L
ord Reith, the first director-general of the BBC, famously distilled the corporation’s mission as being to “inform, educate and entertain”. The last of these three imperatives one imagines being added as a rather grudging concession at the time; today it is invariably the second that is hardest to find on the airwaves. For the last 25 years, however, there has remained one outpost in the schedule still governed by the elevated Reithian ideal: In Our Time, which yesterday morning broadcast its 1,000th edition.
On its face, it would be easy to dismiss the Radio 4 programme as a throwback: a 45-minute encounter between three academics called into Broadcasting House to speak in learned conference on a subject of mutual interest, overseen by an accomplished
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