"We are horrified to learn that the British Broadcasting Company is to act as the arbiter of English." So worried one newspaper in 1926. But John Reith, the director-general of the BBC, believed that with the advent of mass communication, the BBC was charged with a responsibility to influence the way English should be spoken. The BBC engaged some of the nation's finest minds, including George Bernard Shaw, to consider the best way to speak on the wireless. John Humphrys explores the history and politics of received pronunciation and the people who brought it to the world.