BBC Television’s first female newsreader, Nan Winton, tells the story of how she was sacked because the editor preferred men to read the news. That editor, Michael Peacock, describes his shame at the whole episode.

Staff working in the BBC’s monitoring service near Reading explain the critical role they played in defusing the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war. And Tony Blackburn describes the alarm his new colleagues at Radio 1 felt when he said he worked without a script: it meant their morning delivery of coffee and doughnuts was under threat. Show less