Today: A History of our World through 60 years of Conversations & Controversies

by Edward Stourton (Editor), Nick Robinson (Foreword), Martha Kearney (Foreword)

Today is the sound of history being made - live on air.

In an era of fake news, echo chambers and new fault lines in global politics, millions of listeners turn to BBC Radio 4's Today programme each morning to help them make sense of the world around them.

The first ever book from the iconic programme marks six decades of BBC Radio 4's Today programme with sixty world changing stories as they were broadcast. Covering war, rebellion and political transformation, to significant changes in culture, society, and the scientific world, the book explores events as they happened, and how they changed the world around us.

From the fall of the Berlin Wall and the anti-apartheid movement to 9/11 and the Rise of Islamic State, from the Rushdie affair to the emergence of Brit Art and from space exploration to the tomorrow's world of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Key figures within the book include Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, Stephen Hawking, Tracey Emin and Barack Obama.

Chapters include:
Chapter 1: Rebellion, Revolution and Protest
Chapter 2: Britain's Political Landscape
Chapter 3: War, Conflict and Security
Chapter 4: Art, Culture and Sport
Chapter 5: Social Change
Chapter 6: The Natural World, Science and Technology

Also available in Audio and Ebook.

Edited by Edward Stourton
Forewords by Nick Robinson & Martha Kearney
With an introduction by Sarah Sands, editor of the Today programme.

Shortlisted for the 2019 FutureBook of the Year award

Genres: Nonfiction

512 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 5, 2019

About the author

Edward Stourton is a newspaper columnist, writer and presenter of several high-profile current affairs programmes and regularly presents BBC Radio Four programmes such as The World at One, The World this Weekend, Sunday and Analysis. He is a frequent contributor to the Today programme, where for ten years he was one of the main presenters.

Reviews

[Dylan Vieites Glennon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll forever love BBC Radio 4, and I found this book to be so brilliant since it recanted first-person experiences around different subjects as said on air the day it occurred. From varying Prime Ministers and other interesting individuals.

At the same time, it enabled me to contextualise information I had previously vaguely heard about and not understood the ramifications of.

[Francis Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 60 year (1958-2018) anthology of news stories covered on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme is a fascinating read, particularly for Britons of pensionable age looking back on the events that formed the background to their lives. In the busiest years of those lives there was no opportunity to listen to the Today programme and the focus was elsewhere so there was only vague and partial awareness of what was going on. The book neatly fills in the gaps with details on 60 news stories spread across six thematic chapters - covering internal conflicts/protest, UK politics, wars, culture, social change and science/nature.

I lived through these events and so on the one hand they feel very familiar, but on the other hand, having read the book, it is amazing how little attention I was paying to them or really understood what was going on!

Each story has been expertly told and summarised from its beginning to its end (at least as far as it stood in 2018), with analysis of the key issues using Today programme interviews with experts and protagonists. So, for example, the history of the supersonic aircraft Concorde, a source of Anglo-French technological pride, began in the 1950s, saw the maiden flight in 1969 and first commercial flight in 1976, and ended in 2003. Lacking commercial take-up outside the host governments, only 20 were ever built, of which 14 flew commercially.

The range of topics is one of the things that makes the book so interesting, from Greenham Common to the Northern Irish hunger strikes, and from grammar schools and fox hunting to Britain’s involvement in space and the BSE/CJD crisis. There are many surprising facts, such as the hundreds who died from vCJD, and much to be learned in general from these episodes.

Striking too is how much has already changed since the publication of this book, from geopolitics to society to technology.

[Cambridge Spine Crackers · Rating 4 out of 5]

A remarkable account of the late 20th and early 21st century, told through the lens of one of the BBC’s flagship programmes.

I found the audiobook version to be incredibly beneficial, as they could insert the audio archive that they’re referring to within each section, giving deeper context to the tone of the remarks being quoted.

I liked the way they categorised and themed chapters, not simply choosing to go chronologically.

[Colette Coen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book that I have been dipping into over the last few months. It looks at the last 60 years through the lens of the Today programme and gives bite sized history lessons. None of the chapters are more than a few pages, but they enlighten with the nuggets of knowledge.