In Popular Culture
Author and journalist George Orwell worked in Bush House between 1941 and 1943 and the building is said to have given him the idea, when writing 1984, both for the nightmarish Room 101 and the almost equally awful canteen at the Ministry of Truth.
Bush House was used by many celebrities, including Sir Paul McCartney, for his broadcasts to Russia.
For most English-language shortwave listeners (during the Cold War and after), Bush House has always been the unquestioned BBC World Service home. Although the Bush House complex was not designed for international broadcasting (like Broadcast House that RNZI uses in Wellington)—it nevertheless is perceived by many broadcasting professionals as being the stereotypical international broadcasting centre. With BBC World Service no longer at Bush House, a new era in international broadcasting has started for the UK. However, this new era begins with a new building that was built some 50 years distant from the Blitz (the event that led to Bush House's use).
Read more about this topic: Bush House
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)