The Battle of Savoy Hill

Miniseries

Miniseries

The Battle of Savoy Hill is a dramatised five-part account of Hilda Matheson's working relationship with the BBC's founding Director-General, John Reith, and the censorship of a talk by writer and politician Harold Nicolson. The account also features some of the extensive correspondence between Matheson and her lover, the novelist Vita Sackville-West. One of the first women on the staff of the BBC, Hilda Matheson was head-hunted by Reith in 1926 when he persuaded her to leave her job as political secretary to Nancy Astor MP and take up the post of the first Director of Talks. Her pioneering work in this role shaped speech radio. During her time as Director of Talks, some of the big names she brought to the wireless included HG Wells, John Maynard Keynes, Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West.