Patrick Comerford
Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. It is one of the first purpose-built broadcast buildings in the world and was completed in 1932. The first radio broadcast from the building was on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May 1932.
The main building is in the Art Deco style, with a facing of Portland stone over a steel frame. Broadcasting House is a Grade II* listed building and over the years, has been extensively renovated and extended. A new wing added in 2005 is now known as the John Peel Wing.
Broadcasting House was designed by the architect George Val Myer (1883-1959), in collaboration with the BBC’s civil engineer, Marmaduke Tudsbery. The interiors were mainly the work of the Australian-born Irish architect Raymond McGrath (1903-1977).
Val Myer and Francis James (‘FJ’) Watson-Hart (1880-1953) had been working in 1927 for a consortium headed by Lord Waring that owned sites at the bottom of Portland Place. The BBC identified the sites as the location for its new building, and Val Myer, who began as the landlord’s architect, came to undertake the leaseholder’s bespoke design.
Myer named his original design ‘the Top Hat design’. With its clean-cut lines and allusions to New York Art Deco, and its accentuated front section with its clock tower and aerial mast, Myer’s design has often been compared with the streamlined liners of the 1930s.
Inside, the reception has Art Deco light fittings and a mosaic floor, while the decoration matches the 1930s colours. The interior designs for Broadcasting House were the first major commission for Raymond McGrath. He was a Cambridge-educated architect, illustrator, printmaker and interior designer and for the greater part of his career he would live in Dublin, where he was the principal architect for the Office of Public Works in Ireland.
The gilded Latin inscription on the ceiling arch of the main reception area describes Broadcasting House as a ‘temple of the arts and muses’ and welcome workers and visitors alike to a palace of art and creativity: ‘This temple of the arts and muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the first Governors in the year of our Lord 1931 John Reith being Director-General, and they pray that good seed sown may bring forth good harvest, that all things foul or hostile to peace may be banished hence, and that people inclining their ear to whatsoever things are lovely and honest, whatsoever things are of good report, may tread the path of virtue and wisdom.’
Broadcasting House links emphatically to the rest of Regent Street with its use of Portland stone. But it was modernistic in spirit, and the building showcases works of art, most prominently Eric Gill’s statues of Prospero and Ariel, from The Tempest by Shakespeare. The reception area also has a statue of ‘The Sower’ by Gill, and there are additional carvings of Ariel in many bas-reliefs on the exterior, some by Gill and others by Gilbert Bayes (1872-1973).
Gill was among the most prominent sculptors of the 20th century. The choice of Prospero and Ariel was seen as fitting at the time as Prospero was a magician and scholar and Ariel was a spirit of the air, representing in some way radio waves.
The most important group by Gill is in the niche above the main entrance and shows Prospero, Ariel’s master, sending him out into the world. Gill accepted the BBC’s suggestion that the literary subject of the carvings should be Shakespeare’s Ariel, who, as the invisible spirit of the air, might well serve as a personification of broadcasting.
The two panels by Gill on the west front show ‘Ariel between Wisdom and Gaiety’, and ‘Ariel hearing celestial music’, and a panel on the east side represents ‘Ariel piping to children’.
Directly above this group, at the seventh floor level, is a rectangular clock that is without chimes but that uses an amplifier and loudspeaker to reproduce the chimes of Big Ben.
The great surface area of the west face is relieved partly by vertical breaks in the massing of the windows, and partly by a carved balcony on the third floor, the BBC coat of arms between the third and fourth floors, and groups of sculpture at appropriate places on the level of the first floor. The carving of the BBC coat of arms and the frieze of the ‘birds of the air’ and ‘waves’ or ‘rays of light’ on the balcony front were designed by the architect.
Inside, Gilbert Bayes was commissioned to create 12 friezes for the walls of the Concert Hall, later the Radio Theatre. His carvings on the west wall are of classical scenes such as poetry, dancing and music; those on the opposite wall depict modern scenes. Bayes is best-known for his ‘Queen of Time’ (1908), which supports the clock above the main entrance at Selfridge’s on Oxford Street.
Gill carved his statue of Prospero and Ariel onsite in 1931 and 1932, and it was one of his many high-profile commissions. He later said he did not understand why the Shakespearean characters were relevant and that his statue actually depicted God and Jesus. Other reports said Gill had sculpted them as God and Man, rather than Prospero and Ariel, and that there is a small carved picture of a beautiful girl on the back of Prospero.
From the beginning, some features of the statue were controversial, including the size of the sprite’s genitalia. A question was tabled in the House of Commons, but the popular story that Gill was ordered to modify the statue is not substantiated.
The statues of Prospero and Ariel have become controversial once again in recent years with revelations from Gill’s diary that he engaged in paedophilia and questions about whether the statue reflect his sexuality.
Despite his keen interest in religion and pious appearance, Gill’s private diaries revealed a life of sexual deviancy. After his death in 1940, his diaries revealed he had sexually abused his two eldest daughters, documented an incestuous relationship with at least one of his sisters, and gave accounts of sexual activity with the family dog.
Since all this was revealed in Fiona MacCarthy’s biography of Gill in 1989, calls for the removal of his public artworks have grown. But the BBC has declined to remove his work from Broadcasting House, saying he is one of the pre-eminent British artists of the 20th century.
Gill’s statue of Prospero and Ariel was vandalised in January 2022 by a man using a hammer and who wrote on the statue: ‘Time to go was 1989’ and ‘noose all paedos’. The statue was damaged a second time in May 2023 by a man with a hammer. BBC staff reportedly heard him shouting ‘paedophile’ as he struck the statue.
The Grade II*-listed statue was restored and unveiled in April (2025). The estimated total costs of the restoration and protective work in line with the building’s Grade II* status was put at £529,715. A protective screen was installed in front of the sculpture ‘to avoid future damage’.
At the time, a spokeswoman said the BBC ‘in no way condones Gill's abusive behaviour’ but that it ‘draws a line between the actions of Gill, and the status of these artworks’. The head of BBC History, Robert Seatter, said: ‘Gill’s abusive behaviour and lifestyle are well documented and the BBC in no way condones his behaviour. So while it is right that the fabric of the building is restored, we must also ensure people are fully informed about the history connected to it.’
As for Raymond McGrath, the architect who designed the interiors for Broadcasting House, he moved to Dublin in 1940 when he was appointed Senior Architect at the Office of Public Works. He was appointed Principal Architect in 1948, and held that post until 1968.
His first major work for the OPW was the decoration of the interior of Áras an Uachtaráin. After a fire in the state apartments at Dublin Castle in 1941 he took charge of the team responsible for the restoration work.
McGrath is credited with giving a recognisable ‘look’ to Ireland’s state buildings. These included specially designed woollen carpets, Waterford glass chandeliers and Irish silk poplin hangings, along with fittings that included 18th-century chimney-pieces and ornamental plasterwork. He supervised and co-ordinated the decor as well as the architecture, drawing on his extensive knowledge of Irish Georgian architecture.
In the 1950s, he worked on a series of specially-woven carpets that became the hallmark of his government work. They were installed in public buildings in Ireland and in Irish embassies around the world, most notably in Paris, Rome, Washington and Ottawa.
McGrath also designed the Royal Hibernian Academy building in Ely Place, and in 1968 he became the RHA’s professor of architecture. For many years, he also championed a new National Concert Hall. He died in Dublin on 2 December 1977 at the age of 74.
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