Wimbledon

delights of my years in radio included the arrival from London of the Guide to Players' Names from the BBC Pronunciation Department, who carefully annotated Czech, Russian, Spanish and other players to give us a fighting chance of getting them right, as they efficiently removed any British players from early rounds.

Resuming packing as Murray loses the second set in today's gentlemen's' final, I came across this slim volume from 1928, with a lofty Foreword by J. C. W. Reith - "Since the earliest days of broadcasting, the B.B.C. has recognised a great responsibility towards the problems of spoken English. They are vexed but intriguing ... As the broadcaster is influential, so also is he open to criticism from every quarter in that he addresses listeners of every degree of education, many of whom are influenced by local vernacular and tradition. There has been no attempt to establish a unform spoken language, it seemed desirable to adopt uniformity of principle and uniformity of pronunciation to be observed by Announcers [love the capitalisation] with respect to doubtful words. The policy might be described as that of seeking a common denominator of educated speech."