The BBC’s Last Warrior-Statesman: Sir Richard Francis and the Battle to Save the Corporation from Thatcher — and Itself

“The BBC needs no lesson in patriotism … Truth is always the best propaganda.” During its golden age, the BBC was respected as the most trusted and most powerful voice in global broadcasting, unrivalled in its role of holding the British government to account. But it was a position constantly under threat, with successive Prime Ministers keen to place the BBC on a tight leash so they could ‘mark their own homework’. With the rise of Margaret Thatcher, that pressure became an all-out assault. Mirroring this eventful era from the late 1950s to mid-1980s was the equally turbulent career of Richard ‘Dick’ Francis, one of the broadcaster’s most controversial yet influential figures. A warrior-adventurer at heart, the calm but doughty Oxford-educated Yorkshireman thrived on taking risks and charting unknown territory. He travelled the world’s war zones, including Vietnam; was the BBC’s go-to man for the ‘big occasion’, overseeing the coverage of era-defining events including the death of President Kennedy, the Apollo moonshots, and successive UK general elections; and faced death threats, bomb scares and the ire of Number 10 with a calm that comforted his colleagues and stilled his enemies. Written by his eldest son, The BBC’s Last Warrior-Statesman is the first official biography of Sir Richard Francis, charting his rise from director of flagship current affairs programme Panorama in the revolutionary Sixties, BBC Controller for Northern Ireland during The Troubles of the Seventies, and Director for News and Current Affairs in the polarised Eighties. With unique access to documents hidden from public view for 40 years, it uncovers the colourful personalities and heated conflicts within a BBC boardroom under siege, and underlines Francis’ key position as an unshakable and innovative champion of public service broadcasting when the organisation needed it most. “An engrossing account of the BBC’s inner workings during its most turbulent era.” Chris Riches, Daily Express “Francis sheds new light on Margaret Thatcher’s siege of the BBC.” Richard Moriarty, The Sun "Stephen masters the grand organism that is the BBC…laying out the weird, and in some ways apparently arcane, battles within the BBC, as well as the princes and big beasts of broadcasting it made that ran it." Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster & author of Pinkoes and Traitors