Reith, John ___ 1889-1971 ___ British ___ politician

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Born at Stonehaven in Scotland, Reith was the youngest of seven children born into the family of a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. He studied at Glasgow Academy and at Gresham's School in Norfolk. He was commissioned into the 5th Scottish Rifles and served in the First World War until he was invalided out in 1915. He spent two years in the US, supervising armament contracts before returning at the end of the war and working for an engineering firm in Glasgow. Unsatisfied with his lot, Reith moved to London and became secretary to the London Unionist group of MPs in advance of the 1922 general election. Subsequently, he was appointed general manager of the British Broadcasting Company, an organisation aimed at promoting sales of wireless sets. But he then oversaw the organisation's transformation under a royal charter and became its first Director-General in 1927. The first regular television broadcasts began in 1936, and Reith left the BBC in 1938 for a term as chairman of Imperial Airways. In 1940 he was appointed Minister of Information, and subsequently was elected, MP for Southampton. Under Churchill, Reith also served for a while as Minister of Transport and then as First Commissioner of Works. He was created Baron Reith of Stonehaven in 1940.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
The Diary Review - Reith on Hitler, Churchill

DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1911-1971 ___ political social art self commerce

WEB TEXT LINKS
a bit about and some citations
a couple of quotes
one long extract on the King's abdication
 

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
The BBC Story

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
The Reith Diaries
 

July 2005, August 2008, April 2013
Please email if you have any corrections, additions or comments, or if you've found the site useful. Thank you.

IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.