The first day of one of the world's finest broadcasters

On this day, November 14, 1922  The BBC began radio service in the United Kingdom.

The BBC had plans to close down BBC Four, the specialist arts and science television channel. It will not now be closed down, instead it “will continue to have originations [commissions], with a focus on the arts”, a BBC spokesperson said.

Earlier this week it showed a four-part series, Berlin 1945. It was a powerful recall of the last year of the war. It strongly relied on the diaries of Berliners, who experienced the arrival of the Red Army, the death of Hitler, the Potsdam Conference and the subsequent four-part division of the ruined city.

The programme acknowledged the literary genius of Vasily Grossman and it also referred to Soviet Marshal General Georgy Zhukov's management of the city in those great days of horror.