are the sound directors creating this inventive sensory world.