Who remembers the wartime news bulletins? The early ones didn't register for me as I was too young. But later they started to.
It was the practice throughout that period for the newsreaders to identify themselves, not in pursuance of personality cults like today, but to encourage listeners to identify particular men - they were all men - and to recognise that these were genuine BBC broadcasts. I remember the names of several of them, Stuart Hibberd, Frank Phillips, John Snagge. Wilfred Pickles was also introduced in order to provide a more distinctive voice, so distinctive in fact that I do not remember him at all in that role. But my favourite, for whom I always listened out because I loved the silkiness and "niceness" of his voice, used to introduce himself as follows: "Here is the news and this is Alvanidel reading it". It was ages before I ever saw his name in print and realised that it was Alvar Liddell.
I wish I could remember more detail of some of the broadcasts in addition to the names of the readers. Just a couple of phrases have always stuck in my mind. "Fierce fighting along the River Don", sometimes shortened to "the Don". That seemed to crop up for a long time and it always seemed strange that there was somewhere - I didn't know where - a river bearing a boy's name. And, after every report of RAF activities "All our aircraft returned to base". Or less happy variations on the same theme.
I also remember the war correspondents, shouting into their bulky recording equipment in the desert or Italy or France, sometimes with the noise of battle in the background. Men like Howard Marshall, Godfrey Talbot, Frank Gillard and Richard Dimbleby.
I once asked my elder sister - who was in her early teens and was therefore the repository of all knowledge and wisdom - as to whether there would be news bulletins after the war, when, after all, there would be nothing to report. "Oh yes" she said, "when ships sink and things like that". She also told me about a particular miracle which occurred in peacetime. How there were regular broadcasts, not only talking about the weather (which was never currently mentioned on the news) but also telling you what it was going to be like TOMORROW!" I found this revelation hard to accept but eventually, after a long time, I found it to be true.
Anyone else remember these newsreaders and reporters?
Chris