Noel Newsome

Along with his deputy Dougles Ritchie, Newsome is credited with having been responsible for every word spoken over the BBC European Service microphones at its Bush House facility until shortly after D-Day in June 1944.

[5] Unable to make any impact at the paper, Newsome seized an opportunity to travel to Malaysia to edit a newspaper in Kuala Lumpa called the Malay Mail.

In 1935, with the situation in Europe looking increasing bleak, Newsome returned to the Daily Telegraphy to take up a sub-editor position on the foreign news desk where he became a severe critic of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement in his dealings with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

[7] It was Newsome who would set out the BBC's strategy for news as a weapon of war, and go on to direct a huge broadcasting operation mounted in twenty-five different languages for a total of over twenty-three hours a day.

In December 1940, after BBC Broadcasting House had been bombed, the European Service transferred to a disused ice rink at Maida Vale under an enormous glass roof.

When rumors were abound that the allies intended opening a second front in 1942, Newsome was dead set against raising hopes among the people in Europe under occupation that a new phase was imminent, a position that brought him into conflict with Winston Churchill who summoned him to Downing Street.

It was an initiative that threatened to put him on a collision course with the Foreign Office and, particularly with the Minister of Information Brendan Bracken, as his broadcasts typically reflected more than a hint of socialist thinking.

Newsome conceded in his memoirs that he was permanently at war with the Foreign Office during his time at the BBC, as his opinionated approach and left wing tendencies often caused friction and resentment.

[17] Newsome also made enemies at the corporation by allowing little deference to higher authority, and had previously been warned by his bosses prior to D-Day that he was too much of a crusader to have a future in broadcasting.

[19] Not until a quarter of a century after Newsome left the BBC's European service, was he acknowledged as a central figure in the organisation in Asa Briggs' History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom.

[21] Shortly after the invasion of Europe Operation Overlord began in June 1944, Newsome left his role at the BBC to join the broadcasting arm of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF).