David Hendy is a British writer and broadcaster, specialising in modern cultural history. He is an Emeritus Professor of the University of Sussex, where he taught media history between 2013 and 2021. Before that, he taught at the University of Westminster in London, during which time he held visiting Fellowships at the universities of Cambridge, Yale and Indiana-Bloomington. He's the author of five books, including 'Life on Air: A History of Radio Four', which won the Longmans-History today Book of the Year Award. His most recent book is 'The BBC: A People's History', an authorised biography of the British Broadcasting Corporation published in January 2022 to coincide with the Corporation's Centenary. David Hendy spent seven years in the 1980s and 1990s working at the BBC as a current affairs reporter and producer, on programmes including 'The World Tonight' (BBC Radio 4). In recent years he's returned to broadcasting, writing and presenting a number of series for both BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3. These include 'Noise: A Human History', a thirty-part series broadcast on Radio 4 in 2013, as well as several editions of 'The Essay' for Radio 3. In 2016, he wrote and presented 'Langston Hughes at the Third' a 45-minute Sunday Feature which explored the BBC work of the Harlem poet Langston Hughes. In 2011, he also co-wrote (with Ade Bean) a full-length Sunday drama for BBC Radio 3 called 'Between Two Worlds', which dramatised the life of the Victorian physicist and spiritualist, Oliver Lodge. He currently lives in Lewes, Sussex.
