Ronald Knox - Radio Hoax

Radio Hoax

In January 1926, for one of his regular BBC Radio programmes, Knox broadcast a pretended live report of revolution sweeping across London entitled Broadcasting from the Barricades. In addition to live reports of persons, including a government minister being lynched, his broadcast cleverly mixed supposed band music from the Savoy Hotel with the hotel's purported destruction by trench mortars. The Houses of Parliament and the clock tower were also said to have been flattened.

Because the broadcast occurred on a snowy weekend, much of the United Kingdom was unable to get the newspapers until days later - the lack of newspapers caused a minor panic, as it was believed that this was caused by the events in London.

A 2005 BBC report on the broadcast suggests that the innovative style of Knox's programme may have influenced Orson Welles' radio broadcast War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938 and foreshadowed it in its consequences. The script of the broadcast is reprinted in Essays in Satire (1928).