22 JULY 1949, Page 14

RADIO

IT would be a salutary experience for listeners groaning under the B.B.C. monopoly to spend, say, six days glued to a radio set in some other country (I put six days as about the limit of endurance before the brain would collapse in a merciful release.) Just as you cannot really appreciate the British Press until you compare it with its equivalent in France or U.S.A. or Italy, so you have no sense of the B.B.C.'s uncovenanted (but strictly chartered) mercies unless you have suffered the flood of accordion music that pours out of French transmitters, or the bray and babble to which American listeners have been obliged to make their cars callous.